Information Under Control

Continued

Users have felt empowered by the new system. "People were very excited," says Furtwengler. "We could provide functionally specific applications, such as management reporting, margin reporting, and FTE reporting, that were consistent across all financial applications. As a result, the applications run faster, meet the users' specific reporting needs without clutter or 'static' noise, and support traversing from one system—each with its own unique level of granularity—to another system, because of the consistency." Internal, external, and regulatory reporting applications are separated, and ad hoc reporting is still an option. Most importantly, emphasizes Furtwengler, "We know that we can go to one place to get the hierarchy structure that is relevant for one particular application. The great thing is that we now have confidence in the data, and that enables users to have power over the information."

Fifth Third Bank has more than 80 master data hierarchies in Hyperion Data Relationship Management with more than 450 applicable attributes, which one or more downstream systems may use. Hyperion Data Relationship Management's business rules engine, inheritance, and derived calculation capabilities make it easier for Fifth Third Bank to maintain those attributes consistently across all hierarchies.

"A key feature of Hyperion Data Relationship Management is that, of those 450-plus attributes, we only need to enter fewer than 10 of them manually. All the rest are derived, defaulted, or inherited, which is pretty incredible when you think about it," Furtwengler says. "Without Hyperion Data Relationship Management, I do not think we would be able to have the breadth of applications we have. Without it, we would be in a constant state of trying to figure out how to make sure all structures are the same, which would be a disincentive to creating additional functionally specific applications."

Furtwengler says the largest benefit of the Hyperion Data Relationship Management tool is that the company has eliminated senior management's frustrations with using data. "I don't have senior management coming to me or my boss telling us they don't trust the numbers," he says. "In that regard, it's a huge win, because now executives are able to use information across multiple systems with consistency to manage the business. By definition, this is what enterprise performance management is all about—being able to use data to guide and direct your organization."

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Monica Mehta is a California-based writer who specializes in business and technology.