Experian used Oracle Data Integrator to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with the Oracle Hyperion system. On the first five workdays of the month, the system loads data from Oracle E-Business Suite into the EPM suite every two hours. For the remainder of the month, there is a daily system update.

“Previously, it could take hours or days to gather our financial data across regions and business units and push it through our myriad reporting tools—and even then, there was no guarantee that the information was accurate or timely. The standardized processes enabled by the Oracle Hyperion solution, as well as the continuous refreshes, help us on a day-to-day basis and also greatly help streamline our month-end and year-end financial close processes,” said Kulbir Sandhu, senior director, global reporting systems, Experian plc.

Experian can also pull financial source data from acquired companies that have not yet been integrated into the Oracle E-Business Suite instance by loading the data directly into Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management—providing the company with a full enterprise view without losing precious time.

“We have 800 users across the Oracle Hyperion applications. The system gives our financial management teams a truly global view of data. They can log in, pull profit and loss and growth reports, and track performance in Asia Pacific and in North America and have confidence that they are using standardized data to make decisions,” Sandhu said. “The platform also gives us a great platform for the future. For example, we’re looking at deploying additional sales reporting capabilities in the EPM system.”

The system also provides Experian with the flexibility to load all data in local currency, automatically completing conversions and budget rates and thus providing a robust set of reports in constant currencies. The ability to aggregate large volumes of data in Oracle Essbase puts information at the finance teams’ fingertips very quickly.

“With Oracle Hyperion, we spend less time building reports and more time on actual analysis. Our various business units within our regions can support their sales and marketing organizations and provide them with the analyses they need to help drive and grow their business,” Sandhu said.

Prior to the Oracle Hyperion implementation, if the company wanted to conduct a global aggregation of its financial performance data, it would need to wait for each region to upload numbers and then reconcile those numbers to their source systems.

“It could take more than a day before we could even access that data,” Sandhu said. “Now, with our continuous refreshes between Oracle E-Business Suite and Hyperion, we can run the end-to-end process in 90 minutes or less.”

Experian has also accelerated its year-end financial close process from seven or eight days to just three.

Another key benefit from the implementation is improved flexibility in human resource management. Previously, with a number of reporting systems in place worldwide, it was difficult to move employees from one region or business unit to another without requiring extensive training on systems.

Now, with one standard global system, Experian has greater flexibility to offer employees new opportunities without needing to invest as much in training.

In addition, with Oracle Hyperion Smart View for Office, users have the freedom to view, import, manipulate, distribute, and share EPM data in familiar tools, like Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. 

“Oracle Hyperion Smart View also enables our users to be more self-sufficient. Once they go through training, they can easily interrogate and report on data without IT assistance,” Sandhu said.

Of course, change does not always come easy. Sandhu noted: “With our implementation, we had a lot of changes at once—consolidating three Oracle E-Business Suite instances into one, putting in a brand new chart of accounts, and replacing all our local reporting systems with the integrated Oracle Hyperion suite. Initially, it was a challenge. But, with a little time and training, we have reached a point where our employees see this as a tool that they cannot possibly do without. The Oracle Hyperion solution is critical to our success, and our users like the ad hoc capabilities of Smart View to slice and dice data the way they want.”

With its comprehensive implementation, Experian knew that the integrated applications in the Oracle Hyperion suite could address multiple requirements, from data validation across multiple source systems, to financial consolidation and reporting, to budgeting and forecasting.

With Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management, Experian can more easily maintain its downstream systems. Without this tool, if Experian needed to make any changes to metadata or add new values, it would need to go into each Oracle Hyperion application and repeat the process. Now, the company can make any necessary changes in Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management, and the tool pushes the changes down into all Hyperion applications.

Experian also uses Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management to support alternate hierarchies to provide different views of the business for sales reporting, profitability analysis, and strategic client reporting—without having to recreate common dimensions each time—saving a significant amount of time.

“Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management allows our lines of business to analyze and report from their points of view, but still gives us the confidence that all our critical applications will tie together, from the top down. We have true consistency,” Sandhu said.

In addition, by replacing multiple reporting systems worldwide with one global tool, Experian has reduced its total cost of ownership. The company previously had various teams across regions that maintained the local applications. With one global system, Experian was able to consolidate and establish one team to maintain applications and data, worldwide.

“We especially see this benefit with upgrades. Previously, we would have had to upgrade our myriad systems—it was not feasible or cost-effective, so it was difficult to stay up to date. With Oracle Hyperion, we can do a one-time upgrade, and everyone immediately benefits,” Sandhu noted.