Globally, more than 38,000 enterprises utilize Oracle Hyperion Planning to improve business predictability. On the contrary, over 35% of large enterprises and up to 65% of medium-sized enterprises still rely on spreadsheets or legacy systems to meet their planning, budgeting, and forecasting requirements. Not only is this practice inefficient and time-consuming but also prone to human error resulting.
Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS), which is part of Oracle’s Cloud Offerings, reduces financial inefficiencies by providing organizations with a centralized application for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analysis. This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application allows visibility and brings confidence to financial planning, budgeting and reporting with no capital investment.

Why Enterprises Should Shift to a Cloud-based Solution?

One of the primary objectives of Oracle PBCS is to lower the adoption barrier for Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions by moving them to cloud, where no capital investment is needed. Currently, EPM solutions are available in Cloud Planning, Shared Services, Financial Reporting, and Smart View Provider (Excel-Add-In).

Here’s how Oracle PBCS lowers the adoption barrier of EPM solutions:

• Reduces/Eliminates up-front capital investment
• Offers mainstream applications as cloud services
• SaaS subscription model lowers IT resource requirements
• Delivers EPM cloud stand-alone services with fusion financials cloud service

Benefits of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud

• Quick adoption of Oracle Hyperion
• Speedy implementation cycle
• Temporary location to initiate development while awaiting new hardware acquisitions (can be switched to a traditional model)
• Can be easily switched to a traditional model

In the existing Oracle Hyperion Planning, customers may utilize Oracle PBCS to support new business areas or decide to move their existing applications to the cloud, especially while implementing major changes (such as an upgrade from an earlier Hyperion release). For enterprises already using Oracle Hyperion Planning, there are multiple benefits Oracle PBCS offers over the traditional on-premises model, like:

• Shorter sprint cycles for upgrades and testing
• Expansion of the current model/dimensions without hardware restrictions
• Sandbox for testing without additional overhead
• Option to switch back to a traditional on-premise model

Why Choose Oracle Cloud for PBCS?

Oracle has been offering cloud applications for more than 13 years and is one of the few leading vendors that can comprehensively support the diverse needs of small, medium, and large enterprises with flexible, modern, and secure applications.

Complete

• Broad: Spans Oracle’s application and platform portfolio
• Best-in-class: Based on Oracle’s industry-leading cloud products
• Integrated: Built on a common, unified platform

Flexible and Modern

• Standards-based: Built on industry standards (Java, SQL, HTML5)
• Web Extensible: Build and deploy new apps or extend existing apps
• Portable: Migrate apps to and from on-premise

Enterprise-Grade

• Secure: Strict controls and policies to ensure data protection
• Elastic: Self-service, capacity-on-demand with a monthly subscription
• Managed: Fully automated operations and management

How do Enterprises Benefit by Adopting Oracle PBCS

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service offers vast benefits to enterprises with the simplicity of cloud:

• Zero capital infrastructure investments or depreciation (no hardware or software purchase)
• Minimum IT resource requirements
• Lower cost of total ownership (setup and maintenance)
• Easier to move towards an on-premises deployment model
• Rapid deployment with faster time-to-benefit

Features and Functional Advantages of Oracle PBCS

Oracle PBCS offers enterprises with functional advantages that support robust planning and budgeting. Here’s how:

• Best-in-class financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting
• Ability to align top-down and bottoms-up models
• Consistent use of assumptions, calculations, and allocations
• Use of web and Microsoft Office interfaces
• Powerful workflow and process management tools
• Leverages Oracle Essbase for powerful reporting and analysis
• Flexible planning functions such as rolling forecast wizard
• Drills-through Oracle’s EPMS to source integrations

In addition to Oracle PBCS functional advantages, enterprises will also experience tangible efficiency and financial advantages, including:

• Application diagnostics
• Built-in starter kits
• Microsoft Excel-based admin capabilities
• Zero up-front hardware cost – eliminating capital expense requirements
• Monthly subscription providing predictable cost structure for planning and budgeting
• Changing the focus from hardware and infrastructure to deliver real business value
• Automatic upgrades and patches to ensure that enterprises use the latest features
• Common web browser and Microsoft Office interfaces to increase efficiencies of business users
• Oracle’s hardware support to keep the applications running smoothly

Oracle PBCS Specifications

Differences (from a typical on-premise model) that enterprises should know before Oracle’s PBCS adoption/implementation:

• One planning application per cloud instance
• Up to four plan types (ASO or BSO)
• EAS is not accessible (key features added to Calc Manager)
• Classic managed applications only (no EPMA)
• Planning modules are on the roadmap for PBCS, but it doesn’t include: Workforce, Capital Asset, Public Sector Budgeting, and Project Financial
• Data and metadata are loaded to PBCS via flat file transfers
• 150 gigabyte of storage available for each environment
• Scheduled maintenance window needs to be specified for patching and version upgrades
• Single sign-on managed through Oracle Cloud rather than shared services
• No MSAD/LDAP user directory integration

Oracle PBCS is one of the most robust cloud-based planning and budgeting software in the market. With powerful workflows, process management tools, and single sign-on capabilities, it makes for a good business decision to adopt Oracle PBCS for planning and budgeting needs of enterprises. Moreover, with the assurance of 24/7 support and frequent technology upgrades from Oracle, enterprises will benefit significantly from their technology investments.

Evoke’s Oracle Services

Evoke Technologies is an IT leader with more than 14+ years of experience in delivering software solutions to global enterprises. When you work with Oracle certified consultants from Evoke, you’re partnering with consultants who can work with you to make your business more efficient and profitable. Our highly trained and experienced software engineers will customize, implement, test, maintain and upgrade all your Oracle products, positioning you for maximum success. To know more about Evoke’s Oracle Services, please contact our sales team at +1 (937) 660-4923 or email us at sales@evoketechnologies.com or visit our website.

Author

Thirumala Rao Mandava is a Senior Technical Associate at Evoke Technologies. With extensive experience in Oracle technologies, Thirumala provides innovative solutions to resolve customer’s business challenges. Thirumala provided solutions across multiple verticals including retail, hospitality, and telecom. In his spare time, he likes to read about emerging technologies.