It’s no secret that Oracle, along with the rest of the software industry, has been moving swiftly to the Cloud over the past few years.
Within Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management platform, this transition began in 2014 with the launch of Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS). In 2016, Oracle added out-of-the-box content to solve specific business challenges in areas like Workforce Planning and Capital Planning and bundled that with existing PBCS functionality to create Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (EPBCS).
Now in 2017, Oracle continues the impressive build-out of its Cloud offering with the introduction of Strategic Modeling, a new product that facilitates long-range planning and financial modeling in the Cloud.
As part of Oracle’s EPBCS bundle, the Strategic Modeling module is available at no additional cost to customers who already have purchased EPBCS. While Strategic Modeling is “new” in the sense that this functionality has never before existed in its Cloud offering, the module actually has its roots in Oracle’s Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF) product and will look similar to HSF for those who are familiar with its on-premise capabilities.
Robust. Flexible. Versatile.
Strategic Modeling provides customers with a multitude of out-of-the-box functionalities built to simplify and enhance financial modeling processes.
In particular, it adds robust capabilities in the area of Balance Sheet and Cash Flow forecasting that were either missing or limited in prior incarnations of the EPBCS suite. It also adds scenario-modeling capabilities that can be created and driven by end users on the fly as they are responding to questions or requests from Senior Management.
While Strategic Modeling provides significant incremental capabilities to EPBCS, it also leverages many common components of the suite to make the user experience consistent. For example, it provides both a Web and an Excel user interface allowing users to create models and report in the tools with which they are already comfortable. The user interface, navigation, data integration and reporting capabilities are the same across all components of EPBCS, which provides a seamless user experience across the platform.
Strategic Modeling Capabilities
Organizations often try to build strategic plans in Excel or by extending the time horizon of their budgeting applications. All too often, these patchwork solutions fall short primarily because they make use of tools that were not intended for strategic planning.
Strategic Modeling, on the other hand, was built specifically for this purpose and provides numerous out-of-the-box capabilities to address challenges in this area. The following is a sampling of some of the key pre-built capabilities that organizations can utilize to streamline and enhance their strategic planning processes:
- Fully Integrated Financial Statements: The standard template that ships with Strategic Modeling contains an integrated Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. The Balance Sheet will automatically balance based on the cash position as derived on the Cash Flow Statement. The circularity inherent in Interest Income/Expense calculations (i.e. as Cash increases, Interest Income increases, which leads to more Cash) is automatically solved for by the system.
- What-if Capabilities: Strategic Modeling greatly facilitates the process of creating on-the-fly scenarios and comparing them against the base case or other scenarios. Scenario Modeling capabilities are designed for end users to create and run and provide immediate results to key strategic questions.
- Robust Funding Capabilities: Strategic Modeling has a Funding Routine that allows users to specify a prioritized order of how cash deficits will be funded (e.g. Sell Marketable Securities, Draw upon a Revolver or Issue Commercial Paper, Issue Long-Term Debt or Equity) and how cash surpluses will be utilized (e.g. Pay Down Debt, Share Buyback, Dividends, Buy Marketable Securities).
- Debt Scheduler Utility: A guided user interface allows for easy input of the parameters for a new debt issuance. Strategic Modeling then will calculate and perform all of the accounting for items such as Accrued Interest, Amortization of Debt Issue Costs and Current Portion of Long-Term Debt.
- Integrated Enterprise Planning: Strategic Modeling is part of Oracle’s EPBCS Suite and as such benefits from tight integration with the other processes (Financials, Capital, Projects, Workforce) and the reporting cubes of EPBCS. This integration allows users to quickly and easily move data from their detailed budgets and operating plans to their strategic plans within Strategic Modeling. Once the strategic plan is complete, data can be easily exported as higher-level targets to seed the budget process.
Whether you own already own EPBCS and are interested in deploying the Strategic Modeling module, you are an existing HSF customer looking to move to the Cloud or you are new to Oracle and its Cloud offerings, Strategic Modeling has a compelling use case for all organizations looking to improve their modeling and strategic planning capabilities.
Register for our “Take Your Strategic Planning to New Heights” webinar: Please join us for our webinar on July 18, 2017, to see a demo of Strategic Modeling in action and to learn more about its capabilities — register here.
