Corralling Data for Business InsightsThe difference data relationship management can make

Part of the Rolta Managed Services Series

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Data Relationship ManagementData inconsistencies plague many organizations. In today’s constantly evolving enterprise,

complex systems often accommodate only the needs of specific business units, thereby creating enterprise silos of data presented in different formats with often contradictory numbers. Such decentralized approaches to data management typically impact the reliability of the data, leading to migraine-inducing extended reporting cycles and decision making based on questionable or faulty data that can ultimately impact the company’s risk profile and bottom line.

There are, however, solutions to resolve this issue.

Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) creates a centralized data repository with integrity enforced by business rules and validations. DRM can push the consistent set of analytical master data out to different systems, or function like a traffic cop and collect data from the various systems and roll it into one consistent set of meaningful reporting structures.

When it comes to reporting and analysis, DRM pulls master data together and synchronizes it into a common definition that perpetuates across the whole

organization. For example, a company with 15 divisions − each with its own definitions for key terms − can create one definition in the master data

for the company to be propagated and used across the enterprise, ensuring global understanding and enforced consistency.

DRM helps organizations effectively manage the hierarchies that exist in the multitude of disparate systems such as

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), General Ledger, Supply Chain, Customer Management, HR, and the like. DRM helps to manage and

maintain hierarchies such as entity structure, chart of accounts and departments

Organizations today primarily rely on any combination of three types of reports:

• Operational Reports are commonly generated by the GL, ERP, MRP or other operational system, and provide basic metrics. They tell “who, what, when, where, how many/how much,” etc. They generally contain metrics from only a single application and focus on a historical period or periods for comparison and predictive purposes. These provide temporal analysis without the insights behind the numbers to allow management to make data-driven strategic decisions.

• Management Reports take Operational Reports a step further, drawing from many sources and combining metrics from multiple Operational Reports. They also provide management insight for measuring performance objectives and goals by including informational metrics that provide tactical support to manage the day-to-day operations of the company. They do not provide sufficient insights to drive the strategic decision-making processes of an organization.

• Enterprise Performance Management Reports take the best of Operational and Management Reports and extend them with enterprise-consolidated information and analytical capabilities, unifying performance management with business intelligence. EPM technologies allow organizations to better plan, organize finances and conduct analysis to identify significant metrics that may be used to make key business decisions that drive profitability. By incorporating data from all facets of the corporate infrastructure (operations, planning, financials, etc.), users are presented with plans, actuals, and variances in one place, facilitating corporate decision making with the ability to manipulate views in real time to discern valuable nuggets of information.

These types of reports, with differing methods of creation and data sourcing, lead to a daunting reporting challenge — how to get the right information from an almost endless set of data repositories across the organization. The difficulty too often leads to financial reports that they are not 100% audit proof. As a result, there exists an inherent misunderstanding of, and distrust in, the reports used by management to drive key business decisions.

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Steps to Solve Reporting Issues

It is not feasible to solve reporting issues by simply throwing technology at the problem.

Technology is a facilitator, not an answer. Reporting problems are solved by understanding the issues, driving business processes to mitigate the risks and deploying technology in support of the solutions.

A fully governed Master Data Management process is a comprehensive business strategy to build and maintain a single, dependable and accurate index of corporate data assets. Master data defines people, places, things and the relationships between them. MDM includes technology-assisted governance of the master data, and interfaces with operational and analytical systems.

MDM solutions are comprised of three parts:

• Data Governance — a set of processes that define how data is handled and controlled throughout the organization to ensure everyone understands what the data assets are, how they are maintained and the methods to be used to affect changes.

• Data Stewardship —the governance of the key data of the organization to ensure data elements are correct, unaffected by outside forces, and maintained in accordance with the approved and understood procedures.

• Data Quality — A metadata management tool such as Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management that ensures the metadata elements are maintained in an orderly process.

It is important to understand that the technology is only a means to enforce the business policies and business rules agreed to by the organization. DRM provides the technical support to enforce the business rules. It supports the creation, modification and validation of all data relationships and reporting structures, all within the constructs allowed by the data governance policies.

An organization employing an MDM solution has the policies and procedures in place to provide a single version of the truth. By centralizing the definition of all data elements, no system or business unit would use an element incorrectly. Also, all reports would use a consistent reporting structure (dimension) so rolled-up numbers would be the same on all reports. The top-line number of a regional sales manager’s report matches the corresponding line item on the VP of Sale’s corporate report. This leads to fewer unnecessary and frustrating discussions over whose number is right and lets management get down to the business of making decisions, not report validation.

Additionally, MDM provides a historical perspective, allowing “snapshots” of all structures and relationships, either on a schedule or on demand. As a result, the structures may be reproduced to any given date and the reasons for all changes are captured and documented, providing an audit trail of changes to key organizational data.

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Oracle Hyperion DRM

DRM is Oracle’s offering supporting Financial and Analytical Master Data Management. Some of the key business functions provided by Oracle DRM include:

• Maintains a complete accounting of all corporate reference data assets. These assets are maintained in reporting hierarchy structures. Through a combination of various storage types and hierarchical management, it is possible for DRM to feed any required metadata information to virtually any target.

• Provides the ability to quickly enhance data that can be pushed to downstream systems.

• Centralizes any set of hierarchy and metadata information. This is the “build once, use many” philosophy. Using EPM targets as an example, it is not uncommon for a company to have multiple but related Essbase cubes and Planning applications. The structures and required metadata are built and maintained in one place – DRM. No direct administration of dimen-sions or metadata is performed in target applications or databases.

• Provides audit abilities by maintaining a complete transaction history of every action performed within the environment. The level of detail and query capabilities of the trans-action history typically exceeds regulatory auditing requirements.

• Creates a standard set of metadata that may feed all corporate systems. DRM is not limited to supporting only Oracle Hyperion EPM applications. Organizations benefit by fully exploiting the capabilities of DRM to manage a wide variety of processes. See the chart below.

• Integrated with Oracle BPEL, third-party, or custom workflow applications

• Manages in-flight data requests within the DRM repository• Enables business rule validations on pending node updates• Leverages DRM repository structures for derivations and

structures during change request process

• Hierarchy management• Node attributes• Data import and export• User access controls

• Enforces relationship validity rules• Enforces data validity rules• Enforces reporting structure and reference data integrity• Supports real-time (at entry) enforcement and batch

verification

• Full-featured, fully-supported custom development interface• Any UI action is supported in the API• Allows for customer ETL processing against the DRM

repository without the need for Imports and Exports• Allows for custom user interfaces to support specific business

processes without requiring users to access the full UI

Workflow Integration

DRM Capabilities Key Features

Reference Data Management

Business Rules Enforcement

Custom API Development

• Maintains versions (snapshots) of the reference data repository

• Allows “rollback” to a previous state of the repository• Support comparison analysis between versions• Enables “what if” analysis• Simplifies chart of account restructuring

Versioning

• Formula-based derivation of property values• Inheritance of property values down and across hierarchies• Supports inference of property values from related nodes

Reference Data Derivation

Success StoriesGlobal Investment Bank Saves Hundreds of Hours & Millions of Dollars

A large, multinational financial services organization with average annual revenues of nearly $1.4 billion struggled with silos of data. Information on employee costs, sales metrics, customer churn and customer profitability were stored in disparate systems with inconsistent naming standards and structures, resulting in a long process for synchronized reporting that took six to eight days to complete. The process required 2.5 FTEs working non-stop for a week-and-a-half to generate the report, and involved over 30 discrete extract, transform or restatement tasks.

DRM and EPM applications were implemented in parallel, with the detail design of each component driving the implementation parameters of the others. Once the target environment was set up and configured, the intermediary processes were eliminated.

Working from bottom to top, the three source systems provide extracts of current metadata – that is, all current employees, all current accounts and all current customers. An automated load process identifies new members and inserts them into DRM hierarchies. Since the company was an MS SQL Server shop, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) was used to drive the inbound automation activities. Once the metadata changes were applied, the SSIS process pulls the transactional data for the current period from each source system, and these values are loaded into a financial data mart.

After new members are inserted into DRM, one reporting administrator uses the DRM client to review the new elements and perform any necessary enhancements. These enhancements include assignment of attribute relationship associations, overriding default values for Essbase metadata (when needed), and moving members to the correct location in the hierarchies. Validations are in place within DRM to ensure the enhancement does not violate documented business rules. The results were impressive.

• New process involves just one manual step – data enhancement• Manual effort is done by only 1 person and is completed within hours• Reduced total process time from 8 days to under 2• Reduced total man-days from 20 to under 2• Eliminated many manual processes, extraneous Essbase cubes and data silos• Provided increased data quality and eliminated the need for data reconciliation on final reports• Increased user confidence in the information used to drive business decisions

This process realized an estimated $1.11 million annual savings and improved accuracy and corporate performance. The coast savings paid for the implementation in less than a year.

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DRM has many uses beyond supporting financial reporting and analysis, including the following.

A large pharmaceutical company used DRM for clinical trials administration• Managed 16 dimensions with multiple alternate roll-ups; ~40 attribute dimensions• Managed properties for Essbase, Planning, attribute association, and management information • Included a custom workflow application integrated into the SharePoint intranet

A large Internet search firm used DRM to create a Chart of Accounts base values system of entry

• Managed regulatory and management reporting structures• Supported 12 dimensions; ~12 attribute dimensions• Managed properties for Essbase, Planning, Oracle Financials, attribute association, and

management information• Included a web-based user using the Oracle BPEL workflow engine• Included a console application running on the DRM application server which ran in batch during

the cube load process; the process identified new consolidated dimension members based on inbound transaction data and added the members to the hierarchies in DRM

DRM supported well team maintenance for a large Natural Gas company maintenance• Geographic manpower assignment• Managed 8 dimensions, including GeoPolitical, Employee and Wells structures• Managed assignments of 30 person well teams• Included a custom Windows client application to support mass reassignment of well personnel

About RoltaRolta’s MDM Center of Excellence is committed to providing the timely business solutions

today’s business climate requires to gain and maintain a competitive advantage using MDM solutions. Rolta’s recognized expertise with Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) provides enterprises with a solution to build consistency within master data assets, despite endless changes within the underlying transactional and analytical systems.

Rolta is a leading provider of Consulting, Managed Services and Technology for many vertical segments, including Manufacturing, Financial Services, Utilities, Oil & Gas, Retail and Healthcare. Our domain expertise and deep Oracle applications experience provides rich understanding of industry drivers and supporting business processes to help organizations achieve their business goals. An Oracle Platinum Partner with more than 1,000 Oracle resources worldwide, Rolta has been honored 9 times with various Oracle awards recognizing outstanding achievement in serving the needs of our clients.

800.755.8872 | Rolta.com | © 2013 Rolta International. All Rights Reserved

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Today, DRM accounts for more than 25% of the MDM tool sales for Oracle and is quickly spreading beyond FP&A and EPM solutions. By living in the center of the EPM architecture, DRM becomes the one source for all dimensional management for the EPM tools. Any number of cubes and applications may be supported by DRM, and each cube or app is fed only those components required. With one central management point, all common elements between cubes and apps are identical.

Ultimately, DRM brings solid security and comprehensive hierarchy management capabilities to all organizations that deliver both control and flexibility. DRM creates alignment critically necessary for proper financial management under today’s demanding regulatory environment.