Edgewater Ranzal Consultant Tom Gargas answered the question, "How can organizations define the optimal mix of strategic initiatives with limited time, funding and resources given the constraints in the process?" At the New England Oracle Applications User Group (NEOAUG) 2013Spring Training Conference Day.

1. New England OAUG:
Leading Practices in Project Planning
Tom Gargas, Edgewater Ranzal
June 10th, 2013

2. Agenda
• Introductions
• Project Financial Planning Overview
• Product Demonstration
• Leading Practices
• Q&A
4

3. About Edgewater Ranzal
15+ Years
700+ clients
1000+ projects
2
Focus
Services
People
Methodology
Customers
Partnership

4. About Edgewater-Ranzal
►
►
One of The Boston Globe’s Top 100 businesses
►
Edgewater
Publicly Traded as: EDGW
Ranked as one of the 500 fastest-growing stocks on Wall Street
Ranzal
Planning
2001
Planning
Founded in
1996
Essbase
Acquired
Vertical Pitch
2007
HFM/
FDM
Acquired by
Edgewater
2004
Data
Integration &
Warehousing/
CRM/
Web 2.0
Development
Build
OBI Team
2011
OBIEE
Acquired
Meridian
2010
HSF
Build DRM &
HPCM Teams
2009
DRM &
HPCM
►
►
►
One of the largest Full-Service
Oracle/Hyperion EPM and BI practices.
Oracle Platinum Partner presented with
numerous awards and recognitions by
Oracle including multiple Partner of the
Year awards.
Premier Consulting Services in North
America, and a regional European office
located in the United Kingdom.

5. Our Services
Dashboards & Scorecards, Profitability &
Cost Mgmt, Financial Analytics & Reporting,
Operational Analytics, What-if Analysis,
Query & Reporting, Visual Exploration
Financial performance, Legal,
Segment & Mgmt Reporting, Financial Close
HFM Optimization, Performance Lab
SOX Compliance Support
Consolidation
Installation, Upgrades,
Migration, System
Monitoring, Backup and
Recovery, Disaster
Recovery, Load Testing,
Hardware Sizing
Planning
Project
Management
Infrastructure
Data Integration, Financial Data
Management, Data Warehousing, Master
Data Management, ETL Services,
Performance Tuning, Automation
Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting,
Workforce Planning, Capital Planning,
Project Planning, Campaign Planning,
Strategic Finance
Business
Intelligence
Data
Services
Project/Program Mgmt, EPM
Road Maps, Application
Reviews, Business
Requirements, Process
Change, Documentation
Support
Services
Training
Support Services - Project/Program
Mgmt, EPM Road Maps, Application
Reviews, Business Requirements,
Process Change, Documentation
Dashboards/Scorecards, Profitability Cost
Mgmt, Financial Analytics & Reporting,
Operational Analytics, What-if Analysis,
Query & Reporting, Visual Exploration
3

6. Why financial planning for projects?
I could try to execute on all
submitted Business Initiatives
I would want to ensure alignment with
Strategic Objectives
I should ensure I have the budget needed
to fund the projects

7. Planning for my Hyperion Project…
Internal Labor & Rates
Approved CR’s
Steering Committee
External Labor, HW, Other

8. My “Ahaaaa” Moment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Multiple sources of information
Numerous tools to utilize
Many manual touch-points
No tracking or versioning
No financial intelligence
Limited reporting
How can organizations define the optimal mix of strategic initiatives with
limited time, funding and resources given the constraints in the process?
I clearly needed Hyperion Planning/PFP!!!

9. What does Hyperion provide?
Are we choosing the
right initiatives?
Where is the money
going?
Is this the optimal
mix of
investments?
Should we pull or alter
any initiatives?
Would we do anything
different with more or
less budget?

10. Oracle's
Project Financial Planning
Solution

11. Oracle EPM Connects Management
Common Reporting & Interaction
Strategy Management
Planning & Forecasting
Financial Close
Profitability Management
Common Integration & Analysis
Data Quality and Consistent Dimensions

12. Oracle Connects Planning Processes
Predictive Modeling & Simulation
Strategic
Planning
Workforce
Planning
Capital Assets
Planning
Project Financial
Planning
Cost
Analysis
Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting
Financial
Detail
Operational
Detail

13. Forged from Leading Practices!!!
Project Planning
Project Financial Planning
• Custom
Workforce Planning
• Custom
• Pre-Packaged Module
Capital Planning
• Custom
• Pre-Packaged Module
•
The Benefits to Implementing Project Financial Planning:
 Pre-configured with detailed capabilities and process flow
to support a rapid deployment.
 Customizable framework for configuring around a client’s
unique needs.
 Proven Hyperion Planning platform
 Oracle-supported application.
Maximize
Value
Minimize Risk
13

14. Pre-Built PFP Application Artifacts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
11 Task lists (including Tasks)
220 Data forms
76 Menus
216 Business rules
111 Smart Lists
11 Financial Reports
Prebuilt & Configurable Dimensionality
Validation rules
Essbase substitution variables
User variables
Maximize
Value
Minimize Risk

15. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
Assess and Manage Risk

16. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Propose & Plan
Model Strategic
Initiatives
• Propose new projects
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
– Contract: Plan Revenue/Billing
– Capital: only BS & P&L Impact
– Indirect: only P&L impact
• Plan Expenses
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
–
–
–
–
Labor
Equipment
Materials
Other Expenses

17. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Rank & Fund
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
• Review project proposals
• Rank and prioritize projects
• Request funding

18. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Approve Projects
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
• Review approval status for projects
• Submit project(s) for approval

19. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Monitor & Report
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
• Monitor & report on financial
performance of projects
 Compare actual vs. plan
 Compare forecast vs. plan
• Monitor & report on approved
financial plans

20. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Update & Forecast
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
• Update project plans with actual and
forecast out remaining months
• Compare original plan to forecast

21. Financial Planning for Projects
Steps to managing the full financial performance
Model Strategic Initiatives
Model Strategic
Initiatives
Update &
Forecast
Propose & Plan
Projects
• Evaluate financial return on
potential key initiatives
• Assess and manage risk
• Select initiatives with best return
Rank & Fund
Monitor and
Report
Rank & Fund
Approve
• Evaluate funding alternatives based
on forecasted project cash flows

22. Short Product Demonstration

23. Leading Practices in Project Planning

24. Project Financial Planning (PFP)
20+ Customers
1
Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

25. Client Example 1
–
–
–
–
Background:
• Leading high-tech company headquartered in Silicon Valley, CA.
• Offers customers products and services involving networking, infrastructure, and system optimization.
Pain Points:
• Engineering and FP&A departments planned on legacy application:
– Internally developed solution was reaching end-of-life; costly and risky to maintain
• Existing process and tools were cumbersome and tasks were not efficiently executed
• No web-based interface.
• Lack of automated interfaces to Oracle Projects and iProcurement
Ranzal’s Solution:
• Built a labor & non-labor project planning application for 150 users:
– Plan Capex and Opex for all projects
– Forecast Labor plans by Department and Project or Initiative.
– Allocate plan H/C and labor expenses by dept. and project based on allocation matrix.
• Integrated with Oracle Projects, iProcurement and HR modules
Benefits:
• Ability to track project spending by project, by multple dimensions & attributes (account, by segment, etc)
• Ability to report against that data
• Relative ease of input for the engineering team
• Ability to forecast spend by project- a HUGE milestone for LCM and product portfolio decisions

26. Client Example 1
Oracle
Projects
Oracle
iProcurement
• Opex & Capex Actuals
• In-service Depreciation
• (Actual & Forecast)
• Opex Commitments
• Capex Commitments
1x load of historical
Forecast & Plan
Project
Planning
Dimensions
& Labor Data
Legacy Planning
• HC% Manual Input by users
• Forecast of Capex, HC &
Labor Costs to Projects
Opex &
Capex Data
Oracle
HR
Dimension
metadata &
properties
Oracle
GL
Corporate
Planning
• Build non-labor expenses by Dept.
• HC & Avg. Labor Rate by Dept by month
• Input factors for Driver based
calculations for TBH
• (Actual & Forecast)

27. Client Example 2
–
Background:
• Leading investment management and services company operated by nearly 50,000 employees in 36
countries worldwide and serving more than 100 global markets.
• Provides services to institutions and corporations, private clients, and consultants and advisors.
• Headquarters in New York, NY
–
Pain Points:
• Major Expenditures division had difficulty with the process of creating proposed capital projects for review
and approval.
• Difficulty tracking the approved budget compared to the actual costs of the project.
• Systems did not interact or integrate effectively.
• Great deal of manual effort was required to manage the overall process.
–
Ranzal’s All-In-One, Closed-Loop Solution:
• Built a capital expenditures planning application to create a financial plan
• Integrated Planning with external workflow to review and approve projects
• Integrated systems for data flow and for comparative reporting of actuals.
–
Benefits:
• Tighter controls of project planning and analysis
• Improved productivity toward value-added activities by automating manual efforts.
• Active project track built up user and executive confidence of the entire process.
• Subsequent application enhancements led to improvements in ERP and Master Data Management systems.

28. Client Example 2
AM
PPM
HR
AP
T&E
• Labor & Capital
Asset related
dimensions, properties
and data.
•Actual spend dollar
amount.
Project
Planning
GL
PC
Approved project
information
Approved project
activities, attributes &
budget dollar amount
Plan project activities,
attributes & plan dollar
amount
Proj. Workflow
• Project plans are created and
data is entered via webforms.
• Planned projects are aggregated
• Planned project reports are
generated

29. Leading Practices in Project Planning
Establish a closed loop feedback to address the process disconnect between project management
decisions and financial decisions
Establish Project Hierarchies and attributes to support workflow, security, reporting, and key business
logic. Key examples include Project Owning Organization, Project Type, and Program.
Link demand based project plans with supply side workforce and capital plans to ensure resourcing is
level based
For global implementations, recognize impact of transaction currencies. Not just the typical functional
and reporting currencies typically associated with Hyperion implementations.
Since project planning is tightly integrated with capital and labor processes, leverage multiple plan types
in 1 application to improve integration between them.
If project planning is at the activity level, standardize on common activities and keep them as a separate
dimension.
Try to incorporate ranking and priority into your application to give management visibility into critical
and non-critical projects.
Minimize alerting capabilities and track the status within the application. This will significantly lessen
the number of emails being burst out.
Don't forget about "unplanned" or "emergency" projects. These are projects that surface after "planned
projects" were approved.
Consider a tailored currency conversion methodology to offer greater flexibility and time to delivery.
Pre-Built in PFP
Configurable in PFP

30. Leading Practices in EPM Projects
– Be cognizant of internal IT and EPM Strategies:
• How does PFP fit into current EPM (planning and reporting) processes for users and
support staff?
• How is PFP impacted by other strategic initiatives?
– Compile and Secure Your Requirements
– Develop Your Future State Processes
– Map Requirements & Process to PFP
• Determine Alignments
• Identify Gaps
• Mitigation: Do Nothing, Customization, Work-Arounds, Training
– Data Integration – Full inventory of data sources and any deficiencies
– Big Bang Doesn’t Always Work – seriously consider a phased approach
given your understanding of future state requirements and process