Ok, so what exactly is CSV?  Creating Shared Value is the latest movement around value creation, focusing on long term success vs short term performance.  Society is finally holding corporations responsible for their actions as they push for more and more transparency around company operations and actions.  But don’t confuse CSV with charity, philanthropy or Corporate Social Responsibility.  This movement is not tied to “marketing” and showing off all the great things your doing in your community.  It goes way deeper and aligns with your corporate strategy while still driving profit.

My apologies if this is not what you want to hear but I’ve yet to stumble across a tool that brings it all together for the senior executive. I’m still looking for a tool that presents a corporate strategy all the way through execution; in a manner that can be consumed by the C Level. All I’ve seen so far are bits and pieces. Please feel free to comment!

So, how do we get to EPM 2.0?

• The old adage, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Strategies are meant to be discussed, dissected, challenged and cemented. The trick is to then take those strategies and apply drivers, insights and metrics across and deep into the organization. These become your leading and lagging indicators that (if done properly) are directly aligned with corporate strategy.
• Implement the new business processes needed to deliver and support the change in strategy. Everything from supply chain to market campaigns.
• Implement the new management processes as an overlay to the new business processes to execute the change in strategy.
• Enable the above with technology that cascades the strategy execution throughout the organization.

But wait, the above sounds like it’s missing the information delivery piece for the executive. You’re right….and no one is addressing it. Solution: put a gadget on the executive desktop with 4 indicators on it. Not 20 or 100, just 4. You creative types can envision a stop light, a happy face, a speedometer….semantics! These 4 indicators should be the 4 key drivers of the corporate strategy. At first glance they should tell the story; the whole story! The executive has the option to drill through the four indicators into the web of information below it or, they can pick up the phone to have someone in their company address it. That’s their call!

Point being, the closer you get to delivering EPM 2.0 the quicker you can maneuver your company. This assumes you buy into the value of leading and lagging indicators. If you do buy in and you do implement EPM 2.0 from top to bottom….it’s useless without the top brass seeing the 4 driving indicators of their corporate strategy. They need real time insight from a simple presentation layer or, they’ll never use it. If the senior executive team doesn’t drive the organization based on the status of these key strategic indicators then it’s not EPM 2.0. It’s features, functions, cool technology and fancy right mouse clicks!

I sat in on a web demo the other day, because I couldn’t help wonder what “the next generation EPM Platform” really looked like. The title of the invite intrigued me enough to sign up to see what is new or, just around the corner. How different can it be? Well, it depends where you are within the organization!

When I worked for Hyperion in the late 90’s the platform consisted of budgeting/planning, consolidation, BI, scorecard, activity based management and of course reporting and dashboards….and none of the products talked to each other. Then post 2000 the new web architected products and platform came along with a few more products. And guess what, the products still didn’t talk to each other.

Fast forward to today. We’re almost four years after Oracle purchased Hyperion. The suite of EPM products has doubled in size and the integration between the products has improved with the latest FUSION release of the Hyperion product suite. Not 100% there but way ahead of where Hyperion was prior to the acquisition.

So, back to the demo. The user experience looks enhanced from every angle. Nice. Flip here, pivot there; speed of thought. Furthermore, this flexibility goes beyond the end user to the people administering the applications. And with the new platform being 64 bit instead of 32…performance testing will no longer be the deciding driver behind the average purchase decision.

So, is this really EPM 2.0? Not really. The bells and whistles that are added with the latest release make these products light years ahead of where they started. The fact you can highlight a cell, right mouse click and drill through or add comments is super cool. But what if you’re part of the executive team and your company just implemented the new platform? Well, you’d probably be doing things the same way you are today. Except the person you call to get the answer would have an easier time navigating the new functionality to come up with the answers in the 11th hour before that important
board meeting.

Until EPM software can easily align and distribute the strategy of a company, you’ll never get the entire organization on board. And until you make the reporting tool(s) purposeful for the executive team to use, they’ll never use the tools or all their great features and functionality. And until that happens it’s still EPM 1.0 to me.

XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is changing business reporting around the world.  It provides many benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information and offers opportunities for cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability in the use of business and financial data.

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language.  It is one of a family of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) languages which is becoming a standard means of communicating information both between businesses and on the internet.

XML is an open standards set of rules for creating structured documents electronically.  The design goals of XML are to emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability over the Internet.   Beginning in 1996, XML was compiled by a working group of eleven members including representatives from Sun Microsystems, Textuality, Netscape, Microsoft, University of Illinois, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Texcel, INSO, HP, ISOGEN, ArborText, NCSA, Muzmo and Grif, Fuji Xerox Information Systems, Adobe, Vignette, SoftQuad, DataChannel)

XBRL began in 1998, and continues to be developed by XBRL International, an international non-profit consortium of approximately 450 major companies, organizations and government agencies (including Oracle | Hyperion, Sun Microsystems, Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, HP, Microsoft).  It also is an open standard and free of license fees.  XBRL is already being put to practical use in a number of countries and implementations are growing rapidly around the world.

A key component in the development of XML came in 2001, when Hyperion and Microsoft published the XML for Analysis specification, allowing open access to multidimensional databases from any platform.

XBRL has been developed with a view to becoming the standard information format for expressing business information.  XBRL tags data with standardized descriptions (e.g. revenue, inventory, cash) that enable that information to be used with many systems for a wide range purposes. These standard codes can be obtained from a taxonomy, or inventory of available tags with common definitions.  Each reporting jurisdiction will devise its own taxonomy to reflect specific reporting applications and regional accounting standards (i.e. IFRS, US GAAP, Canadian GAAP).  Logically, there is a limit to which standards can be achieved, so preparers may need to resort to extensions, or custom tags, to capture the unique aspects of their industry or type of business.  The result is that data is entered only once and then understood consistently and accurately thereafter.

Inline XBRL

Inline XBRL (iXBRL) is a standard for embedding XBRL fragments into an HTML document. It was created to avoid the need to create visual renderings of XBRL instance documents. The objective is to provide documents which can be viewed in a browser while making use of XBRL tags which can be processed automatically by consuming applications. Inline XBRL satisfies the need to work in a “human readable” document while utilizing the “computer readable” XBRL standard.

In April 2010, the Inline XBRL (Rendering) Specification was approved as a recommendation by the XBRL International Standards Board and the International Steering Committee.

Inline XBRL

In 2005, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched its XBRL Voluntary Filing Program.  Approximately fifty companies, representing more than $1 trillion of market value, have joined the SEC’s test group and have agreed to voluntarily submit reports.

In early 2007, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) launched an XBRL voluntary filing program.  Reporting issuers participating in the voluntary program were able to file financial statements in XBRL format beginning in May 2007.  The results of the voluntary program will be used to gain practical knowledge and experience with XBRL and will help in learning both the functionality and challenges involved in using XBRL filings.  After gaining knowledge and experience through the voluntary program, further decisions regarding mandatory XBRL filings will be made.

In December 2008, the SEC mandated XBRL’s use by large public companies and mutual funds for reporting financial statements beginning in July 2009, and all public companies must comply by June 2011.

The FDIC and European Union Central Banks, with Basel II (standards for minimum capital requirements for banking organizations), have committed to an XBRL reporting standard.

Other regulators around the world, including the Australian Taxation Office, Chinese Securities Regulation Commission, Dutch Tax Authority, UK Financial Services Authority and Bank of Japan are also adopting XBRL-enabled processes and systems to collect, aggregate, validate and use information.

XBRL Benefits

The benefits of adopting an XBRL reporting process versus current reporting practices are:

• Reduced preparation time and cost through automated data collection.

• Increased confidence in data by limiting the risk of erroneous data entry.

• Enhanced analytical capabilities.

• Accelerated financial decision making.

• Broader information availability.

• Adaptability to changing reporting requirements.

• Increased transparency.

Oracle | Hyperion Solution

Oracle’s Hyperion EPM applications have long supported XBRL as a basic output format via Oracle’s Hyperion Financial Reporting (HFR).  HFR offers XBRL Manager - a feature that uses XBRL to convert data into a standard format that can be read and processed automatically by a wide range of financial software.  Currently, HFR does not provide rich validation capabilities.

Features of HFR XBRL Manager:

• Download XBRL taxonomies directly into HFR.

• Update and manage XBRL schemas.

• Define XBRL contexts and units for a report.

• Export reports as instance documents, by attaching XBRL metadata.

• Create instance documents using HFM, Hyperion Planning, or Essbase data sources.

Today’s Oracle Hyperion Recommended Solution

In April 2010, Oracle | Hyperion Disclosure Management (DM) was released. DM is a complete XBRL creation and management solution, built on UBmatrix technology, and “demystifies” the creation of XBRL documents and features deep integration with the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System including Hyperion Financial Reporting (HFR), Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) or Hyperion Planning (HP).  UBmatrix Inc. is the leading provider of XBRL-based software solutions for global organizations and enterprises.  The UBmatrix technology helps to provide a much deeper level of XBRL functionality.

DM allows organizations to centralize and effectively manage the development of XBRL submissions now required by many regulatory bodies.  DM enables users to graphically perform XBRL tagging at several levels – within Microsoft Office, within EPM System reports or in the datasource metadata. The solution lets users modify or extend taxonomies before the mapping process as well as support multiple taxonomies. XBRL instance documents can also be created and validated before submission.

DM features include:

• A taxonomy extension and management tool for customizing taxonomies.

• The ability to load and map any XBRL taxonomy.

• An XBRL validation tool that will check the XBRL calculations against the calculations from Oracle’s EPM applications and identify any errors.

• A drag and drop feature for tagging new accounts.

• Tagging at the application metadata level or report level. When XBRL tags are created at the metadata level (i.e. application account level) the tags become automatically available in any new report.

DM’s common foundation and tight integration with the Oracle EPM system reduces the total cost of ownership by providing a single point of maintenance - a unique feature that point solutions and non-integrated EPM suites cannot match.

Oracle | Hyperion Disclosure Management Screen Shot:

For a full listing of software tools provided by XBRL International and other sources for instance document creation, taxonomy creation and XBRL Validation, see the Table “XBRL Software Tools” at the end of this document.

Summary and Next Steps

In summary, XBRL provides many benefits to an organization in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information.  It also offers opportunities for cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability in the use of business and financial data.

For those organizations wishing to explore XBRL further, here are the suggested next steps:

• Investigate your performance management, financial and ERP software applications to find out if they support XBRL.

• Contact those software application vendors to see what their plans are for future versions regarding XBRL support.

• Solicit input and survey internal business processes in order to identify potential business reporting areas that may benefit from XBRL.

• Solicit input and survey external processes and key partners requirements.

• Consider pilot programs for XBRL enabling key internal processes.

• Keep up to date on the latest XBRL developments.

TGG’s Project Methodology - The Solution Workbench - contains templates and tools to address our client’s XBRL requirements.

To learn more about XBRL, and how TGG can help you meet your XBRL needs,  contact Dean Wilson at dean@goalgetters.com

Tgg Xbrl White Paper - 20101014.2

Before the discontinuation of Smart Space, The Goal Getters was one of the first companies to start developing desktop widgets for Hyperion Financial Management.   Our first attempts were to clone some of the administrative features of HFM that are performed through the web interface, and to provide the same functionality as a desktop gadget.  Some of the gadgets we built extended some of this functionality, and added some of the features Smart Space was offering (chat, messaging, notifications).

Consolidation Audit Gadget

This Gadget shows a real-time stream of the most recent consolidations. The consolidation dashboard also shows a graph of the most recent consolidation times. Going over to the consolidation audit tab gives you a table that lets you analyze consolidation times by Date, Entity, and other variables.

Financial Management Consolidation Audit Gadget

Financial Management System Users Gadget

This Gadget shows a real-time stream of the most recent consolidations.

Financial Management Journal Gadget

Financial Management System Messages Gadget

Financial Management Running Tasks Gadget

Financial Management Task Audit Gadget

Financial Management Metadata Viewer Gadget

Financial Management Alerts Gadget

Gadgets were prototyped and developed by John-Paul Gallo

For more information on this years Oracle Open World visit Oracle’s site at here.

If you would like to get in touch with us at this years event, please contact:

Rick Cadman:
416.977.2229 (o)
917.841.5676 (c)

The place where I like to capture client expectations is in the Project Scope and Charter. This document is closely linked to the workplan. The workplan is where expectations are turned into tasks, deliverables and milestones that will help meet those expectations. There isn’t a sequential order implied between defining the work and building the schedule and budget. Therefore, you can work on the Project Scope and Charter and the workplan simultaneously.

Some of the sections of the Project Scope and Charter, such as the estimates for effort and duration, cannot be completed without starting to lay out the overall project schedule. At the same time, you cannot complete the schedule without gaining agreement on the Project Scope and Charter. For instance, you cannot build the schedule and budget without gaining a high-level agreement on deliverables and scope. Defining the expectations for the project also involves describing an overall project approach, which is helpful to know before the schedule is completed.

You will find that as you gather information about scope and deliverables, you can start laying out a high-level schedule. As you gather more information about the work, you can fill in more details on the schedule. When the deliverables, scope, assumptions and approach are complete, you should have enough information to complete a high-level schedule. You can then use the high-level schedule to estimate the necessary budget, effort and duration - which in turn are used to complete the Project Scope and Charter.

At the end of the Plan the Work phase you should have an agreement with your sponsor on the work that will be completed and the cost (time) and duration that are needed to complete the work. These three items then form a concept called the “triple constraint”. The key aspect of the triple constraint is that if one of the three items change, at least one, if not both, of the other items need to change as well.

If the scope of work increases, the cost and / or deadline must increase as well. If you have more work to do, it will take more cost (effort) and perhaps a longer duration. Likewise if you reduce the scope of work, the cost (effort) and / or the duration should decrease as well. If you are asked to accelerate the project and complete it earlier than scheduled, it would also be logical to ask for less work. However, if you are asked to deliver the same work with less duration, the third leg of the triple constraint must increase to maintain the balance. You will need to increase costs (effort), perhaps by working overtime hours or perhaps by bringing in more resources to complete the same amount of work earlier.

These conversations are easier to have with your client if you’ve correctly captured their expectations. And capturing these expectations up front becomes critical to the success of planning any project. Without understanding or, properly capturing these expectations you’re not able to provide project management to your client. And we all know how that story ends!

But it required a pretty specific plan and we had to stick to the plan even though we knew we wouldn’t be looking at the end product in 90 days.  In it’s basic form we had i. a plan with critical milestones and ii. what I’m calling “building blocks” (i.e., framing, plumbing, electrical etc).  We had to make sure that each of the building blocks was fully defined ahead of time (i.e., framed walls went here and not over there) and mapped out on the timeline to fit it in the 90 day window.  Since I was the one managing the workplan I actually ended up switching the tasks around and going against the traditional order followed in construction.

Now, use the same analogy but apply it to HFM.  You will have i. a 90 day plan with predefined milestones….that comes from us, and ii. your building blocks (i.e., COA, entity structure, client list, products, business rules etc)….that comes from you.  Once we have all the building blocks defined we can assemble your application in 90 days assuming you stick to the plan!  What I find the hardest part of implementing HFM is the definition of your building blocks.  Take the chart of accounts for example.  The number of iterations that the chart will go through during a development cycle will surprise you and also extend the development timeline as these refinements are made in an effort to get everything 100%

So, what if we gave you a chart of accounts as a starting point based on your industry?  What if we gave you this chart and then showed you a format that we needed it in to be considered a “building block”?  Now repeat this process for all the other components and there you have all the pieces for your new application.  Using the timeline we provide and manage to you have the ability to be up and running within 90 days!  Will your application include multiple reporting structures and complex items like Cash Flow on day one….probably not…..but you’ll be up and running! What’s even cooler is that Phase II won’t be that far behind with the additional reporting detail that you need to have your final product.

The onus will be on you to stay within the 90 timeline and complete construction on your house.  Or, you may decide to move a wall or two understanding the consequences to the timeline as a result.  At the end of the day it’s your decision….but you do have the option to move in after 90 days putting the final trim work on at a later point in time.

First you have to identify the applications that are suitable for developing and maintaining remotely. Not all situations will fit this criterion due to security and procedures around administering certain applications and/or environments. I’d say 95% of the time this is not an issue however; I’ve been at some financial services clients where AMO was not an option.

Second, you need to know the company you outsource too. More importantly they need to know you and know your business. Outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing or, saving money is in my opinion short sighted and misses the concept of outsourcing all together. Most Hyperion Financial Management applications are considered mission critical due to the impact they can have on the close cycle of a company and therefore, share price. Do you really want to hand that responsibility over to ‘cousin Vinny’ because he’s 10% less than a more reputable firm?

Either way, you’ll need to develop a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that covers all situations. Furthermore, you need to realize that you’re handing over the keys! Whether you like or not, the provider you just gave the keys to became a partner and trusted advisor to you and your company! Make sure you have the procedures in place to ensure success and the capability to monitor that success.

Last, make sure that the provider you give the keys to is flexible and supports your business processes. Not the other way around! This should be reflected in your SLA as well as the measuring and monitoring of performance against that SLA. If you fit the above requirements then it’s worth looking into AMO to explore further if it’s right for you. If it is, there are some significant benefits that will help position you for short term as well as long term success.

For more information on AMO or, to see if outsourcing fits your needs please contact Rick Cadman 416.977.2229.

Bottom line, everyone does it a little differently. If you follow an industry standard PMBOK Methodology you’ll find that there are 4 four common components to managing projects and managing project processes:

• Scope Management
• Issue Management
• Risk management
• Quality Management

So, how do I differentiate between being effective and having mounds of paperwork? Break project management down into the basic components above and then analyze the cost and the benefit of each component with your client. It doesn’t get simpler than that. You’ll have to come up with what the costs are with managing each component; usually pretty straight forward based on applied hours. However, the benefits are usually the costs of not doing something or, doing something incorrectly! Benefits are usually harder to quantify. To me, this becomes the differentiator between going deep with project management and not going deep enough.

Experienced project managers will apply the art in these situations and draw upon past experiences to balance the success of the project whereas new project managers will apply the science.Whether you’re a project management newbee or a PMP certified guru the most important element is communication with your client. Understand how each of the components will be applied and how they will be measured. The rest you can adjust as the project progresses.At the end of the day, if the client is happy with the way scope, issues, risk and quality are being monitored and measured you’ve found the art using the science!