Financial planning and budgeting are two critical processes that influence the performance and profitability of a business enterprise. These processes play a significant role in helping stakeholders track the overall success, sustainability and scalability of an enterprise.
Closing accounts and related financial books are essential to ensure the business is on track and in sound financial health. Using regular spreadsheets and manual entries for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting can lead to errors and make it difficult to audit books. In a highly competitive market where constant change is the norm, businesses require the best possible foresight to make informed decisions.
Enterprise performance management applications integrate and analyze data from various processes and functions, such as e-commerce portals, front and back-office applications, and data warehouses. The most effective Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions are comprehensive and connected suites that integrate with customers’ core ERP systems as well.
Why Oracle EPM?
Oracle EPM Cloud incorporates emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI&ML) that improve the quality of decisions and automate routine processes. This suite of performance management applications helps businesses align short- and long-term business performance goals with strategic business objectives across all functions.
Planning and budgeting require timely and accurate data, inputs, and reports from different departments of an organization. Oracle EPM Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services (PBCS) align the goals of corporate finance and operational teams, i.e., sales, marketing, HR, and IT. This frees up the bandwidth for stakeholders to focus more on expanding the business by bringing in new ideas and strategies to grow revenues. It also reduces the time spent on day-to-day operations hassles.
Further, the application can:
- Automate processes and offer flexibility, scalability, and predictive capabilities for financial planning.
- Help businesses gain insights to survive and perform in volatile market conditions.
- Align different departmental objectives with that of the organization and streamline various processes to drive better decision-making.
- Automate transactions, reconciliations, and integrated data processing in a single audit trail.
If your business is looking for an efficient tech tool to improve financial planning and enhance profitability, Gemini Consulting & Service can help you. We can implement Oracle EPM Cloud and unlock maximum value for your enterprise. Contact us to know more about Oracle solutions and service offerings.
Let us take a look at the main functions of the Oracle EPM Cloud.
Connected Planning
The EPM Cloud leverages pre-built, cutting-edge modules, including Workforce, Capital, Financials, and Project planning frameworks to completely transform the forecasting and budgeting process. It helps improve overall profitability, allocation of resources, and cost management, thereby, helping create long-range forecasts and gain granular insights.
Integrated Financial Books Close
EPM Cloud accelerates the task of account closing and consolidation of cycle times and compliances. It extends support to intercompany, multi-currency, and multiple accounting standards. It helps automate and effectively handle financial reconciliation processes and track the same. Tax reporting and corporate financial reporting are additional features suitable for medium to large companies.
Detailed Narrative Reports
It renders greater transparency to financial reporting and helps create management reports with charts by pulling data from multiple applications and database sources.
Overall Enterprise Data Management
Businesses can easily manage data across enterprise application viewpoints, handle changes with them, share and map data sets that help accelerate cloud deployment, and build an authoritative point of reference.
Automation of Routine Tasks
Routine tasks like scheduling reports to be sent out to stakeholders or importing and exporting metadata can be automated. Oracle EPM Cloud is a boon for those professionals who handle tasks related to financial closure, reconciliation, and data verification. They can look ahead and observe the forthcoming opportunities with more clarity while gaining visibility across all lines of business. This functionality helps formulate integrated, agile forecasts that will help businesses respond to economic changes in the marketplace.
It is possible to create business-specific custom planning and forecasting models or get started quickly with purpose-built planning models that include prebuilt calculations, dashboards and reports. The revenue plan, expenses, and balance sheet analysis can be done anytime. Dashboard views give an overview of key information using slices of data from across the application.
Compliance with Regulatory Norms
The legal and regulatory compliance environment changes often compelling businesses to match the same. Oracle EPM Cloud makes this process easy. Oracle constantly provides information about frameworks for which it has achieved a third-party attestation/certification. Hence, quarterly automatic system updates get triggered.
The Cloud EPM platform also adjusts processes to change along with tax policies and connects processes with data and metadata accordingly. These automatically reflect in the financial reports, planning, and budgeting system of an enterprise.
Make Quick & Strategic Financial Decisions
EPM Cloud eliminates the unnecessary grunt work and empowers finance associates with a strong application platform, thereby, easing off their workload and manual executions. The Cloud EPM connects all the business verticals and helps with planning at a granular level, thus providing the speed and agility for businesses to stand strong amid unforeseen disruptions.
Apart from clear planning, budgeting, and forecasts, businesses can simulate various scenarios like business model changes, M&A, etc.
Out-of-the-Box Functional Features
The EPM Cloud brings innovative new modules that can be tailored to cater to business-specific needs yet remain upgradable by Oracle. Businesses can take advantage of configuration ‘mash-ups’ allowing for the combination of configured processes with pre-built planning components from Oracle.
The library of pre-built planning/budgeting components such as models, dashboards, reports, and KPIs is exhaustive. The application gives intuitive analytics, dashboards, what-if, and predictive capabilities to enterprises.
Seamless Integration with Oracle Cloud ERP
EPM Cloud goes hand in hand with ERP Cloud and hence integration between the two mammoth processes of a business is critical. This integration brings together both these applications that provide various single-point solutions required for planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting needs.
Oracle Cloud EPM integrates the data flowing in from various departments and verticals and offers summarized/consolidated financial data for analysis. It connects data across the organization, helping businesses forecast numbers based on a 360-degree view of the entire organization.
