Choosing the right solution for your consolidation needs
Every organization has unique consolidation needs due to the way it has grown, complexity of the business and also its legal entity structure. What are your consolidation challenges?
Are you coping with multiple systems / multiple vendors sending data for consolidation in discrete manner?
Do you have multiple instances of your GL, which need to be consolidated?
Do you need sophisticated consolidation needs like Extended reporting capability in a single GL environment?
Do you need insights into consolidation for Analytics, Performance management like KPI's, Ratio Analysis etc to make informed decisions?
Oracle provides you choice of multiple financial consolidation solutions depending on how you answered the above questions. Oracle GL provides a Balances / Transaction based consolidation solution while Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) is a specifically built solution to handle consolidation with sophisticated features like Modeling, What If Analysis and Extended Reporting.
Following are some of the key questions to be answered while choosing the right solution:
a) What is the Data to be consolidated and where is it coming from?
Organizations having discrete data sources or multiple instances of GL (PeopleSoft, Oracle etc) would consider using HFM. HFM has been prebuilt to import data from multiple sources using a standard adaptor called FDQM and provides a flexible consolidation solution with interface back to your GL?
b) What are your consolidation needs?
If the requirement is to close GL and handle extended closing adjustments separately, perform extended reporting with What if analysis, modeling etc then HFM is the right tool. But in case the consolidation needs are not very complex and you have a single GL instance then Oracle GL is the right tool.
c) Do you have complex consolidation needs?
In case the organization has complex ownership structures with multiple consolidation hierarchies, cross ownership for adjustments, needs predefined business rules, complex currency / intercompany eliminations and needs a dashboard to monitor the consolidation process then HFM is the right tool to be used. Oracle GL is simple Balances based consolidation solution and cannot handle complex business rules.
To summarize if one is looking for traditional transaction based consolidation without any need for highly sophisticated features like Performance management, Extended financial close, Management reporting hierarchies or Scenario modeling then Oracle GL based consolidation solution would be the right choice
