Financial Services Leader
At the Heart of Financial Services
Our client is a leader in the financial services industry. This iconic brand has a long history of servicing institutional investors around the world.
Outdated Systems were Impeding Growth
As the demands of being a leader in the financial services industry continued to evolve, the company recognized it was facing two critical challenges surrounding the management of its enterprise dimensions throughout the organization.
First, the company was using Oracle Hyperion MDM 9.2 to administer only two of its eleven enterprise dimensions. Additionally, the company had begun the process of upgrading its servers and operating systems, which would require the retirement of the MDM application.
Second, the chart of accounts maintenance relied heavily on manual processes. This not only impacted the two dimensions in MDM, but also spanned the administration of the dimensions within Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), and Hyperion Financial Management (HFM).
The combination of these challenges required extensive manual oversight for governing the chart of accounts to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley controls, as well as internal controls, were followed appropriately. Finally, the processes were slow and burdened by the use of spreadsheets and email.
The firm knew it had outgrown its model for governing the chart of accounts and needed a sophisticated solution that would both meet immediate challenges and simplify the governance processes of its enterprise dimensions.
Achieving Data Governance
Right from the start, we recognized the need for a two-track solution. First, the existing MDM application needed to be upgraded to Oracle DRM as soon as possible in order to meet the deadline for hardware retirement. Second, the implementation of a new and expanded Oracle DRM application was required to meet the company’s remaining goals.
Our project management methodology, coupled with our expertise in Oracle DRM, gave the firm the ability to address both tracks simultaneously. We completed the upgrade from Oracle Hyperion MDM 9.2 to Oracle DRM 11.1.2.4 while also implementing the new future DRM application.
This new application provided many enhancements over the previous processes. DRM now serves as the central “source of truth” for all enterprise dimensions covering EBS, HFM, and FDW. Additionally, DRM’s change-tracking and auditing capabilities provided SOX-compliance out of the box.
Under our guidance, the company was able to introduce a mature versioning strategy within DRM to easily obtain historical views of the dimensions, a long-desired capability.
We developed multiple workflows within the Data Relationship Governance module to provide ease-of-use change management procedures.
With Oracle DRM, our client can utilize standardized workflows within one tool to govern dimensions.
Results
Significantly Improved Data Management
With Oracle DRM, our client was able to significantly simplify and improve data management of its enterprise dimensions. Multiple benefits were realized, including:
- Central point of maintenance for EBS and enterprise performance management dimensions and attributes
- Synchronized dimensions across all systems downstream from DRM
- Versioning capability for historical views of hierarchies
- SOX-compliant auditing features
- Customized workflows for requesting, reviewing, enriching, and approving chart of accounts maintenance for over 400 users
- Systemic enforcement of the organization’s business rules
- Ability to create “what-if” scenarios of the dimensions
- A highly customized security model to ensure users can only access authorized data
