A Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) application is always tailored to the client’s needs, business environment, and available data. It is almost impossible to lift an existing application and implement it in a different business environment. For this reason, documentation is extremely important.
A design document ensures that the client and the consultant are on the same page as to how the HFM application will be built. The client knows the business and its financial reporting needs, but in most cases they are not familiar with how HFM will meet those needs. On the other hand, the consultants are experts on HFM but they need to be familiar with the client’s business. A design document outlines client requirements and how HFM meets those requirements. It also layouts how the application works, giving the client insight into how they will feed it with data and how they will transform such data into management information.
Final turnover of the application to the client must include an Application Administrator Guide which documents how the client will maintain the application. It also covers a lot of “how to” instructions and explanations about security, rules, and pre-built reports, among others. It is not sufficient to provide the client with the generic Oracle User and Admin guides. The application is tailored for the client’s use, which requires that the Application Administrator Guide should document the application.
Although the Application Administrator Guide contains a lot of “how to” instructions, they only refer to how the application was built. It is not a substitute for actual HFM training that the application administrator must have prior to building the application.
