If you didn’t have an opportunity to attend the webinar, HFM to FCCS – A Customer Success Story, presented by Doga Pamir, Solutions Architect at Perficient, you might want to check it out on ODTUG’s website as part of their educational webinar series. This event was originally presented at Kscope17 and was so well received, that ODTUG wanted to extend the reach of this award-winning event to the greater membership. In part one of this blog post series, I shared excerpts from the Q&A part of the event. Let’s pick up where we left off with more Q&A.
Did you face any challenge by not having contribution adjust and/or entity currency adjust?
No, we did not. We were not adjusting any contributions in this app. This was a straightforward app. Everything is owned 100 percent. Entity currency adjust is not there yet, but the journal module still works similar to HFM. It’s just fixing it on a specific member. We did put higher-level journals, but we didn’t run into any issues, and we didn’t necessarily have the need for the contribution adjust bucket. I know that Oracle is working on enhancing the application, especially when it comes to the consolidation dimension, custom consolidations. It’s just not available yet. I’ve seen some models, but like I said, in this particular case, we didn’t need it. It was a smaller application. It fit the box, and it worked.
How do you implement security so that a novice user doesn’t accidentally make drastic changes to the metadata and Smart View?
Especially when it comes to the metadata, security follows the planning, if you are familiar with the planning security structure. We create user groups, and then we assign them to dimensions. We either give them write access to certain parts of the metadata or the hierarchy, or we give them read access. That would be the way to limit their security. You can go to any level, just like in planning and apply security to different levels, based versus parent to get around it.
Does the application have any equity pickup calculations such as in HFM?
Currently, it does not. When we were implementing, it didn’t. Equity pickups is in the roadmap and Oracle is saying it should be in the next release, but Oracle is not providing specific dates. I believe it will have the calculation manager, and Oracle will open up some parts of the calculation routine for developers to go in and write some logic to it, but as of today, that’s not there.
Regarding the backend of FCCS, is it Essbase BSO behind the scenes, and how is performance?
Yes, correct. The back engine is Essbase, and it’s a BSO cube today. With this type of application, 15 entities, less than 1,000 accounts, custom dimensions are not more than a couple hundred. That’s one reason we identified CPI as a FCCS candidate back when we started.
Now, the application’s evolving. There’s actually big demand from enterprise customers. Once Oracle rolls out additional custom dimensions for FCCS, the backend will be different, and they’re going to be using a hybrid approach, which is going to be an ASO plus BSO cube. It should improve the performance as well. With this particular app, it was not an issue. There are some recommended numbers when it comes to entities and accounts and customs when you’re building your application.
Can only admins be dimensions editors? Our company has another group, non-HFM admin that maintains metadata for all our applications in our company.
I believe today, there are four main roles: system admin, power user, user, and view. Today, system admins do manage the metadata.
How do the actuals integrate with the planning module?
When we did the FCCS implementation, we didn’t do that part of the integration. That was going to be phase two. We currently don’t have in this particular app PBCS to FCCS or vice versa type integration using Data Management or anything like that.
There is not a direct connection between FCCS and EPBCS. You can do a file-based export from FCCS and load that into EPBCS using either the direct import feature within the browser, or using EPM automate to load the data so that then you can pick it up with Data Management. The tools are there in both subscriptions to do the integration, but it just wasn’t a requirement for our customer.
Are there any training courses for FCCS, either with Oracle or your firm?
Not currently. I know that Oracle is working on this, but I’m not sure if they rolled out. Our approach is to train while we do on-site implementations, basically, side by side. You’re shadowing us, that’s how we implement these products. To date, formal training through Oracle education or Perficient is not yet available.
There is a subscription that you can buy from Oracle that provides cloud training. It covers three products. FCCS is not one of them yet, but it’s on the roadmap. The three that are available are Enterprise Planning Cloud. The duration is about 25 hours worth of training. There is the Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud, and about 10 hours of that. Then, Profitability and Cost Management Cloud has about four hours of training. We don’t know exactly when FCCS and ARCS and some of these other products would come out, but I know that it’s under development. If you want any more information about this particular subscription, you can reach out to us.
These are not live instructor classes. In addition to this new subscription, just know that also, when you subscribe to FCCS, there is what is called the Academy, which is an icon which has prerecorded videos already in the subscription. They are very short, but they give you a high-level intro to different features and different ways of implementing the product. There’s always that, and that’s included with your subscription. If you want training beyond that, your option today for FCCS is custom training developed by a partner and possibly in the near future, a subscription with several hours of training provided by Oracle.
What are the purposes of changing the data source dimension?
FCCS comes with this data source dimension out of the box, and it provides some pre-seated members. Some of those members are designated like FCCS elimination, FCCS journal input. One of them is for the journal module. The other one is used when the system does intercompany eliminations out of the box. There are a couple more. One of them is a default option when you set up your data management, the data input one. That can be modified. In addition, if you have in your current HFM system a data source or a source type dimension and have additional members because you’re tracking more than what FCCS provides out of the box, you can enhance dimension, add your own members in there to track different type of data loads into the system. That would be the reason or the purpose of enhancing the dimension.
