HFM utilizes today's most advanced technology, yet is built to be owned and maintained by the enterprise's finance team.
HFM has financial controls, workflow and best-practices built into the platform to support:
― US GAAP and IFRS Reporting ― Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Compliance
― Audit Trails and Activity Logs ― Intercompany Eliminations
― Foreign Exchange Translations ― XBRL Capabilities
In addition to the powerful features provided "out of the box", HFM is also highly configurable to support the complex elimination and allocation requirements specific to your organization. HFM is a finance-owned, IT-supported system that allows your organization to quickly make changes as conditions warrant but tracks those changes to provide transparency and visibility for auditability.
While HFM is a web software application, it also has an add-in with Microsoft Office (called Smartview) which allows users to forecast or budget in Microsoft Excel, an environment comfortable to most finance users.
Why the growing demand for HFM?
Intercompany and consolidation accounting can be a VERY complicated process! Due to acquisitions, intercompany activity and foreign currency accounting, getting a real picture of the state of the total business (consolidation) can be challenging.
Compliance with different accounting standards, various reporting and filing methods, disparate general ledgers and multiple currencies can be an accounting and reporting nightmare. Reviewing, matching, reconciling and accounting for multi-entity, multi-currency intercompany transactions can often slow the monthly close process down by days or even weeks. In fact, mid-size to larger companies often retain an entire team in the accounting department just to do consolidations!
Using Excel for Intercompany accounting, consolidation and translation is not the answer. Excel is a great personal productivity tool but is not designed for complex calculations, accounting for multiple lines of business and/or entities or complicated consolidations.
Additionally, Excel spreadsheets do not lend themselves to auditing, process management, version control and approvals. Companies with millions of dollars in revenue using Excel as their consolidation tool are exposing themselves for errors, deficiencies, or material weakness in internal control. Modeling or tracking such a business via linked spreadsheets might work if conditions remained stable, but they don’t. Constantly modifying a collection of spreadsheets is a particularly complicated, time-consuming process full of workarounds and compromises—the opposite of what’s needed
What advantages does Oracle HFM offer?
- Enables a More Efficient Process, controlled by Finance. IT not needed for most, if any, aspects of HFM. HFM is a tool used for Finance and owned by Finance.
- Ensures that all data is integrated and validated prior to review by management. Automates and improve the timing and efficiency of the month end close.
- Its increased Dimensionality and Intercompany Processes eliminate much of the manual matching and reconciliation process. This reduces consolidation and reporting cycles by days—or even weeks—simply by eliminating redundant data entry and the need to check and double-check actual results.
- Reduces data entry, risk of error and risk of key files located in hard drives or spreadsheets.
- Easier financial consolidation – no need for manual uploads, email of files or transferring of files.
- Faster calculation performance – most calculations performed in 4 seconds or less
- Email alerts to remind user of deadlines.
- Creates control questions to manage sections 302 and 404 of SOX
Why Choose Oracle Hyperion Financial Management?
Improve
- The Financial Close Process by days or even weeks
- Consolidation and Acquisition Accounting best practices
- Turnaround time for providing Financial Results to Chief Decision Makers
Enhance
- ROI with quick implementation time and numerous out of the box features.
- Visibility into subsidiary operating results
- Ability to analyze and gauge results through improved performance metrics
Reduce
- Audit and compliance costs through improved transparency
- Manual Controls, processing times and data reconciliation
- Errors, data entry, control risk, reporting times, departmental overload
Refine
- Intercompany accounting and reconciliation process
- Foreign currency transactions and translation process
- Financial Consolidation and reporting features
