Not to Be Outdone by SAP, Oracle Announces Improvements to ERP Suite

Oracle kicked off their OpenWorld Conference this week in San Francisco—concurrent with SAP’s TechEd in Phoenix—and they have announced several improvements to their ERP package over the past couple days, namely a new system release for their Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platform that includes an ERP integrator that improves financial reporting and provides for bi-directional data integration for budgeting and forecasting.

Oracle EPM system release 11.1.1.3 combines performance management with business intelligence, and provides for a broader range of strategic, financial, and operational management processes. In support of bi-directional integration of financial data into their Hyperion performance management apps, Oracle has introduced an ERP integrator for the Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management application. More specifically, the new integrator merges their E-Business Suite General Ledger and the PeopleSoft Enterprise Ledger with Hyperion’s Financial Management and Planning applications.

In addition, visualization improvements were made within the Hyperion Smart View application. An enhanced integration between Oracle’s Essbase and Crystal Ball—two applications that provide spreadsheets for predictive modeling, forecasting, and Monte Carlo simulation and optimization—now allows inline simulation within Smart View’s Excel interface, and gives users the ability to create, change, and import/export data from the application to Excel. These integrations are being previewed at this week’s convention.

• Array
•