KEY QUESTIONS TO ADDRESS WHEN REPLACING YOUR LEGACY PLANNING AND REPORTING Reinvent your Business Analytics Management Summary Organizations that simplify and optimize planning, unique features 20 years ago, but have been overtaken forecasting and reporting free up valuable resources, so by newer and more modern platforms that combine they can focus on growth. However, many organizations planning with visualizations and analytics. feel stuck with slow platforms that are not user-friendly, expensive to maintain, and difficult to upgrade. This whitepaper reviews key issues faced by business users and developers of legacy calculation engines Often users were forced to select a tool like SAP and planning systems, and compares how the modern Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), or Oracle Jedox platform can address these challenges to provide because it came with their ERP, rather than by selecting greater user satisfaction, less IT burden, and a rapid the most suitable tool from the market. Other tools like Return on Investment. Hyperion Essbase and Hyperion Planning had some Table of Contents Management Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................................3 2. Business problem #1: Too much work .........................................................................................................3 3. Business problem #2: Unifying expectations ............................................................................................4 4. How Jedox helps ...............................................................................................................................................5 5. Return on investment .......................................................................................................................................6 6. Why Jedox? ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 7. Unified planning, analysis, and reporting .....................................................................................................8 Reinvent your Business Analytics 2 1. Introduction Slow installation and configuration, time-consuming Tableau and Hyperion Essbase are examples from both patches and upgrades, performance issues, and end of this spectrum.The next goal is to unify the two heavy costs. These themes are now synonymous with extremes into a single solution that combines superior outdated multidimensional database management visual analytics with a powerful engine for modelling tools. But enterprises are at a loss when it comes complex planning and forecasting. This is where Jedox replacing their legacy systems. provides unique capability. Jedox comes with advanced planning, “Record to Report” (R2R) capabilities, visual At the same time, the Business Intelligence (BI) field is analytics, and powerful data integration capabilities. rapidly transforming. We are now seeing a spectrum, with “data visualization” tools at one end, and “core” Because Jedox is unified, it is easier to become an CPM (Corporate Performance Management) tools for expert. This makes Jedox fast to implement, and flexible planning, budgeting and consolidation at the other end. in solving many organizational challenges. 2. Business problem #1: Too much work Over the last two decades, tools like Oracle’s Hyperion With the value of the original software Capex purchase Suite have been widely used by finance managers. long written-down, combined with high operational This is because it provides a multidimensional view of expenditure from maintenance and running costs, now business data to help analysts build Excel models and is a perfect time to understand your alternatives. When analyze them from various viewpoints. it is difficult to move on to a new version, it can be easier and smarter to replace than upgrade. However, software like Essbase lacks the easy and flexible reporting functionality needed by most finance departments, and carry a heavy IT and admin load. These are typical challenges: ⊲ Expensive implementation and maintenance costs ⊲ Reporting dashboards for financial reporting often not user-friendly ⊲ A large in-house IT team to maintain changes ⊲ Inadequate integration with legacy systems ⊲ Time-consuming software updates and patching ⊲ Slow support response from mega-vendor ⊲ Slow aggregation time for simple changes − relationship management teams unsuitable for real-time reporting Reinvent your Business Analytics 3 3. Business problem #2: Unifying expectations A major barrier to true organizational performance is The challenge is how to meet these new expectations, when disparate tools are used for reporting, analysis while assuring that current business processes like and planning. Instead of intuitively reviewing and budgeting and planning running in legacy tools, can be understanding the past and using this to inform the easily redefi ned in the replacement solution. future, business users across all departments must go to diff erent systems to perform diff erent functions. This is slow, manual, and tedious. The rise of self-service BI means that business users have higher expectations from corporate solutions. They expect a modern user experience, available on any device. They expect compelling visualizations and interactivity with social collaboration functions built-in. And they expect rapid sustainable results – whether deploying on-cloud or on-premise. Figure 1: Unifi ed BI and CPM with Jedox Jedox empowers you with powerful planning, eff ective analytics and beautiful reporting, on every device Reinvent your Business Analytics 4 4. How Jedox helps Five ways Jedox helps you overcome issues faced by business and IT: 1) Unifi ed: 4) User interfaces: A major concern for development teams Many BI & CPM systems only provide a is the integration and using diff erent single user interface. This is often rigid packages for ETL (Extraction, Transform, and hard to learn. To use web or mobile, Load), Reporting, Planning and Analysis. you need to build these interfaces on Typically, these activities have diff erent user interfaces, top. Jedox gives you the same foundation as Essbase which makes them hard to use simultaneously and you with the Jedox Excel add-in. You can use all your Excel need diff erent experts to maintain each package. Jedox reports and import them into Jedox with one click unifi es these functions so you can manage server without recreating from scratch. From here, you can connections, user security, data integration, batch jobs, use the Jedox Offi ce add-in to embed dynamic graphs OLAP cubes, reports and dashboards with less time and tables in Word and PowerPoint. Critically, you can and less resources. seamlessly use Jedox from web and mobile – on any device. Jedox web is highly fl exible so you can embed 2) Real-time: it into other corporate tools like Salesforce and SAP With outdated analytics tools, you must Business Portal. By providing a consistent and secure design and run aggregation scripts to interface you can use on any device, you can support see your results at the consolidated level. diff erent user groups and requirements with the same This is highly time-consuming. Jedox’s platform. high-performance analytical engine runs calculations in real-time so you don’t worry about which calculation 5) Ownership: scripts need to be written or managed. There are no Monolithic systems are very rigid and aggregation scripts – Jedox just works. cannot be modifi ed by business users. They are expensive to implement, and 3) Easy to maintain: create ongoing IT burden and heavy If you want to update the data dimension consulting support. Jedox follows a “self-service” in a tool like Essbase, you must add this approach that returns simplicity and speed to your information to each cube. If it’s a dense business users. Jedox empowers users from marketing, dimension, this forces a time-consuming sales, procurement and fi nance secure access to data cube restructure. With Jedox, any dimension update through an intuitive and consistent user experience. instantly applies to all cubes using that dimension. You can adjust, rename and add to dimensions, elements, attributes, cubes without constraints. Reinvent your Business Analytics 5 5. Return on Investment Jedox is founded on one vison: to provide unified, smart Jedox is easy to use on-premise and on private and and scalable planning and BI that’s cost-effective, so public cloud. Jedox has industry-leading lowest Total organizations can maximize business value. The high- Cost of Ownership. The scalable Jedox license model compression in-memory database with the advanced means the investment to replace your legacy tools are GPU accelerator makes it highly scalable for highly less than what enterprises pay for software maintenance demanding big data for planning scenarios, while the on their mega-vendor system. unified architecture means mid-sized organizations with lean IT minimize their maintenance and support. Fastest Lowest Lowest Lowest implemen- effort to run license TCO tations and = fees + + (little effort) administrate Average total cost of license fees (US$´000) Projects implemented in less than 3 months Jedox $33 Jedox 49,2% Tableau $46 Infor 43,8% BOARD $111