Hyperion Planning is a Web-based budgeting and planning solu-

tion that drives collaborative, integrated, event-based planning

processes throughout the organization for a wide range of
financial and operational needs. It provides a comprehensive
approach for the complete planning process that in turn drives
continuous profit improvement. Decision-makers and front-line
managers can communicate which course of action to take
and get budget holders to collaborate so that all profitability
improvements can be identified and acted upon. Hyperion
Planning leverages a Web infrastructure that facilitates the
creation, allocation and communication of top-down targets,
tactical bottom-up planning and real-time updates to forecasts.
Built-in planning best practices support rapid time to benefit
and lower cost of ownership.
Hyperion Planning
Hyperion Planning 2
Opportunities for Improved Business Performance
The pressure on organizations to plan more efficiently and accurately keeps growing.
Rapidly changing economic conditions, increased competition and globalization, and
the growth of partnering are forcing companies to change their planning processes.
As a result, communication and collaboration between large numbers of front-line
decision-makers are seen as increasingly important during all planning cycles and
processes. There is a need for common business definitions and measurements that
allow for enterprisewide distribution of business drivers, targets and assumptions,
which lead to enhanced understanding and analysis of plans.
With less emphasis being placed on historical data as the basis for planning, the
need for leading indicators, real-time forward planning and reforecasting becomes
crucial. This has also increased the need for business modeling as part of the planning
process, as greater emphasis is now being placed on operational efficiency and better
allocation of resources. These changes drive the need to link to incentive plans, per-
formance measurement, scorecarding, business modeling and resource allocation
processes to the planning process. As key performance measurements become aligned
with organizational strategies and objectives, management can employ analytic appli-
cations to extend traditional financial systems.
Barriers to Improving Profitability
But many barriers remain to improving planning processes. Organizations still rely on
time-intensive applications that make it difficult to move toward continuous real-time
updates. By the time the process is complete, the information provided is often out of
date or there is not enough time to work with it. Some existing planning applications
are too costly to maintain. Users and administrators become overly involved in the
mechanics of the system or too much demand is placed upon IT resources. Other
times, software and applications have to be maintained on users desktops, code has
to be written or macros maintained. In-house applications that require large amounts
of maintenance force companies to spend time writing code, diverting focus from the
business performance.
When organizations do not have a central planning solution, there is little cross-
process integration, resulting in a host of difficulties. Without enterprisewide appli-
cation standards, desktop tools and spreadsheets are used, resulting in suboptimal
planning application performance and scalability. Applications that are difficult to
amend or undocumented become out of date, unable to reflect changing business
conditions and new opportunities.
Hyperion Planning: A Centralized Planning Solution for the Enterprise
Hyperion Planning helps organizations communicate and implement a course of
action to improve profitability and impact the bottom line. It leverages a Web infra-
structure to expand the planning process throughout the enterprise, enabling cross-
disciplined activity and consensus between IT, finance, business operations and senior
management to ensure all goals are aligned, communicated and clearly understood.
Hyperion Planning facilitates all aspects of the collaborative planning and decision-
making process the creation, allocation and communication of top-down targets,
tactical bottom-up planning and real-time updates to forecasts. All the elements of the
planning cycle data entry, negotiation and iterations, process control, reporting and
reforecasting are coordinated and managed in Hyperion Planning. Built-in planning
best practices that have financial, process, currency and reporting functionality
provide for a rapid time to benefit and lower cost of ownership.
Hyperion Planning 3
Hyperion Planning is a Web-
architected solution that enables
multiple planning tasks using
thin-client technology. Powerful
reporting and analysis capabilities
allow users to manage all
reporting tasks and carry out
plan review and analysis.
Hyperion Planning
Complete Web Functionality
Hyperion Plannings complete Web functionality data entry, including data-entry form
administration, reporting and analysis, and process management ensures an easy
and low-cost distribution to a wide audience. A Web-centric interface enables compa-
nies to easily roll out the application to large, distributed planning organizations with-
out having to install software on client machines. All software resides on the server.
Built using a high-performance, scalable architecture, Hyperion Planning lowers the
total cost of ownership by significantly reducing time spent on application mainte-
nance and simplifying deployment to many users who have access to the application
anytime, anywhere.
Hyperion Plannings Web infrastructure enables decision-makers to be involved in all
of a companys critical profit planning and analysis processes. Users can:
Input and review data
Report and analyze information at all stages of the planning process
Model, calculate and report on what-if scenarios
Run and analyze allocated costs and revenue
Control and manage versions at the user and administrative level
Create and maintain data entry forms from generic information
supplied by an administrator
Add and view annotations and process documentation
Approve the budget from any state
Support multiple iterations of sign-off and review
Track status of roll-up dimensions
View history information on a planning unit
Hyperion Plannings Web
functionality includes reporting
and analysis, process manage-
ment and data entry, allowing
top-down targets to be formed
and communicated easily
throughout the organization.
4
Collaborative Planning
It is difficult to include the whole organization in the planning process, but by
utilizing the knowledge of front-line decision-makers, a company can better deploy
resources within the organization. Hyperion Planning includes all front-line decision-
makers and consistently communicates changes in direction for all aspects of
planning, including target setting, reforecasting and tactics.
Advanced planning functionality makes Hyperion Planning easy to use, ensuring
increased use throughout the organization. Flexible structures and powerful modeling
capabilities support continuous event-driven planning. Targets can be calculated or
input to a summary level and allocated to the required level of detail so planning
processes can be integrated. Top-down targets can be formed and communicated,
and the bottom-up values are easily input, annotated and understood. A spreadsheet
add-in, which allows users to work in a familiar tool if required, is also available to all
users for reporting and analysis as well as data entry purposes.
Hyperion Planning 5
Hyperion Plannings spreadsheet
add-in makes it easier for
employees to enter data as well
as report and analyze all aspects
of the planning process.
Empowering Users with Process Management
Hyperion Planning contains powerful process and workflow management functionality,
including e-mail notification and alerts, which are critical for users trying to achieve
their performance objectives. Process management empowers users to track the
progress of their budget, create and validate plans, and respond quickly to changes.
Users identify bottlenecks and focus on volatile sections of the business so they can
reforecast part or all of their responsibility areas, view status information, identify
ownership of the budget and change the budget status, reducing planning cycle time.
By facilitating improved communication, collaborative planning and decision-making,
Hyperion Planning shortens planning cycle time.
Integrating Planning Processes
With Hyperion Planning, companies focus on fast, versatile decision-making and create
detailed multidimensional plans that feed into an overall enterprisewide operational
plan. Target-setting scenarios are set with cascading targets and objectives that con-
tain annotations, allowing managers to set top-down performance targets that close
the gap with operational plans. Users check the status and progress of each planning
unit so they can analyze variances in real-time, revise, promote, reject and approve
plans. Efficient communication promotes broader participation, increased understand-
ing of the numbers and greater acceptance of ongoing planning.
Hyperion Planning 6
Hyperion Planning contains
powerful process management
that enables users to track the
process of their budget through
multiple levels of sign-off and
review.
Flexible Business Rules Functionality
Business opportunities are often missed because timely information is unavailable.
Plans are updated and decisions made based on fixed time markers instead of events.
With Hyperion Planning, decision-makers have access to real-time information that
allows for interactive analysis, allowing organizations to change direction based on a
material event. Constant updates are available so value-adding activities can be
identified and resources allocated in the most efficient manner.
Hyperion Planning is flexible enough to build plans around operational business
structures and drivers. By reforecasting and planning around value-add dimensions,
such as marketing campaigns, projects, customers and products, as well as traditional
financial structures, like accounts and cost centers, and also including statistical
information, companies develop greater insight into those areas that will increase
competitive advantage. Since the actual planning is widely distributed, the communi-
cation of assumptions and standards is increased, and more employees have a
heightened understanding of the story behind the numbers. Users maintain and
update their own specific rules since there are no complex programs and macros for
IT to maintain. Line managers show increased ownership of plans when business
methodologies and calculation assumptions are clearly communicated to them.
Hyperion Planning 7
Hyperion Plannings graphical
business rules and planning
methods builder promote greater
understanding of planning
methodology and corporate
assumptions throughout the
organization.
Integration with Other Functions
Hyperion Plannings open architecture increases the value of an organizations existing
information systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, data ware-
houses, legacy systems, e-business systems and customer relationship management
(CRM) applications. Hyperion Plannings robust application integration technology acts
as a source or target for data from these systems. Data can be quickly collected from
multiple sources and used as inputs to the planning process, and final plans can be
published back to these systems.
Integration with Hyperion Business Modeling and Hyperion Performance Scorecard
enables better, faster and more informed decision-making and enhances collaboration
and communication throughout the entire strategic and tactical planning cycle. This is
a comprehensive modeling, planning and scorecard solution that helps executives,
managers and planners monitor performance, execute effectively and optimize
resources to improve the bottom line.
Reporting and Analysis
Powerful reporting and analysis capabilities allow users to manage reporting tasks
and carry out all aspects of plan review and analysis. Hyperion Planning leverages
Hyperion Essbase and its robust analytic and calculation capabilities, security
filters, APIs, pre-built financial intelligence, calculation functions and multicube
application support. Its open platform delivers unparalleled performance and
scalability advantages over competitive offerings.
Hyperion Business Performance Management Applications
As part of Hyperions world-class family of business performance management
applications, Hyperion Planning provides a Web-based budgeting and planning
solution that drives collaborative, integrated, event-based planning processes
throughout the organization. Hyperions business performance management
applications help organizations to focus resources, improve operational efficiency,
manage for profitable results and leverage opportunities for growth.
Hyperion Services Superior Product and Industry Expertise
Hyperions global services organization provides comprehensive consulting expertise,
technical support and staff education for rapid, successful implementation of
Hyperion products. With 20 years of experience and thousands of satisfied clients,
Hyperions services organization delivers superior customer service.
2002 Hyperion Solutions Corporation. All rights
reserved. Hyperion, the Hyperion H Logo and
Essbase are registered trademarks of Hyperion
Solutions Corporation. Hyperion Solutions, Hyperion
Business Modeling, Hyperion Planning and Hyperion
Performance Scorecard are trademarks of Hyperion
Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved. All other
trademarks and company names mentioned are the
property of their respective owners.
3402_0602KS_PBR
Hyperion Worldwide Headquarters
Hyperion Solutions Corporation
1344 Crossman Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Tel: +1 408 744 9500
Fax:+1 408 744 0400
Product Information
Tel: 800 286 8000 (U.S. only)
Consulting and Education Services
Tel: +1 203 703 3000
E-mail: northamerican_consulting
@hyperion.com
Web Site
www.hyperion.com
Contact Us
www.hyperion.com/contactus/