“If you take up any textbook on implementation, it will tell you it should
take anywhere between 9 and 12 months. We wanted to do this in 6.”
—Alan Dempsey, Group Controller, CEVA Logistics
the system is a financial consolidation application, a smaller
data set was an option, which simplified the extract, transform, and load process for legacy data. Also, Dempsey and his
team knew that older data would be available in the existing
system if they needed to review it for due diligence purposes.
“We only need two years, because for our annual reporting
purposes that’s more than sufficient,” says Dempsey.
Another decision that helped out immensely was the agreement to provide only a small number of standard, system-generated reports. Rather than try to start off with all possible
reports—which colleagues in the finance department are typically slow to release—Dempsey’s team limited initial customization and reporting options to only the most critical ones.
“We went live with only three standard system-generated
reports,” says Dempsey. “We simply showed all our users how
to use the simple functionality of the reporting tools and how
to build their own reports, which they were quite happy with.”
MANAGING CHANGE
Effectively completing a large implementation project doesn’t
simply mean installing a functional application—it must also
be accepted by the user community. For CEVA, this meant
making sure that end users of the consolidated financial management application had a clear vision of the new solution
and why it would be beneficial to them.
Dempsey says he has seen two ways of presenting a new
IT system that can lead to negative acceptance. One approach
entails telling the user base too much about the project and
the product too early in the implementation phase, leaving
them panicked and overwhelmed. Alternatively, management
can tell them nothing until right before go-live, leaving a
vacuum that makes them nervous.
CEVA chose a third path, implementing an incremental
communication plan, driven mainly by project newsletters.
The main goal was for the end users to see the deployment
of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management as a positive
development—more modern, user friendly, and faster than
their old processes. The newsletters continued through the
implementation process, communicating why there was a
need to replace the legacy applications, why Oracle Hyperion
Financial Management was chosen, when the users would be
trained, what the new screens would look like, and more.
“The sooner you make the end user aware of the application
and what it will look like, the less of a surprise or a shock it will
be when it comes to the day when they switch on that application, on the day of go-live,” says Dempsey. “So months before
the users got to use the application, they had a sense of the look
and feel of it already. And even then, before the training, they
also had a first glimpse of what the application looked like.”
DELIVERING SUCCESS
Dempsey had very clear milestones to measure the success
of the project: to upload and consolidate the financial results
for October 2008 and produce the 2008 annual report from
the new Oracle Hyperion Financial Management implementation. After going live on November 4, CEVA’s operating companies submitted their October results via the new
system. “We made some refinements in November, even
fewer in December, and were able to produce the 2008
annual report from Oracle Hyperion Financial Management,”
says Dempsey.
The new Oracle Hyperion Financial Management solution has already delivered additional benefits for CEVA. For
example, the solution has resulted in the simplification and
integration of CEVA’s closing process and a shortening of the
financial closing and consolidation procedures, improving
time, cost, and efficiency of reporting. Today, CEVA has shortened the monthly shareholders reporting cycle significantly.
But the long-term benefit will be the value of having
more-timely and more-accurate information available to
CEVA’s leadership team. The new Oracle Hyperion Financial
Management solution also enables CEVA to do complete
multidimensional consolidations as well as providing better
facilitation and functionality for intracompany accounting
and reporting.
Although not all companies may be able to move as
quickly as CEVA, it’s helpful to know that such in-depth transitions can not only happen quickly but also have a strong
positive impact on an organization.
Improved, consistent financial consolidation is part of
a bigger move that more and more companies are making
toward more-transparent and faster financial reporting processes. “There are more pressures now on companies to
deliver the results externally as fast as they can,” says Oracle’s
O’Rourke. “That helps external stakeholders, but it can be
just as important internally, where the faster the books can be
closed, the faster managers can view and react to the results if
something is not going according to plan.” <>
DAVID A. KELLY is a freelance business, technology, and travel writer based in West
Newton, Massachusetts.
Oracle Hyperion Financial Management
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hyperion-financial-performance-management/
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