Oracle Corp. today introduced a packaged integration between its enterprise performance management application and its sales and operations planning software, making it easier for manufacturers to quickly analyze the financial implications of changing customer demand.
Oracle said the new integration between its Oracle Hyperion Planning EPM product and its Oracle Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning platform is available now. Based on Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture (AIA), the new EPM-S&OP integration provides manufacturers with a way to more easily tie together operational and financial planning processes.
At many companies, systems and processes used for financial and operational planning have been separate or integrated manually with the help of spreadsheets, said John O’Rourke, Oracle vice president of business intelligence and EPM product marketing, in an interview. This has often made it difficult for manufacturers to quickly understand and respond to the financial implications of shifting demand signals, he said.
The new integration allows manufacturers to more easily share financial and operational data between S&OP and financial planning processes and run integrated updates as frequently as needed.
“The goal is for the customer to move toward a set of real-time, closed-loop processes that also enable them to react to unpredictable changes that impact their demand,” said Jon Chorley, Oracle’s vice president for applications strategy.
Using the new integration, for example, a manufacturer could immediately update the Hyperion financial planning system when a natural disaster or competitive event altered the S&OP operational plan.
With the new connection, data also flows from the Hyperion financial planning system to the Demantra S&OP application. With updated financial data integrated into Demantra, supply chain and manufacturing managers can reconcile current operating plans against updated financial targets and budgets, Oracle officials said.
In addition to providing manufacturers with a better way to link operational and financial planning, the new integration will afford Oracle an opportunity to sell its Hyperion EPM suite to users of its Demantra S&OP platform, O’Rourke said.
Some Oracle customers, such as Cabot Microelectronics, have developed their own integrations between Oracle Hyperion Planning and Demantra S&OP, according to O’Rourke. The new packaged integration, however, will be supported by Oracle and updated to account for customers’ changes to either system, he noted.