The I.T. Side

Dear Finance Manager:

So you decided to take the plunge and implement a shiny new Hyperion system 9 or 11 implementation. You have purchased your software, bought your hardware, hired a partner to install and configure the servers, and are ready to start designing all your great pie charts. You have trained your finance staff on how to load data, create dashboards, and email reports. That’s great!

But what about IT? You forgot about your IT department, didn’t you?

You have just rolled out an Enterprise class system and dumped it on an unsuspecting IT department who has not idea how to maintain and administer the system…..and you expect the system to be up and running 24/7, right? And you want to get your data back if someone accidently deletes something or the hard drive blows up, right? And you want them to fix it if there are problems and make it go faster when it slows down during your close process, right?

No way.

A modern day IT department is in charge of many systems – email systems, sales, databases, inventory, HR, Payroll, billing, web sites, etc…. all of which are very unique. Simply put, you cannot just throw an enterprise system on an IT department and expect them to have everything working smooth with no training. That’s not saying anything against your IT staff – I’m sure they are very talented, but complex corporate systems are just that – complex. Installing a system, getting it working, and getting finance up to speed is just half the battle….you need the other half – IT training.

There are many aspects to IT administration – Maintenance, Troubleshooting, automation, monitoring, capacity planning, backup/restore, business continuity and disaster planning, helpdesk integration, job automation, upgrades and patching, etc. While these concepts are common in IT, each corporate system has it’s own unique methods in dealing with these things, and Oracle/Hyperion is no exception.

We all have experienced the wonderful support calls within Oracle. My advice – don’t fall short with Infrastructure services. After the system is installed, take the time to get additional training that is specific to IT. I assure you that rolling out your system into production will go a lot smoother with a well trained IT staff.

Let’s face it…you want your system up and running, they want to sleep through the night without their cell phones and pagers going off.

Sure, you can get general training with Oracle Classes. But those assume a one server simple environment with ALL Oracle EPM products performed in an Oracle classroom on THEIR system with a bunch of different customers. Great for an intro, but modern day IT departments need to get up to speed fast and need the detail to perform their daily jobs and keep the systems delivering.

Some Oracle Partners, such as Hackett offer customized classes performed on YOUR site, on YOUR system, on YOUR products, in detail with YOUR IT staff.

Help your IT staff help you – even if god-forbid, the money has to come out of the Finance budget. 🙂

Feel free to contact me for more information.

~ by Eric Helmer on March 1, 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized