Advice needed on Hyperion Job Opportunities

Question

Hello,
I'm trying to venture into Hyperion Consulting and I need some advice on Hyperion Job Opportunities. I thought this would be a good place to ask.
Let me give you my background. I have a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering, a Masters degree in Computer Science, and an MBA in Finance from a TOP 15 Business School in the U.S. I have been working as a Senior Financial Analyst for the past 5 yrs primarily doing Forecasting, Budgeting etc using Excel. I'm an advanced user of Excel proficient in vlookups, pivot tables etc. I've also used Hyperion sparingly to get budget and actuals numbers from the Hyperion system.
Now,I would like to get into Hyperion Consulting. I'm debating whether I should learn Hyperion Planning or HFM (Hyperion Financial Management) and I'm not able to decide. I want to base my decision on which one of these two systems (HFM/Hyperion Planning) has more job opportunities and pays a higher billing rate.
I've been told that job opportunities in HFM are much less than Hyperion Planning but the billing rates for HFM are higher than Hyperion Planning. Is this true?
I would really appreciate if anyone can advice me on this issue. It would be great if you could also provide me with the average billing rates for both HFM and Hyperion.
Thank you very much in advance for your help

Answer 1

Hi,
This topic is quite controversial for many consultants who chose to carry on with Planning. Let us be honest for a minute: As Planning consultants, we don't like HFM'ers much, but there is a reason behind it. They tend to perceive us like IT geeks. Well, you may argue that it's not particularly a bad thing but are we not more than that? Once I had a rather strange conversation with the head of HFM team in my previous firm. They were trying to hire someone to their team and interviewing a few people weekly but couldn't find anyone for a long time. I happened to ask him how it was going and he said: "well, you know, physical appearence and candidate's care for outfit is very important for us. We are not like you guys, we are dealing with CFOs and even CEOs s". I replied: "yeah, you are right, we do the design with janitors."
But on the contrary, most of the time Planning projects urge you to interact with a much larger community within the company than that of HFM's. I can say, for example, I have discussed with production unit heads about the processes involved in producing steel products, or petrochemicals. I have hands-on knowledge about telecommunication, insurance and government sectors. That's why it's so much fun for me and I love doing it.
About how well you make, it might be true that HFM consultants are paid little more than what Planning conultants are paid on initial grades. But as you move ahead in your carreer, the gap is closed. You can check monster or glassdoor yourself, Planning architects are paid more than HFM counterparts by a significant margin.
It's I think with little argument is a fact that, Planning requires you to be little more technical compared to HFM but in return you have more fun and gain more experience with it. It's a personal choice of course and I know people who does both. The world needs HFM'ers as much as it needs Planning consultants, well, maybe half as much.
Good luck.
Cheers,
Alp