Hyperion Planning vs Oracle Financial for departmental budgets

Question

Hello,
I was wondering what the consensus is between using Oracle Financials vs. Hyperion Planning for variance analysis purposes.
My contention is that HP is a best-in-breed budgeting/planning tool and should be used to house our departmental budgets/forecasts and that actuals should be fed from Oracle Financials (G/L) to Hyperion Planning for variance anlaysis purposes. Some of my piers disagree. They feel the budgeting/forecating data should be pushed to Oracle Financials for variance analysis purpose. They claim it will be easier to provide drill-back capability into the ledger to find the answer to their variances.
I really couldn't disagree more - to me the analytical capability of HP trumps any drill-back capability provided by Oracle Financials. In addition, if we use an ETL tool like FDM to feed actuals from Oracle into HP, can't I drill back to the transactional data (actuals) via FDM? In addition, since we budget at a summary account level, how can you push summary planning data in HP to detailed transactional accounts in the G/L - pushing "one to many" doesn't make sense to me.
Anyway, just looking for some expert opinions on the subject. Much appreciated - Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
We are currently in the final phase of implementing Oracle Financials and Hyperion for the same purpose that you have described in your post. We use Oracle Financials to record actuals and then transfer it to Hyperion under the scenario 'Actual'. While the budget/forecast data in only entered/saved in Hyperion. There are several financial reports for variances that are generated out of Hyperion. So far, this arrangement is serving us pretty well. I second your point that in Hyperion, we can easily compare summary level data. We have Hyperion reports that do variances calculations for sub-totals. In fact, we are also using HP reports for consolidated statements such as Balance sheet, Income statement etc. The actual data for these statements is coming from GL.
As for drill through functionality (from HP to sub-ledger details in financials), we are in process of implementing FDM and use it for both (1) loading data and (2) drill through.
Hope this helps.
ABG