Oracle today announced it has delivered a new release of PeopleSoft® Enterprise Performance Management. PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management is an integrated suite of analytic applications that enables organizations to drive world-class performance by aligning the right information and resources to strategic objectives. With this new release, PeopleSoft Enterprise Management delivers real-time interactive profitability and planning tools, supports next-generation global compliance and offers rich packaged analytic content to speed application deployment.
“Today, most firms deploying Performance Management software focus on a single application or business process. Once that’s been done, they will need to find ways of using their improved process and systems to raise business performance. This can be achieved only by aligning a fuller set of management processes,” said Lee Geishecker, research vice president with Gartner. “Only large vendors will be able to offer the breadth of software functionality to support multiple management processes.”(1)
Rich Packaged Analytic Content
With PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9, pre-packaged content such as analytical maps, models and metrics has been significantly expanded across every functional business area, including Customer Relationship Management, Financial Management, Human Capital Management and Supply Chain Management. In Enterprise Performance Management 8.9, data from PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World is now sourced, mapped and rationalized into a single warehouse environment, enabling JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World customers to use all modules of the Enterprise Performance Management suite. Additionally, PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 has been architected so that warehouses and data marts can be licensed separately and deployed modularly. For example, a company can deploy the real estate data mart without licensing the entire financials warehouse.
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 provides over 200 predefined key performance indicators through standards-based web services, giving users of other applications access to the analytical content generated by PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management. For example, users can monitor and track key performance indicators from Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Additionally, users can define custom key performance indicators, and using web services, enable them to interoperate with other applications. The web-services approach is part of Oracle’s adoption of a service-oriented architecture and evolution towards Project Fusion – the convergence of Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications into a single product.
Real-time Interactive Profitability and Planning
As part of the PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management suite, PeopleSoft Planning and Budgeting has been integrated into a unified solution to provide a seamless top-down and bottom-up planning process, which will help shorten the planning and budgeting cycle and align operational budgets with high-level strategic goals. A real-time modeling engine has been added to PeopleSoft Activity-Based Management, a cost and profitability analysis solution, enabling users to perform modeling and “what-if” analysis without having to run batch processes. Users can now create models and change elements to immediately see the impact.
Next Generation Global Compliance
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 provides enhanced integration between Enterprise Performance Management and PeopleSoft Internal Controls Enforcer, a compliance offering, to enable greater compliance and enterprise risk management. For multinational companies, PeopleSoft Global Consolidations can manage multiple reporting structures for both U.S. GAAP and international accounting standards. In addition, a major new feature to PeopleSoft Global Consolidations captures activities that affect account balances and provides instant audit trails to better enable customers to meet compliance reporting requirements. For example, if an organization retires or sells a particular asset, that activity can be tracked and noted.
Creating a Superior Ownership Experience
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 is now faster to deploy and easier to use and maintain. Usability enhancements include new, easy to use navigation pages, as well as personal scorecards and individual planning workspaces to make users more productive. In addition, the underlying infrastructure of the suite has been simplified with a single data movement tool from Ascential that optimizes data integration. New metadata management enhancements include a metadata console that provides a single point of access to quickly understand warehouse structures and content. This makes it easier for technical staff to maintain and extend Enterprise Performance Management’s content and features.
“We believe that there are long-term benefits in having an integrated solution for business planning and budgeting,” said Paul Pauesick, Manager- Information Technology, Kansas City Board of Public Utilities. “PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 is a unified solution that delivers an enterprise perspective enabling us to do business forecasting and modeling and align our operational budgets with our longer-term strategy. Moreover, the usability and architecture enhancements in this release will help us get up and running more quickly than we had believed possible.”
“Oracle’s plans to maintain the strategic partnership with Ascential Software, as well as the delivery of PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9, validates a long-term commitment to the continued, consistent support of PeopleSoft customers,” said Pete Fiore, vice president, IBM Information Integration Solutions. “IBM WebSphere DataStage and IBM WebSphere MetaStage deliver advanced data transformation and meta data management capabilities to PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 customers, increasing the strategic impact of the solution.”
“Driving enterprise performance is a top priority among our customers today,” said Chris Leone, vice president applications strategy, Oracle. “PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 delivers leading functionality, while making it easier than ever for our customers to get up and running quickly and realize business value sooner.”
About PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management Solutions
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management suite is an integrated suite of analytic applications that enables organizations to drive world-class performance by aligning the right information and resources to strategic objectives. PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management helps managers formulate strategies for profitable growth, align strategies with operational plans, actively monitor day-to-day operations and collaborate across the enterprise.
