Is EPRCS Management Reporting the Hyperion Financial Reporting Killer?

You won’t typically find feature comparisons between EPRCS Management Reporting (MR) the Hyperion Financial Reporting (FR) as ostensibly they are intended for different purposes.

That said, EPRCS Management Reporting keeps growing and growing, and adding more features and functionality that were previously only found in Hyperion Financial Reporting (FR). Are we approaching the point when MR will make FR obsolete?

In this article, I will try to highlight the benefits and advantages of each product, to help you decide which product or products you need for your business needs.

 

Is EPRCS Management Reporting (MR) the future?

EPRCS MR is Oracle’s strategic reporting solution. Management Reporting has near full parity with Financial Reporting, and is built on an advanced platform that can handle the future. Oracle is investing heavily in the development of this product.

The Management Reporting Hub for supported Oracle EPM / OAC and ERP Cloud sources Supports grids and charts against multiple sources. It is completely Integrated with the collaborative narrative reporting process via the Reference Doclet Framework and is included out of the box.

MR simply feels more up to date, and offers a better user experience than FR. FR feels more awkward to use, and the creation of one report can take much longer.

 

MR offers a complete integration with EPRCS with the Collaborative Narrative Reporting Process

MR has embed grids and charts in Word and PowerPoint report package doclets. It offers the possibility to insert entire reports into PDF report packages and utilises EPRCS report package variables to drive the POV in reports and report content, to mention only some of the features.

 

Financial Reporting – Down, but not out, yet…

There are still several major FR features that aren’t yet available in MR:

• Scheduling and  bursting
• Books/ cascading – although the new PDF report package can accomplish simply cascading today, it will be better when MS Office documents can be added, planned for late summer.
• Auto-calcs
• Butterfly reports
• Export to Office
• Annotations

If these are features that are essential to your business, you still need to be running FR for the time being at least.

Sources at Oracle, however, say that all of these features should be included in future updates of MR, more than likely before the year is out.

For more detailed information on the differences between MR integration with EPRCS versus FR, there is a section in the MR official documentation: https://bit.ly/2G3Hu2B (Keep in mind that overall the cross-cloud reporting, report package integration and design paradigms and features of MR are equivalent or superior to FR).  

 

Is it the end for Financial Reporting?

None of this means that Financial Reporting is dead. It could be that on-premise Financial Reporting serves your business needs adequately, and there is no need for you to upgrade to Management Reporting.

It is clear however that Oracle is not looking to invest in the future of Financial Reporting. In the short-term, it seems clear that Management Reporting will soon be a one stop solution.

Perhaps in the long-term, we shall see Financial Reporting phased out altogether, but right now it’s too early to say for sure.

Interested in finding out more about these two products in more details, then do not hesitate one more minute, and contact one of our reporting specialist at Tactic Key Consulting, and we will advise you on the best reporting tool, based on your business and resources.