Kit Updated: 18-July-07
Hyperion Planning
Elevator Pitch
Target Account
Profile
High Yield Questions
Key Features
Competition
Third Party Validation
Objection Handling
Market Trends
Customer References
Contacts and
Resources
Elevator Pitch
For finance managers who can no longer rely on disconnected spreadsheets to manage their
budget process, Hyperion Planning is a centralized planning, budgeting and forecasting
application that reduces budget cycle time and improves forecast accuracy. By aligning financial
and operational planning processes companies can allocate resources effectively to maximize
business results.
Key Benefits
o Reduce budget cycles – quickly respond to market changes
o Improve forecast accuracy - allocate resources to the most important opportunities
o Minimize budget maintenance - no wasted resources in finance
o Maximize analysis – spend minimal time on reporting and look forward instead
o Align finance with operations – create consensus across the organization
Target Account Profile
Buyer profiles
Target buyers are in the Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) or Budget Group within the
Finance Department. This group is typically found at Corporate Headquarters or the head office
of a major division or business unit.
Finance managers such as VP/Director Finance, Manager FP&A or Budget Manager, are likely
to be process owners and are primarily interested in driving out inefficiencies and reducing time
and resources spent on completing the budget.
Budget Analysts typically maintain budget templates and reports and handle the distribution and
collection of budget data and reporting. They are primarily interested in how easy they can build
budget models, templates and reports. Because they maintain (and likely built) the system that
needs to be replaced they could be the most resistant to change and likely want to do a very
detailed evaluation. Secondary targets are financial analysts or controllers in the business. They
are much closer to the business operations and need more flexibility than at corporate to deal
with the planning process. Leverage them to grow your deal by expanding beyond financial
planning to operational planning (e.g. sales, marketing, production planning). This can help
overcome price point or complexity issues if Hyperion Planning is perceived as an overkill by
Corporate compared to simpler solutions.
The CFO is oftentimes the decision maker and a visionary. As advisor to the CEO and the Board
of Directors, brings financial rigor to the business planning process. Therefore CFO’s rely on
accurate forecasts especially at public companies where they face high exposure every quarter to
investors and financial analysts that expect earnings guidance. To engage or get access to the
CFO consider including Hyperion Strategic Finance as it addresses topics that are typically high
on the agenda (see HSF saleskit).
Department or Cost Center Managers and business users are contributors to the budget process
but don’t see it as their primary job. They are primarily looking for ease of use when entering
and reporting budget data. They want minimal disruption of their primary (business) activities.
Install Base
Oracle, PeopleSoft, and JDE
customers that have not
licensed or implemented
Oracle EPB, Oracle OFA or
PSFT BP or competing
budgeting applications
Oracle, PeopleSoft or JDE
ERP customers who are
unhappy with their current
budgeting solution
OFA customers who have
outgrown this technology and
are looking for a budgeting
solution
Oracle Data Warehouse
customers that want to
leverage their technology
investment and focus on
planning and budgeting
Hyperion customers with
only single product – i.e.
Enterprise, Essbase, Financial
Management, Strategic
Finance etc. and looking to
expand their performance
management capabilities
Daily Business Intelligence
New Customer
Companies with SAP ERP
systems, poor planning and
budgeting processes
.
Companies with mixed ERP
environments and no standard
platform for planning and
budgeting
Companies who are
struggling with spreadsheets
to support planning and
budgeting
Companies using best of
breed budgeting point
solutions from Cognos,
Business Objects, Infor,
Longview and others, but
lack the scalability of a
centralized platform
Target Audience
CFO
Manager FP&A
Budget Manager
Financial Analyst
Cost Center Managers
(DBI) and Balanced
Scorecard (BSC) clients, to
extend their analytical
capabilities to planning and
budgeting
High Yield Questions
o How does your organization manage the planning, budgeting and
forecasting process? How long does it take to complete your budgeting
process? What are the bottlenecks in the process?
o What types of planning/budgeting does your organization perform? For
example strategic planning, financial planning, capital planning,
headcount/salary planning, sales planning, marketing planning,
production planning? How well aligned are these plans? If you make a
change to one plan is it immediately reflected in all other plans?
o How many people are involved? In how many different
locations/geographies?
o How often do you update your plans and budgets to reflect changes in
your business strategy or market conditions?
o What are the key drivers of your business? How do you determine their
financial impact when planning your business?
back to top
Key Features:











Integrated advanced analytics ensure accurate forecasts
Driver-based planning allows expanding beyond finance into operations
Microsoft Office integration reduces manual reporting and data entry efforts
Built-in financial intelligence reduces administration efforts and enhances plan reliability
Offline planning allows users to work on their plans anytime, anywhere
Intuitive Web interface connects a wide user community of business users
Task List wizard guides frequent users step by step through the planning process
Prepackaged modules for Workforce and Capital Planning enable quick implementations
Powerful workflow ease collaboration and maintains process control
Scalable architecture supports large deployments to thousands of users
Robust data integration with data warehouses, ERP and other transaction systems ensures data
quality
Packaged Modules
Workforce Planning
Key Features

Packaged application with
prebuilt functionality
Benefits

Simplify
implementation and
incorporating best practices
Head count and expense
management
 Flexible customization tools
 Integral part of Hyperion
Planning
 Dependable security





Capital Expense Planning

Packaged application with
prebuilt functionality
incorporating best practices
 Flexible customization tools
and capabilities
 Real-time calculation and
consolidation of capital asset
and capital asset-related
expenses
 Dependable, built-in security






reduce maintenance
requirements with
prebuilt functionality
Address all workforce
planning requirements
with a fully flexible
and open architecture
Achieve greater
accuracy,
predictability, and
accountability
Assess real-time impact
of salaries and
associated workforce
expenses
Reduce workforce
planning cycle time
Simplify
implementation
processes and reduce
maintenance
requirements
Manage all capital
expenses easily
Assess the immediate
impact of capital
expense decisions on
financial statements
Achieve greater
accuracy,
predictability, and
accountability by
involving operationallevel planners
Eliminate manual steps
by using a
comprehensive
planning solution
Gain security over data,
calculations, and global
settings
back to top
Third-Party Validation
Analysts and Other Research
IDC
IDC ranks Hyperion #1 for Financial Performance Management Software
“Hyperion continues building loyalty in the finance ranks, with the more current BPM
Offerings; including planning, budgeting, and forecasting; financial consolidation
and statutory reporting; and scorecarding…The argument against the lack of integration of Hyperion
solutions is being met head-on with strategies such as the Hyperion System 9
Foundation, which supports data sharing, synchronization, and security, and Hyperion
has a continuing strategy to further integrate the BPM suite. Hyperion’s experience in
the BPM market, legacy in finance and BPM applications, and widely adopted BI
capabilities get Hyperion an automatic spot on the short list in the majority of deals.
Hyperion continues to command the BPM market and has again in 2005 increased its
market share.”
Gartner
Gartner puts Hyperion in the Leaders Quadrant in the CPM Magic Quadrant Report 12/06.
“Hyperion has maintained its high brand recognition among CFOs and finance professionals,
which means that it is present in virtually every CPM suite evaluation. Hyperion strengthened its
offering with release 9.0 of its applications. This leveraged the new Hyperion System 9 BI
platform as a more consistent underlying foundation for its main CPM applications, Hyperion
Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. The System 9 BI platform includes enhanced
Web analysis and financial reporting capabilities and also provides common user management
capabilities. Hyperion recently introduced new capital asset-planning capabilities and launched
BPM Architect, which enables users to create custom CPM applications and process flows.”
back to top
Market Trends
 Market gets more competitive, more players have entered the market and stronger players
are consolidating, e.g. SAP buys Outlooksoft and BO buys Cartesis
 Small point-solution vendors provide competitive pressure by focusing on ease of use,
fast implementations and low price. Fixed price projects and SaaS offerings are starting
to occur.
 Planning extends beyond finance into operations. Initially by including driver based
planning and connecting business functions into the financial planning process. More
sophisticated integration starts to occur by connecting financial planning with Sales &
Operations Planning and Supply Chain Planning.
 Industry specific solutions are becoming increasingly important. This is enforced by the
expansion from financial planning into business operations. Rather than building
packaged solutions some competitors are using industry templates effectively in sales
cycles, e.g. Cognos performance blueprints.
 Increase in large scale deployments. Driven by the initial success in EPM by finance,
companies are starting to roll-out EPM/planning solutions to a wider community within

the organization.
Growing demand for enhanced sophistication like predictive modeling and statistical
forecasting.
back to top
Competition
Vendor
Strength
Outlooksoft
(acquired by SAP)
 One application for Budgeting
and Consolidations
 Slick demos
 Excel focus
 Perceived ease of use
 Low price
Cognos
Weakness
 Excel administration, not
hierarchical
 Scalability issues
 IT resource intensive, needs a DBA
 Sensitive financial reporting data in
same database as volatile planning
data
 No thin client, Active X
components downloaded to PC
 Rich GUI in web browser
 Distributed architecture
 Modeling flexibility (esp. in  Multiple admin consoles, admin
Analyst product)
burden
 Template (build) applications  Scalability issues
for specific planning types or  Resource intensive
verticals
 No zero footprint client
back to top
Objection Handling
Potential Objection
Oracle/Hyperion Response
Vs Outlooksoft: Hyperion
has multiple products for
planning and financial
consolidation.
With OutlookSoft, a single product doesn’t mean a single application. In
fact Planning and Consolidations require two OutlookSoft 5 applications
in order to support two different process workflows. Also one product is
more complex when it’s not scalable; some OutlookSoft implementations
require multiple OutlookSoft instances, or app-sets to provide adequate
end user performance.
Hyperion Strategic Finance
is a separate product from
Hyperion Planning while
competitors provide one
solution for planning.
Hyperion Strategic Finance is in addition to what competitors define as
strategic planning. It allows you to do critical corporate finance analysis
not offered by our competitors. For example optimize capital structure
with debt repayments or share buy-backs, analyze affordable dividend,
utilize excess cash or fund cash deficits, analyze and structure M&A deals
and calculate shareholder value. HSF provides this functionality out-ofthe-box while integrating seamlessly with Hyperion Planning.
Hyperion offers only two
modules while competitors
provide a number of
templates or blueprints.
(Cognos)
A blueprint looks attractive until you try to implement it, then it is like
trying to understand interlinked Excel models that were developed by
someone else. In contrast, modules are extensions of existing
functionality, they can be implemented, they are supported software and
can be upgraded when new functionality is released.
back to top
Customer References
In March 2007 we had more than 1,400 active Planning customers. Over 110 are using
Workforce Planning and 18 are using Capital Expense Planning (released begin 2007).
Sample Customers by Industry:
Manufacturing
Banking
Retail
Consumer Packaged Goods
Telco & Media
Pharmaceuticals
Dell, Motorola, Alcoa, Oakley, Gilette, General
Motors, Honeywell, Logitech, Goodyear, Lockheed
Martin, Daimler Chrysler
Citigroup, HSBC, Bank of America, UBS, BNP
Paribas, Fifth Third Bank, Commonwealth Bank of
Australia, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Credit
Suisse
Office Depot, Safeway, Radioshack, CompUSA, Liz
Clairbourne, Denny’s, Carrefour, Decathlon
Kellogg, Sara Lee, Red Bull, Cadbury Schweppes,
Puma, Levi Strauss, Polo Ralph Lauren, ,
Yahoo, Google, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, BT, France
Telecom, Telenor
Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb,
AstraZeneca
Fifth Third Bank
Challenge
 Provide technology infrastructure to support rapid growth
 Re-engineer forecasting and planning process to create more scalable solution
 Standardize templates and manage global changes
 Provide accurate, credible data to foster competitive sales culture
 Support expanded forecasting requirements of lines of business
 Enable true business performance management across the organization
Solution
 Planning and forecasting spreadsheet processes replaced with Hyperion Planning
Results
 Improved profitability with greater visibility and insight into all business segments
 Improved reporting and planning process, eliminating 1,200 spreadsheets
 Made officers more accountable, thanks to data transparency
 Provided platform that easily accommodates growth and manages change
“Hyperion Planning is an easy-to-use tool, which meant we could support the
concept of monitoring, managing and holding people accountable to business
plans at the banking center level, yet have it centrally administered. So if we
needed to make a change people did not have to reopen 1,200 spreadsheets.
We did not have to hope and pray everybody got the changes right.”
Bret Furtwengler, Vice President, Financial Systems, Fifth Third Bank
Hyatt International
Challenges
 Consolidate financial data from 200+ global business units
 Create budgets for all divisions and business units
 Provide executives with clear view of financial results and forecasts
Solution
 Centralized, Web-based planning, budgeting and forecasting solution, delivered via
Hyperion Planning
Results
 Reduced month end closing time at business unit level for financial cycle from 15 days to
2 days
 Shrank time required to create forecasts from 5 months to 6 weeks
 Improved accuracy of data
 Provided ideal platform for future growth
“With Hyperion Planning we saw that we would be able to dramatically cut down on the
planning cycle time by streamlining the amount of detail that was previously required to submit
with our budgets.”
Gebhard Rainer, Vice President for Hotel Finance and Technology, Hyatt International
Corporation
Olympus
Challenges
 Forecast sales of all consumer products, ensuring inventories are equal to customer
demand
 Provide more detailed analysis by integrating data from other departments
 Make the system available to 40+ sales executives, many of whom lack technical
expertise
 Support company’s expected growth with flexible analytical tools
Solution
 Hyperion Planning adopted as forecasting application by Sales, Sales Operations, and
Finance departments
Results
 Enabled sales force to make accurate, timely forecasts
 Enabled Marketing and other departments to create better plans to support Sales
 Enhanced relationships with retailers and resellers
 Empowered sales executive and others who may lack strong computer skills to easily
view reports using the web
“Hyperion has provided us with a solution that enables us to improve our overall company
performance by creating timely, accurate sales forecasts. Hyperion Planning allows us to do
much better analysis of our sales and inventory data, which has affected not only the company’s
bottom line, but also our top-line revenue and market share goals.”
Daniel Mastellon, Senior Manager, Sales Operations, Olympus America, Inc.
back to top