Oracle Essbase - Moving Beyond the Finance Department

People sometimes think of Oracle Essbase as only suited for use by the Finance department. While it’s true that Essbase “excels” at this (pun intended), the tool can help almost any business function that uses numeric data. Its ability to analyze data in multidimensional ways allows users to “slice and dice” numbers and gain new insight into what’s happening in their business. Once you see how to do this in one area, why not do the same thing somewhere else? Indeed, the goal should be to increase the value of Essbase in your organization by using it in ways you might not have previously considered. Move it out of the Finance department and make yourself an analytics superstar!

Here are a few areas where savvy users of Oracle Essbase can extend it horizontally across multiple business functions:

• Operations: inventory control, forecast accuracy analysis

• Sales and Marketing: product profitability, marketing spend planning

• HR: compensation trend analysis, timesheet tracking and analysis

• Manufacturing: creating build plans, bill of material (BOM) analysis

• Finance: days sales outstanding (DSO) analysis

Put on your thinking cap, think about how many people outside of Finance use data to accomplish their tasks and come up with Oracle Essbase models to satisfy their needs.