Essbase Analytics: Where to calculate metrics?

One of the most often missed enterprise information improvements with Essbase is the calculation of organizational metrics. All Essbase frontends have the ability to perform calculations on the fly, but often this is overused.

The Problem (in the beginning)
Essbase is often implemented to standardize an organization's financial data. In addition to extending analysts' capacity to review financial data beyond the limits of Excel and traditional reporting tools, having standardized metrics ensures all decision makers are comparing similar values. You've probably heard the cliche 'Single Version of the Truth'... this centralized storage of financial information alongside centralized metrics is the embodiment a single version of the truth.

The Deployment
Great... so once an organization realizes the need to standardize and centralize, step one of any successful implementation is to define their requirements. In the simplest terms, this includes the data to be housed in the application, as well as the definitions for the metrics to be applied to that data. Utilizing this blueprint results in an implementation that solves the key goals: having everyone utilizing the same data and the same definitions.

But...
There is always something that isn't captured. This isn't a problem, this is a reality. Often, a metric isn't included either due to time constraints, foresight constraints, or conflicting priorities.

The front end to the rescue!!!
All modern Essbase front ends have the ability to do calculations. Some are limited to rudimentary calculations, others have robust calculation languages. Regardless, the inevitable suggestion of "Lets just accommodate that in the front end" is brought up. Which is great, but...

Back to square one
Back during the evaluation phase, one of the key decision points to implement an Essbase application was to centralize and standardize all business logic. As soon as the decision is made to move away from centralized business logic, the long term value of the implementation begins to erode.

What to do
I'd be a fool if I heavy-handed recommended that any and all business logic is only ever developed in the backend. This is going squarely against one of the key benefits of Essbase- power to the analysts' to perform their own operations, without being at the mercy of someone else to implement logic. But, that's where the distinction ends. One of the key rules to any successful Essbase, or Performance Management, or BI, implementation is that all logic that will be shared amongst multiple users must be centralized. A key principle that an organization must adopt is a requirement that any business logic that is to be distributed to the masses must be implemented at the point at which it is sourced to the masses. This doesn't necessarily imply that every piece of business logic is sourced solely in Essbase; it may be that the logic is created in a system that feeds Essbase. In addition, the realities of a modern complex organization must be recognized, and, situations where the full audience for a piece of business logic are served by multiple systems, there may be justification for business logic configuration in multiple systems.

Hyperion Planning Data Forms

Hyperion Planning Data Forms are the main input mechanism to gather end user budgets and forecasts, and oftentimes, are the only component an end user interacts with in Planning. Because of this, there is a lot of functionality built into the forms that help them both mimic the use of a spreadsheet and enhance basic data entry and usability. Following are some of the features you will find when using data input forms.

Entering Data
Like a spreadsheet, you can copy and paste data into a cell, row, or column. If you enter data to a summary time period (quarter or year), values will automatically spread back into the months accordingly. If no months have data, values will be spread equally. If data does exist in the months, the summary time period spread will happen according to the previous spread pattern. You also can use the lock cells feature here to lock the spread from occurring in certain months. The result is that the spread would occur evenly to only the unlocked months.

Ad-Hoc Calculations
Data forms allow you to perform cell “what-if” scenarios to determine the impact of a number change. In a cell, you can add +, +-, *, /, or % along with a number and Planning will return an updated value. For example, if a cell contains 1,000 and you input “+500”, the cell would update to show 1,500. Or, you could enter “%40” and the result would be 400.

Supporting Detail
Supporting detail allows users to enter additional lines of detail below the lowest level of account contained in the application. For example, if you had a general Travel Expenses account, you could add additional rows of detail to itemize out airfare, meals, ground transportation, and hotel. Supporting detail can be added to a cell, cells, or an entire row. The supporting detail feature allows you to build hierarchies into the rows and contains row logic to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or ignore lines when rolling them up.

Adjust, Grid Spread, and Mass Allocation
The Adjust feature lets you adjust a cell or cells by a value or percent.

Grid Spread allows you to adjust a parent number by either a value or percent and then spread that value back to its descendants on the web form, either proportionally based on existing values, evenly, or filling all children with the parent value. The user need to have appropriate access to the target cells in order to write back to them. The administrator can also create other spreading options, if desired.

Mass Allocation is similar to Grid Spread, with the following differences:

• Data is allocated to all descendants of a member, even to those intersections not displayed on the web form.
• Access to the target cells is not required.
• Mass allocated values cannot be undone.

Exporting to a Spreadsheet
There are two options for moving a data form to Excel. There’s the spreadsheet export that copies the POV, page, row, and column members into an Excel spreadsheet, along with the data grid. The result is a file that is disconnected from Planning, although it could be used as a lock and send sheet by connecting through either the Essbase Add-In or Smart View. The second choice is the Open in Smart View option. This option opens the data form in Excel where you can essentially perform all the same functions as in Planning web, all while remaining connected to the system.

Notes and Annotations
Cell Text lets you add a textual note to a cell, similar to the Comments feature in Excel. This allows you to provide explanations for cell amounts and/or variances.

Account Annotations let you add descriptive information or a URL web link to an entire account row.

Instructions can be added to an entire data form to provide direction and information to an end user.

Other Functionality
With version 11, you now have the ability to add a document to a cell in a data form via a hyperlink or a Workspace object. You could either have a URL link to an Excel spreadsheet or Word document or provide a link to a Financial Reporting Studio report.

Another new feature in version 11 is the ability to drill from a data form cell down to FDM loaded source data. This allows a user to view data at a more granular level than is available in the Planning application.

Finally, calculations can be attached to and launched from a data form. For example, you could have a calculation that aggregates values up the hierarchy. A nice feature here is that the calculations can be set to run automatically, either upon opening a form or saving it.

The Impact of IFRS for EPM Reporting – Part 4

In Part 4, I want to provide more detail on the similarities and differences regarding: Business Combinations and Inventory. The details below were from a presentation I viewed during a company sponsored educational seminar about IFRS.

Business Combinations

Similarities

• All accounted for using the purchase, or acquisition method
• Recognized at fair value, but currently differing definitions of fair value
• Acquisition date is the date that the acquirer obtains control
• Contingent consideration recognized at fair value at acquisition date, subsequent changes in earnings
• Negative goodwill recognized immediately as income
• Acquired in-process R&D recognized at acquisition date fair value
• Restructuring liabilities only recognized if criteria have been met, and is recognized at the acquiree level at the acquisition date
• Net identifiable assets of acquiree are recognized at their full fair value
• All transaction costs expensed as incurred

Differences

Acquisition of less than 100% of acquiree

• US GAAP – noncontrolling interest is measured at fair value, including goodwill
• IFRS – Choice of measuring noncontrolling interest at either full fair value including goodwill or at its proportionate share of the fair value, exclusive of goodwill

Inventory

Similarities

Same principle that the primary basis of accounting for inventory is at cost

Both define inventory as assets held for sale in the ordinary course of business, in the process of production for such sale, or to be consumed in the production of goods or services

Permitted techniques for cost measurement, such as standard cost method or retail margin method are similar

Cost of inventory includes all direct expenditures to ready inventory for sale, including allocable overhead

Differences

Costing methods

• US GAAP – LIFO permitted
• IFRS – LIFO is prohibited

Measurement

• US GAAP – carried at lower of cost or market
• IFRS – carried at lower of cost or net realizable value

Reversal of inventory writedowns

• US GAAP – cannot be reversed
• IFRS – can be reversed up to the amount of the original impairment loss

Offline Budgeting and Planning

Have you ever been on a plane and said to yourself, “there aren’t enough Jack Daniel's miniatures aboard for me to have to sit through Santa Clause 3 again, but if I could just enter my Q4 forecast numbers, I’d be all set for the remainder of this ten hour flight.” Or, maybe you were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway thinking, “if I could only finish annotating my annual budget right now, my trip to the beach would be so much more enjoyable.” [Disclaimer here that I would never condone driving and budgeting or driving and doing anything else besides just driving, for that matter…] Or, maybe you’ve stayed at that Motel 17 out in nowhere with a download speed of 1 kb (+/- .5 kb) per hour and lost your budget updates no less than 20 times.

Ok, maybe not… But certainly, there is value in being able to access a budgeting system while disconnected from the system. Whether you’re on a plane or staying in a remote location, there’s inevitably a time when a deadline is looming and you just have to finish your work. Hyperion Planning provides a solution for this dilemma through the offline capabilities of the Smart View Excel add-in tool.

Smart View is a tool that allows you to pull Hyperion Planning data web forms into Excel. Once a form is in Excel, you can essentially perform all the same functions that you can in Planning web. With Smart View, you can input data and save it to Essbase, use the adjust data feature, enter supporting detail and cell text, and run business rules and calc scripts. You even have the same look and feel as a web form with expandable parent members, page drop-down boxes, green read-only cells, and yellow updated cells.

The process for taking a Planning data form offline in version 11 is fairly simple:

1. The application has to first be enabled for offline usage. Set this by going to Administration -> Manage Properties -> Application Properties and setting ENABLE_FOR_OFFLINE to true. This is the default setting.
2. Next, you need to enable individual data forms for offline usage. Edit a form, go to the Other Options tab, and click the Enable Offline Usage box.
3. Open the data form(s) in Smart View and click Take Offline. You can choose to take a single form, multiple forms, or an entire form folder and its contents offline.
4. Select the page dimension members to store offline. You can either choose to take all page members or just a subset.
5. Provide a connection name and click Finish.

At this point, the necessary application components are copied from the server to your local machine. Basically, a smaller version of the application is created on your system, including necessary outlines, calc scripts, dimension members, data, substitution variables, and web forms. The download can be quite large depending on the number of items you choose to include. To minimize the download time and system footprint, you will want to limit the web forms and page dimensions to only those that you will truly need.

Once all the components complete their download, you can work in your subset of the application to your heart’s content, all while being disconnected from the network. You can essentially perform the same operations as if you were still connected, with the following exceptions:

• When you save information, you are saving it to your local machine.
• When you log into the application in Smart View, you no longer log in through the Common Provider. You now go to Independent Provider Connections and open your offline connection there (named in step 5 above).
• Currency conversion is not supported for offline usage.

This offline connection can be accessed as many times as you’d like, continually opening, saving, and closing it until it’s synchronized back to the server.

Take the following steps to push any updates in your offline connection back up to the network server:

1. Open the offline connection.
2. Click Sync Back To Server.
3. Log into the application on the server.
4. Select which forms, folders, and page members to sync back.

After the upload is complete, I generally delete the offline Independent Provider Connection to remove the application files from my machine.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. So, the next time you're in the middle of the Gobi Desert or standing on the edge of a crater rim on Mount Kilimanjaro, you'll have the comfort of knowing you can still get your work done. If, on the other hand, your motto is "when I'm away from work, I'm away from work", then just forget everything you just read.

Hierarchical Metadata Relationships in Essbase – Pro’s and Con’s

A question that often has to be considered during design of an Essbase database is to establish a relationship between metadata points that could possibility be two separate dimensions. For instance, combining Entity and Project into a single entity dimension with Projects rolling into the entities that are responsible for managing those Projects. The first litmus test that needs to be passed is whether your project has a direct correlation to a specific entity. Essentially, does a one for one relationship exist? Can the Project only be managed by one Entity?

In instances where a Project may roll to many different Entities the debate as to whether combining the dimensions is often eliminated since the size of the dimension could eventually become very large due the numbers of combinations of metadata points that would need to be supported. In earlier versions, member uniqueness would be a constraining factor, that at that time, could only be addressed through member concatenation. Duplicate member names capabilities have since eliminated that constraint.

If the project is only managed by a single entity then Pro's and Con's need to be evaluated.

The Single Dimension Approach

• Con's relating to a Single Entity dimension:
  
  • What-if Modeling would need to be a function of an administrator since they would need to stage the alternate roll-up based upon end-user feedback
    
• Pro's with a Single Entity dimension:
  
  • Relationships between contracts and divisions could be clearly understood by viewing the hierarchical structure
    
  • No need to copy, clear, input or move data by end-users when What-If modeling is being performed since organizational changes could be modeled via alternate hierarchies, leveraging shared members.
    
  • Sparseness of the database is reduced allowing for better performance
    
  • One less dimension for users to have to navigate, reducing the possibility of user getting lost in their data
    
  • One less dimension is necessary to aggregate enhancing application performance and promoting a more dynamic application
    
  • Easier administration of security
    

The Separate Dimension Approach

• Pro's relating to the multiple dimension approach:
  
  • End-users would need no administrator involvement in modeling What-if analysis since they would leverage separate slices of the database through scenario and version combinations to model.
    
• Con's with the multiple dimension approach:
  
  • Relationships between contracts and divisions cannot be inferred by viewing the hierarchical structure
    
  • Data would need to be copied, cleared, input or moved by end-users to stage the what-if.
    
  • Sparseness of the database increases which could lead to diminished performance
    
  • Another dimension for users to have to navigate, increasing the possibility of user getting lost in their data
    
  • One more dimension necessary to aggregate reducing application performance
    
  • More complex administration of security. Flat dimensions don't readily allow the use of relationship functions when administering security.
    

So what is the right approach? Either approach is acceptable as long as the Pro's and Con's of each approach is understood.

MUD and Aliases

A common issue encountered when using MUD is the appearance of columns in the presentation layer with a "#1" appended to the end of the column name. The most likely of reasons this is occurring stems from the existence of aliases in the presentation layer. For example, say there was a column named AccountName at a previous time in the repository. When it was renamed to something new, AccountDescription, an alias of AccountName was retained in AccountDescription, unless it was manually removed. So when a new column is added to the presentation layer in the checked out repository named AccountName and merged into the master repository, the merge process sees that AccountName already exists and appends the #1 to it in order to differentiate.

Remedying this issue is fairly straightforward and simple. After merging the checked out repository to the master repository but before publishing, check the presentation layer in the master repository for any #1 columns and either remove them, remove the alias from the other column, and/or rename them if the alias is needed. Remember to do this right after the merge but before publishing to the network so that you avoid getting #1 columns in the master repository. Best practice is to not keep aliases around but sometimes one may have good reason to retain them or they may slip through unnoticed until a situation like #1 occurs.

Tips for using Smartview and Excel Add-in for Essbase

Smartview for Office and the traditional Essbase Excel Add-in offer analysts a powerful adhoc capability to query an Essbase database. Both tools allow for real time drilldowns, pivots, and custom reporting directly from within Excel. In addition, users can utilize all of Excel's built in calculation commands against retrieved Essbase data to perform unique analysis and problem solving. However, getting started with either adhoc tool can be daunting. Here I'll list several options every new user of the Excel add-in should be aware of to help them navigate their Essbase databases.

Color coding of Parent members
One common question is simply "Where can I drill down?" Utilizing styles, it is possible to highlight all members that can be drilled down upon a differently than those which can not be expanded (i.e. the Level Zero members).

Smartview for Office:

1. Connect to an Essbase data source in adhoc mode
   
2. Select "Options" on the Hyperion menu
3. On the "Cell Styles" tab, expand Analytic Services -> Member Cells
4. Check "Parent Cells"
5. Right-click "Parent Cells" and select the manner in which you'd like to format them (I prefer to adjust the font, making Parent cells Bold and Black).
   

Excel Add-in for Essbase

1. Connect to an Essbase database
2. Select "Options" on the Essbase menu
3. On the "Display" tab, ensure "Use Styles" is checked (under "Cells")
4. On the "Styles" tab, check "Parent" under "Members"
   
5. Click the Format button. Set formatting to your preference (I make Parent members Black and Bold)
   

Identification of Read-only vs. Writable data cells
Users utilizing Excel to write to their database can have cells they have access to write to highlighed in a different color than read-only cells.
Smartview for Office:

1. Connect to an Essbase data source in adhoc mode
2. Select "Options" on the Hyperion menu
3. On the "Cell Styles" tab, expand Analytic Services -> Data Cells
4. Check "Writable"
5. Right-click "Writable" and select the manner in which you'd like to format them (I prefer to adjust the font, making Writable cells Bold and Green).
6. You may also want to highlight read-only cells differently. I prefer making these values Red.
   

Excel Add-in for Essbase

1. Connect to an Essbase database
2. Select "Options" on the Essbase menu
3. On the "Display" tab, ensure "Use Styles" is checked (under "Cells")
   
4. On the "Styles" tab, select "Read/Write" under "Data Cells"
5. Click the Format button. Set formatting to your preference (I make writable values Green and Bold)
6. You may also want to make Read-only values a special color. I prefer Red.
   

Retaining Excel formulas during a retrieve
(This applies to the Excel Add-in only; Smartview for Office retains formulas during a retrieve.)
One of the greatest powers of both tools is the ability to utilize Excel's built-in calculations against Essbase data. However, by default, all calculations are deleted from the worksheet whenever a blanket retrieve is performed. One option to prevent this is to highlight only the cells necessary for the retrieve (both the data cells and member cells). Alternatively, both tools have an option to preserve formulas during a retrieve.

1. Connect to an Essbase database
2. On the "Model" tab, select "Retain on Retrieval" under "Formula Preservation". This will retain your formulas when doing a simple retrieval.
3. To have Excel adjust your formulas when performing Zooms or Keep/Remove only operations, use the second and third options.
   

Some other settings I've found useful when using the older Excel Add-in (some I use all the time, some only occasionally):

1. On the "Display" tab, select "Adjust Columns". This setting will automatically adjust the width of each column with either an Essbase data point or an Essbase member to the width of the largest item.
2. On the "Display" tab, change "Indentation" to "Subitems". I find it easier to read an adhoc spreadsheet if a member's component members are indented, as opposed to the default.
3. On the "Zoom" tab, select "Formulas". This will not show me the exact formula utilize in the Essbase database, but will show me all members that appear in the formula from the same dimension as the member drilled upon.
4. On the "Mode" tab, select "Update Mode" when doing a number of data write-backs. This will automatically lock all writable data cells when doing a retrieve, so instead of having to perform a lock, then a send, only a send is necessary.
5. On the "Global" tab, unselect either "Enable Secondary Button" or both "Enable Secondary Button" and "Enable Double-Clicking" if using Excel but not against Essbase. This will give you back full functionality of your right and left mouse buttons.
   

Hopefully you've found these tips helpful for getting started with adhoc analysis directly against an Essbase database.