JR Irvin described Halliburton’s financial reporting systems which are divided between SAP which ‘runs the business,’ and Oracle Hyperion to ‘manage the business’. Every three hours, data transfers from SAP into Essbase. This acts as a core repository for Hyperion planning and financial management. Hyperion systems also provide information for SEC and management reporting. Five IT staffers support Halliburton’s 17 strong finance team while IT infrastructure is outsourced.
Michael Elliott described Marathon Oil’s Planning and Performance Management, also based on Hyperion, which was implemented in 2007 to improve data gathering and speed operations, financial and statistical forecasting. Initially a constellation of Hyperion Planning, Essbase, WebAnalysis, and Financial Reporting were deployed to deliver a monthly ‘rolling’ forecast. After roll-out, corporate financial requirements became clearer and the system was re-tooled to improve the Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF) model calculations. Now Essbase reporting meets management and ad-hoc analysis requirements.
John Dobbs outlined Murphy Oil’s move from a legacy Excel-based long range planning process which was hampered by the interface with accounting and asset valuations which were disconnected from financial projections. Robust price, expense and project maturity scenario analyses were difficult. Hyperion was implemented in 2011 and now, asset valuations are aligned with financial projections. Price forecasts can be made easily and Murphy is now moving towards ‘evergreen’ forecasting. Following initial roll-out, a phase 2 implementation has simplified customization and application complexity with universal model templates and streamlined data input and integration. Data quality is reviewed in a front-end Essbase staging area. Murphy is now planning to further reduce its reliance on Excel with Hyperion Planning and to offer dashboard reporting on the iPad.
Computer Science Corp. (CSC) outlined how ‘big data’ and predictive analytics are transforming organizations—a component of an industry-wide revolution that includes social media and proliferating mobile devices. All of which represents both ‘a problem and an opportunity.’ Big data—in-memory analytics, database appliances and unstructured data—must co-exist with traditional business intelligence. CSC has developed an ‘oil and gas reference model’ and ‘petroleum intelligence framework’ which it claims integrates technical, operational and financial systems. This includes production management, laboratory information systems and real time dashboards. All of which, real soon now, are to leverage Hadoop/MapReduce, ‘shared nothing’ architectures, ‘NoSQL’ and/or ‘parallel relational’ databases. More from OpenWorld.
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