You would not believe the number of times I’ve heard that.  Every conference and product demo I went to.  This was a common sentiment.  To be honest, it is, but not impossible.  By following some simple yet important considerations, you can have a successful Hyperion implementation.

Why are we doing this and what do we expect to achieve with this new tool?  Often times, the push for new technologies and applications comes from sales guys trying to meet some goals.  Other times, you see that demo somewhere (running off the Oracle Vision Instance).  Either way, if you jump without a clear path, your Hyperion implementation will be difficult.

Every environment is different so there is no real “cookie cutter” solution.  If you were fortunate enough to maintain a relatively vanilla EBS implementation, your timelines can be considerably shorter and more aggressive than organizations with highly customized EBS environments. 

Hyperion is not just a Finance tool, it spans multiple functional areas.  Along with Information Technology, your Human Resources, Finance, Benefits, and Payroll departments are key players.  Obviously some organizations may combine these functions in a variety of ways, but these are the typical areas involved. Because department heads tend to set direction for their respective functional silo(s), it is imperative to get CxO buy-in, to encourage the cross functional collaboration required for a successful implementation.

This one can be controversial, and typically applies if your organization does not have the existing skill set.  Some organizations will want to wait until systems are implemented before sending staff to training.  I find this counter-intuitive as you will need to rely solely on your Systems Integrator to do all the work vs. just the heavy lifting, and knowledge transfer will be less effective as your workforce doesn’t have familiarity with the application.

Identify and determine internal roles and responsibilities.  Some of the complexity behind supporting Hyperion can be solved by creating a Responsibility Matrix to segregate the functional and technical tasks.  Who will be responsible for loading data from the source system(s)?  Is the application administration role resource in IT, HR, or Finance?  Where do my DBAs fit?  These are a few of the questions that should be answered as a part of Change Management.

Don’t cut corners.  Build out physical servers where needed, and virtualize where you can.  Your choice of Operating System(s) is important as there are certain components that have specific requirements, and you may find value in a homogeneous Hyperion environment.  Take advantage of clustering and performance tuning, and ensure that your TEST, DEV, and PRODUCTION environments follow the same application installation guidelines.  Slight differences can result in significant delays in troubleshooting.