Talking Tech: Streamline Your Close Process with Oracle EPM Cloud

Let’s Talk Tech.

Oracle EPM Cloud’s Task Manager just got even better!  Task Manager, which comes with the Financial Consolidation & Close (FCC) product now has the ability to connect to other EPM Cloud applications within the same domain. For instance, if there’s an interdependent activity between Oracle Consolidations and Oracle Planning, that task can be executed directly from Task Manager – set up within FCC – while simultaneously impacting the data in Planning. For example, maybe you need to resubmit drivers in Planning based on 6 more months of Actual data (new run rate). By connecting tasks that need to be completed across both Planning and Consolidations, it helps users think in terms of “What business processes do I need to complete?”, rather than “What application do I need to log into?” Let’s take a closer look to see how easy it is to improve your financial close processes.

If you’re new to Task Manager, it’s a tool that helps outline, execute, and report on the interdependent financial close activities of a given period. It’s also a centralized monitoring tool that allows you streamline the close and provide visibility, especially when something has gone wrong. Rather than emails being sent to one person’s inbox, Task Manager stores all of the close tasks in one place. This makes it easy to understand which part of the close process is taking longer than it should, which parts miss the most cut-off days/times, and who’s slowing down the process.

Continuing our example from above, let’s walk through updating Planning data via FCC. The first step involves creating a connection in EPM Cloud to link your applications.

Once the connection is configured, the Task Manager owner will set up tasks for the financial close (monthly/quarterly/forecasting/etc.) and assign them to your Worklist in FCC.  For our example, let’s see how we can “Assign Expense Drivers to Accounts” in the Planning application.

After navigating to your FCC Worklist and finding the correct task to assign expense drivers, let’s complete it!

When opening the task from Task Manager, the form opens directly within FCC, as seen in the screenshot below, but under the covers it is actually opening a form stored within Planning. Notice we can see all of the previous Planning submissions that have been made.

After review, we see that several of the submissions need to be revised after closing the books. Let’s update the “Advertising” driver to .05 and “Rent Expense” driver to 97.32, which is based on 6 months of actuals data (our new run rate). Below, we’ve entered the updated values into the open form.  Upon clicking save, the data will automatically update in the Planning application.

After saving, the updated data can be seen in FCC after we submit the task, indicating that it has been completed:

Note: Task submission is not required for data to be submitted, but is a requirement of Task Manager

Let’s jump into PBC now using our connection link without needing to change applications.

Opening the same form in Planning, we can see the data that was just submitted from FCC’s Task Manager.

Yes, this data is updated in real-time since you are connecting directly to Planning via FCC. Implementing intelligent close templates can help streamline your close and obtain visibility –  in real-time.