Futuresense aids Imperial in Hyperion upgrade

For large organisations, today's business environment has many financial management complexities that require specialist solutions. Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management suite is one such solution, providing an application that offers rapid consolidation and reporting of financial results - regardless of the size of the company.

The Imperial Group, a corporation spanning South Africa, the rest of Africa, Europe, the UK, the US and Australia, is made up of numerous companies across the automotive industry, including vehicle sales, automotive distribution, parts and service, financing, insurance, logistics, warehousing, automotive rentals and sales.

A JSE-listed business, the Imperial Group necessitates accurate, consolidated accounts for the whole group - a complex task simplified through the company's use of Hyperion Financial Management.

Mohamed Jogee, Group Accountant at Imperial, explains prior to implementing Hyperion Enterprise (a predecessor of Hyperion Financial Management), the organisation used Excel for its annual reporting. "This resulted in the consolidation of 700 entities being extremely time-consuming, taking on average a month and a half to complete. Hyperion's consolidation application takes care of everything, bringing that time down to around two weeks. In addition, the five different divisions within the Imperial Group use different systems and Hyperion provides standard reporting systems."

The company recently embarked on an upgrade to Hyperion Financial Management, using the services of Hyperion implementation specialist Futuresense. Futuresense was chosen as the implementation partner for the project owing to its excellent track record, as well as the company's intimate understanding of the system and the technology, Jogee says.

"Over the years, we have used a number of Oracle partners, and Futuresense stands out with its excellent service capabilities. We have a support contract with the company, which provides continuous support as it is needed. Futuresense's staff has exceptional knowledge of the system itself, and any technology issues that have cropped up have been resolved as soon as they have been logged - usually within an hour."

Riaan Mellet, Director of Futuresense, explains Hyperion Financial Management's strength is in reducing consolidation, close, and reporting cycles. "This has been the biggest benefit for the Imperial Group. The upgrade included core financial consolidation and reporting functionality as well as purpose-built modules to manage the entire financial close process and to create and submit regulatory filings."

Hyperion Financial Management met the Imperial Group's needs in terms of its reporting requirements, minimising the need to enter, check and double-check actual results. Oracle Hyperion Financial Management is an integrated part of the Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Suite, delivering timely results, reducing compliance costs and delivering a single version of the truth to improve internal and external transparency.