Hyperion Myth #6: Administrators Must Spend More Time on the Urgent Instead of the Important

Properly using Oracle’s Hyperion suite of business process management and business intelligence software is a delicate art. Administrators must be careful to manage their time appropriately and to not bite off more than they can chew.

The good news is that if you feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole with Hyperion performance issues, there’s no need to go it alone – help in the form of automation is available.

The Myth

The sixth Hyperion myth we’ll cover is that administrators must spend more time on the urgent rather than the important. Like most misconceptions surrounding Hyperion, the source of this myth lies in Hyperion administrators’ real-world experiences. When you’re using a complex system, performance issues and minor crises are not only inevitable but can be overwhelming to deal with.

Author and businessman Stephen Covey is best known for his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but he also made a lasting contribution to the way that businesses approach time management. Covey created a matrix divided into four sections, separated by urgency and importance. Some examples of tasks that typically fall under each section are:

• Important and urgent: Solving technology crises and breakdowns.
• Important but not urgent: Long-term strategic thinking and planning.
• Urgent but not important: Daily scheduled activities such as meetings and phone calls.
• Not urgent and not important: Busy work that has no real purpose.

Ideally, Hyperion administrators should maximize the time that they spend in the second bullet on activities such as strategic planning and building relationships. However, all too often they’re forced to spend time on tasks in the first bullet – tasks that, arguably, are urgent but not always important when it comes to generating revenue and building financial value. If Hyperion administrators and managers can offload the tasks in the first bullet, they’ll be free to spend more time on what’s truly important – long-term strategic thinking and planning.

The Mythbuster: Datavail’s APM Platform

Datavail’s Application Performance Management (APM) software platform for Hyperion, developed by technologists at recent acquisition Accelatis, takes care of much of the day-to-day firefighting that would otherwise fall under the administrator’s purview. For example, by constantly monitoring your Hyperion deployment for performance issues, our software can catch problems when they arise, alert you, reboot the affected subsystem, and notify the appropriate team members.

One of Datavail’s clients discovered just how much time it could save through automation by installing our platform. Every month, the client needed to use Hyperion Financial Management to perform a five-year consolidation. This meant that employees needed to repeat a series of manual tasks: unlocking periods, running consoles, waiting for the processing to finish, and then locking the periods again.

With our APM software, the client discovered that this entire process could be automated and scheduled to execute at the desired interval. As a result, the client’s effort on these activities decreased from 40 manual person-hours of CPA effort every month to a completely automated process. In doing so, the client freed up large chunks of time that team members could devote to long-term strategic activities.

Final Thoughts

Your organization isn’t an IT troubleshooting provider – so why are your Hyperion administrators spending so much time on these activities? By leveraging automation to handle tedious tasks, Datavail’s APM software platform for enterprise performance management can save you from wasting time on things outside your core business competencies.

For more detail on how to debunk this and 8 other Hyperion myths, download our in-depth white paper: 9 Hyperion Myths That Are Making You Less Effective.