What a Trump Presidency means for EPM?
A catchy title, isn’t it? I read so many articles about what a Trump presidency means for the economy, immigration, banks, education, art, I am sure you are all wondering if the new administration will impact your Oracle Hyperion project or your existing implementation. At first, I thought it would not mean anything, then I gave it another thought, and yes, I found enough to write an article, which can be seen as a very early prediction for 2017 but in no point an endorsement for the President Elect or any other political opinion, no hate here.
More simulations
One goal of the new administration is to repatriate manufacturing jobs to the US. You might have heard it, Apple asked his manufacturers to sketch out plans to repatriate his iPhone production to the US. Once new laws will be passed on the subject, they will need to run the simulations again but with different parameters.
I call it simulations, what if scenarios, or even sandboxing. The good news for sandboxing aficionados is that this feature available on the Cloud only will soon be available On-Premise (I heard Q1 2017 but don’t quote me on this one, I am probably wrong) and it will be improved on the Cloud version next year as well. There are no better tools than Hyperion to do simulations and What if, I think we all agree about it.
There is another thing with simulations, you don’t need a crazy Planning application to do simulations. As far as I know, most simulations are done with Microsoft Excel. But you can push your models a little higher and use an Essbase cube for that: there are a lot of financial features built in Essbase for predictive modeling and financial calculations and you can use Essbase to store your different scenarios and assumptions in order to compare them. This is where Essbase Cloud Service will come handy to create a cube from a spreadsheet, use the cube, then throw it away.
New laws, new regulations or less laws and less regulations.
There will be new laws or new regulations or even the termination of existing laws and regulations (if I understand correctly their plan). I understand it can have an impact on your Workforce application. I don’t think it can impact the design of an existing Workforce application but definitely, administrators will need to update a few Global assumptions. The Cloud version of Workforce has a sub-cube entirely dedicated to the calculation of taxes and benefits to accommodate regulations from any country so you should be covered here.
Another thing is that they Sarbanes Oxley act will be either terminated or modified. Given the number of applications built in relation with this law, there is probably something to do there.
And last, the Dodge Frank act, regulating banks will be examined, when you think about how banks are a big user of EPM applications, be sure that any change there will have a huge (yes, HUGE) impact.
Build a Balance Sheet and a Treasury Application
The new administration will try to bring cash owned overseas by US company, expect CFOs to ask the impact of bringing this $$ home. Without a Balance Sheet application, users will be on Excel all night long. Also, Planning (Essbase) is a fantastic tool to create Treasury applications and this is probably a domain to look at.
More Cloud
I don’t think a Trump new administration has anything to do with it actually. But we all know that 2017 will be even more focused on the Cloud. I don’t think the Donald decided it but the new modules (Workforce, Capex, Project, Financials) won’t be available on premise anytime soon so if you like to be up to date, you know where you should be.
See anything else?