Oracle EPM Cloud Health Care Planning
This document compares and contrasts Oracle’s latest offering in the EPM space tailored for healthcare providers with traditional bespoke deployments of EPM Planning employed by most providers. The comparisons include cost of deployment, time to market, amount of customization, and ease of adoption. Oracle EPM Cloud: This general Planning and Budgeting product has been used…
This document compares and contrasts Oracle’s latest offering in the EPM space tailored for healthcare providers with traditional bespoke deployments of EPM Planning employed by most providers. The comparisons include cost of deployment, time to market, amount of customization, and ease of adoption.
Oracle EPM Cloud:
This general Planning and Budgeting product has been used at many different categories like retails, banking, manufacturing, healthcare among others. Traditionally, this has been a custom-built application using the components available in the EPM Suite, such as dimensions for chart of accounts, Data Management/Data Exchange for upstream and downstream data flows, webforms and Excel models for end user data input and reporting for various management and operational reports. This approach has served customers well because it gave the architects, developers and business analysts to incorporate most, if not all of their business processes, requirements and also add enhancements. These projects often took very long time to go-live starting from requirements gathering phase all the way to companies building their budgets and forecasts in the system. This required a lot of manpower from the business as well as implementation teams at various stages of the project.
Oracle EPM Cloud Healthcare Planning:
While the traditional approach has served companies well over the years, it also highlighted an inherent weakness in the process. Many of the processes and objects that are common across an industry vertical have been reinvented and rebuilt at each company, almost with identical specifications. There was no real leveraging of existing or accumulated knowledge regarding this particular business model. This meant there was always a considerable lead time for the application to be delivered, requiring a lot of upfront capital and manpower, which meant it took a long time to recoup those expenses. This is especially true for businesses like healthcare, where almost every company is very similar to others in terms of its business model, operating structures, and financial setup. The rapid rate of consolidation in this segment means new acquisitions must be brought under the corporate umbrella much faster than ever before. A commonly agreed-upon application across these different companies would do wonders in such a scenario.
Oracle has realized there is a lot to be gained by packaging years of consulting expertise in the healthcare sector. Oracle’s new offering caters to a majority of healthcare companies right out of the box, requiring very little customization. Any gaps in the customer’s business processes can be closed easily given that the heavy lifting has already been done.
The application comes with the following features out of the box:
- 1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.
Product
Segment
- 2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.
- 3) Capital (Capex): This module helps plan long-term and short-term capital expenditure.
- 4) Workforce: One of the biggest line items for healthcare providers is their enormous payroll. With thousands of nurses, doctors, surgeons, and an equally high number of support staff, a company’s payroll and staffing process becomes highly complex. Oracle’s Workforce planning module ships with an almost ready-to-use payroll model that helps plan staffing costs, anticipate material changes to such expenses, and track variances between budgets, forecasts, and actuals.
Integrations with other systems:
The application comes with pre-built integrations to various ERP applications, including Oracle Cloud ERP and SAP. These can be used on day one with very little modification to customize them for specific customers and applications.
Webforms:
A number of well-designed webforms that follow useful workflow paths are delivered with this application. These forms allow business users to enter drivers, assumptions, and various manual inputs to use them to build budgets and forecasts. These forms are production-ready with very little need for changes.
Business Rules:
Almost all conceivable business rules come standard with this application. Some of these rules include asset management, employee/FTE addition and removal, and trend-based balance sheet calculations. These rules can be tweaked to the business’s needs with very little effort and can be productionized rapidly. 
Reports:
To cap it all off, the application comes with dozens of operational and management reports used by business users, managers, and the C-suite. It also comes with reports designed for statutory reporting for the likes of the SEC and other regulators.
Customers:
There has been a significant uptake of this offering from Oracle. The following prominent companies have successfully implemented Oracle Healthcare Planning and can provide references:
- Mayo Clinic
- Indiana University Health
- Adventist Health
- Emblem Health
Our Take:
We strongly recommend going with this application as it leverages hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent building, supporting, and enhancing the various business processes involved in running a healthcare business. With the cost of healthcare rising every year, it is important that businesses have a clear view of their financial health, operational expenses, and room for improvement. The application allows businesses to hit the ground running on day one and fill any missing functionality with minimal effort and time.
Caveat:
We exercise caution in adopting this application on the rare chance that your business is significantly different from a traditional healthcare provider. While unlikely, we believe there might be outliers, and if you are one such business, this application may not be right for you. However, if your business processes have been inherited from many different acquisitions over the years, this application provides an excellent opportunity to consolidate your models and build a single, efficient model that allows for greater transparency, efficiency, and cost savings.
Oracle EPM Cloud Health Care Planning
This document compares and contrasts Oracle’s latest offering in the EPM space tailored for healthcare providers with traditional bespoke deployments of EPM Planning employed by most providers. The comparisons include cost of deployment, time to market, amount of customization, and ease of adoption.
Oracle EPM Cloud:
This general Planning and Budgeting product has been used at many different categories like retails, banking, manufacturing, healthcare among others. Traditionally, this has been a custom-built application using the components available in the EPM Suite, such as dimensions for chart of accounts, Data Management/Data Exchange for upstream and downstream data flows, webforms and Excel models for end user data input and reporting for various management and operational reports. This approach has served customers well because it gave the architects, developers and business analysts to incorporate most, if not all of their business processes, requirements and also add enhancements. These projects often took very long time to go-live starting from requirements gathering phase all the way to companies building their budgets and forecasts in the system. This required a lot of manpower from the business as well as implementation teams at various stages of the project.
Oracle EPM Cloud Healthcare Planning:
While the traditional approach has served companies well over the years, it also highlighted an inherent weakness in the process. Many of the processes and objects that are common across an industry vertical have been reinvented and rebuilt at each company, almost with identical specifications. There was no real leveraging of existing or accumulated knowledge regarding this particular business model. This meant there was always a considerable lead time for the application to be delivered, requiring a lot of upfront capital and manpower, which meant it took a long time to recoup those expenses. This is especially true for businesses like healthcare, where almost every company is very similar to others in terms of its business model, operating structures, and financial setup. The rapid rate of consolidation in this segment means new acquisitions must be brought under the corporate umbrella much faster than ever before. A commonly agreed-upon application across these different companies would do wonders in such a scenario.
Oracle has realized there is a lot to be gained by packaging years of consulting expertise in the healthcare sector. Oracle’s new offering caters to a majority of healthcare companies right out of the box, requiring very little customization. Any gaps in the customer’s business processes can be closed easily given that the heavy lifting has already been done.
The application comes with the following features out of the box:
- 1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.1) Financials: This cube is where all financial planning and reporting takes place. It comes with a number of dimensions commonly used in healthcare, including Account, Entity, Fund, Product, Project, and Segment.
Product
Segment
- 2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.2) Projects: A comprehensive projects module helps plan and deliver capital-intensive projects. This module is vital for healthcare companies building new hospitals, upgrading expensive machinery, etc. This module links to the financials module out of the box, allowing the Balance Sheet and P&L to accurately reflect financial reality at any given time. Project cost overruns can be easily pre-empted using the detailed reports and effective business processes that come standard with this module.
- 3) Capital (Capex): This module helps plan long-term and short-term capital expenditure.
- 4) Workforce: One of the biggest line items for healthcare providers is their enormous payroll. With thousands of nurses, doctors, surgeons, and an equally high number of support staff, a company’s payroll and staffing process becomes highly complex. Oracle’s Workforce planning module ships with an almost ready-to-use payroll model that helps plan staffing costs, anticipate material changes to such expenses, and track variances between budgets, forecasts, and actuals.
Integrations with other systems:
The application comes with pre-built integrations to various ERP applications, including Oracle Cloud ERP and SAP. These can be used on day one with very little modification to customize them for specific customers and applications.
Webforms:
A number of well-designed webforms that follow useful workflow paths are delivered with this application. These forms allow business users to enter drivers, assumptions, and various manual inputs to use them to build budgets and forecasts. These forms are production-ready with very little need for changes.
Business Rules:
Almost all conceivable business rules come standard with this application. Some of these rules include asset management, employee/FTE addition and removal, and trend-based balance sheet calculations. These rules can be tweaked to the business’s needs with very little effort and can be productionized rapidly. 
Reports:
To cap it all off, the application comes with dozens of operational and management reports used by business users, managers, and the C-suite. It also comes with reports designed for statutory reporting for the likes of the SEC and other regulators.
Customers:
There has been a significant uptake of this offering from Oracle. The following prominent companies have successfully implemented Oracle Healthcare Planning and can provide references:
- Mayo Clinic
- Indiana University Health
- Adventist Health
- Emblem Health
Our Take:
We strongly recommend going with this application as it leverages hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent building, supporting, and enhancing the various business processes involved in running a healthcare business. With the cost of healthcare rising every year, it is important that businesses have a clear view of their financial health, operational expenses, and room for improvement. The application allows businesses to hit the ground running on day one and fill any missing functionality with minimal effort and time.
Caveat:
We exercise caution in adopting this application on the rare chance that your business is significantly different from a traditional healthcare provider. While unlikely, we believe there might be outliers, and if you are one such business, this application may not be right for you. However, if your business processes have been inherited from many different acquisitions over the years, this application provides an excellent opportunity to consolidate your models and build a single, efficient model that allows for greater transparency, efficiency, and cost savings.
Contact Trending Thoughts for more information.