After a long wait, the Enterprise Profitability and Cost Management (EPCM) will be officially released next month, June 2022. The new Enterprise PCM is designed on top of the Planning platform. You will be seeing a lot of common features, clusters, and cards that are currently existed in Planning or FCC solutions. The Enterprise PCM is an evolutionary leap forward for the traditional/existing PCM solution.
In fact, you might have heard about or started using the Enterprise PCM in 2021. Oracle has partnered with a few consulting firms to implement the Enterprise PCM solution for the past years. Additionally, this year’s ODTUG Kscope22 will have a good amount sessions to discuss Enterprise PCM. There will be comparisons, case studies, and successful stories sessions. Do follow the Kscope22 news, more to come!
To recap, the EPCM uses an Essbase cube to store and calculate data. It is using the ASO cube technology to support cost decomposition, consumption-based costing, and scenario-playing to measure profitability. EPCM can
- perform complex calculations, transformations, and allocations
- generate sophisticated reports and dashboards
- combine data from many source systems
Since the EPCM is now sitting on top of the planning platform, the data, and allocated results will be able to display via the following EPM features:
- Dashboards
- Infolets
- Forms
- Profit Curves
- Allocation Trace
- Oracle Smart View for Office
- Reports
As you see here, forms, dashboards, infolets, and reports are surely new to the EPCM solution.
If you have not used or heard about PCM / EPCM, or you have a complex feeling about PCM before, I do suggest you take a second look at it, especially for the new Enterprise PCM. Using and modeling profit, cost, and tax requirements in EPCM will be able to offload work from the general ledger and simplifies statutory reporting.
Now let’s take a tour and see what are the new features and interfaces in the brand new EPCM solution.
Home page
The home page is utilizing the EPM planning interface. If you have used other EPM solutions, you will be much familiar with this interface.
The Navigator page has changed accordingly as well.
Application Cluster
The application cluster contains the traditional planning features, including valid intersection, data exchange, cell level security, etc.
Modeling Cluster
The modeling cluster contains the core PCM allocation functionalities. The models, designer, model validation, etc. are displayed and managed in here.
Redwood Theme – Dynamic Tabs
By using the Redwood theme, the dynamic tab is available by default. Again, dynamic tabs allow us to view multiple artifacts o a single page. For example, open one related form/dashboard from an existing form. These additional artifacts are denoted by horizontal tabs at the bottom of the page. This feature is for users who do want to view multiple artifacts simultaneously but don’t want to have multiple browser windows open.
Models
Now, let’s take a deep dive into the Modeling cluster. The first one is the Models card. Models are containers for organizing sets of rules.
Designer
The Designer card is the place to manage rules. This page has been redesigned.
Model Validation
Before running models, use model validation to validate the rules.
Model Validation
Before running models, use model validation to validate the rules.
Calculation Analysis
Calculation Analysis stores the detailed calculated status for us to audit how the system calculated the results.
Rule Balancing
The Rule Balancing page has been redesigned as well. We can validate the results on this page where we can see each rule and its impact. Use this page to review calculation results at a high level on a rule-by-rule basis. This top-down look at rule progression can help us identify where data may not have been allocated correctly so we can adjust rule definitions accordingly.
Reporting
As we mentioned previously, since the new EPCM is using the EPM planning platform, we are now able to use the EPM reporting and analysis. For example,
Using the forms, dashboards, reports, and infolet we can
- Operational profit and cost analysis for SKUs or customers
- Management fees by entity
- Effective tax rates pre and post allocation
- Invoices for integration with other financial systems
Integration
Last but not the least, the EPCM is integrated with other EPM cloud solutions seamlessly.
- Planning
- Financial Consolidation and Close
- Tax Reporting
Thanks for reading through this post. I will share more comparisons and lessons learned about EPCM in future posts.