Intelligent Enterprise

Oracle has added new capabilities for public sector agencies in the financial analytics component of the vendor's business intelligence suite.

The new functionality is within Oracle BI Applications 7.9.5.1, which was introduced Monday. The features provide public sector agencies with more operational details for better funds management and spending controls.

In addition, the upgrade is better able to detect exceptions through improved monitoring of budget spending, and offers more real-time information to support trend analysis and decision-making on issues.

To make deployment of the software easier, Oracle has added pre-built integration with the financial module of version 11.5.10 of the company's suite of business applications, called E-Business Suite. In addition, there are extensions to the Oracle BI Applications data warehouse schema andmetadata layer to support public sector content.

The vendor has also added extraction, transformation and load maps to pull data from the Oracle Financials module of the E-Business Suite, and had includedpre-built dashboards and reports for the public sector.

"Oracle BI Applications can be deployed quickly to enable public sector agencies to achieve rapid return on investment," Paul Rodwick, VP of product management for Oracle, said in a statement.

Besides government agencies, Oracle BI applications are available for a variety of business operations, including sales, customer service, marketing, financials, supply chain, human resources and order management, procurement and spend. Specialized industry analytics are also available.

Oracle's latest release followed less than a week after the introduction of an upgrade of the Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion, a financial modeling application that helps executives understand the financial impact of alternative corporate strategies.

Edition R11 includes integration with Oracle Crystal Ball, a spreadsheet-based application for predictive modeling, forecasting and Monte Carlo simulation. "Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance R11 allows analysts to improve their forecasts by using Crystal Ball's simulation capabilities in their financial models and better understand the risk factors impacting their business," BillGuilmart, Oracle VP of product management, said in a statement.

Other new integration features allow for automated sourcing from systems like general ledgers, budgeting and consolidations. The capabilities make it possible to drill back to the source system, providing an audit trail.

The Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion application is part of the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management system.