As you are all probably aware, Oracle has released the latest version of its on-premise applications - EPM 11.2. One significant change in this release is the replacement of EPM Architect (EPMA) with a restricted-use version of DRM.
This free version of DRM is only restricted by the target applications you use and to 5 named users. There are no restrictions on the number of records or in the core functionalities (although please remember that DRG and DRA are not included). It is restricted to reading and feeding Oracle EPM On-Premise applications such as HFM, Planning or FDMEE. It does not permit integration with a data warehouse, staging tables, cloud applications, general ledgers or other applications.
Having gone through this small print, access to this restricted use DRM can still be a very compelling reason to consider an upgrade. Here are some of the key benefits it delivers.
- Calculate and store mappings between EPM applications – DRM’s properties and validations can allow you to efficiently store and validate or simply calculate the mappings between your EPM applications. You can then publish these to FDMEE to ensure robust and reliable data flow between applications.
- Versioning and audit - DRM has robust auditing and versioning capability, allowing not only to prepare new versions of your master data, store snapshots but also to rebuild a view of your master data at a specific point in time.
- Advanced hierarchy sharing abilities - Unlike EPMA, DRM allows you to share parts of hierarchies between applications, including sharing branches only and having custom filters.
- Custom Technical and Business rules and validations - Through DRM properties and validations, you can build advanced business rules from ensuring unicity within branches, controlling the structure of your hierarchy.
- Enrich your master data - In DRM, you can store additional information such text or hyperlinks against versions, hierarchies or specific members. This can help transform your set of hierarchies into a proper data dictionary. It's also worth knowing that the additional information can be leveraged by rules and validations to dictate the content of more technical properties such as HFM's user-defined attributes leading to a more business-oriented maintenance process.
The key in approaching DRM is to think beyond what you would do with EPMA and think about how it can improve your business processes.
It also helps to have an experienced DRM partner to guide you along the way!