You're a beginner now, but won't be after learning ODI's features, customizing Planning without coding, building dimensions in EPMA, finally getting that ASO application off the ground, and hearing how your peers implemented their successful Oracle EPM project.

Recommended Beginner Sessions

MONDAY
Session 1, 11:15 AM - 12:15PM
Calculation Manager: The New and Improved Application to Create Hyperion Planning Business Rules
Jeff Richardson, Edgewater Ranzal
This presentation will introduce the attendee to Calculation Manager.  Calculation Manager, a component of Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Architect, is the new tool to create business rules and business rule sets to run against Hyperion Planning and Oracle Essbase.

By attending the presentation, the attendee will learn about differences between Calculation Manager and Hyperion Business Rules, as well as see a live demo of the tool to develop and deploy business rules to a Hyperion Planning application.

Or

Introductions to Essbase Studio
Stephanie Shrake, CareFirst
Essbase Studio was introduced in EPM Fusion Edition 11 as a replacement for Essbase integration Services(EIS). Learn what it is and how it works to create Essbase databases from multiple data sources. This session takes you through the creation of an Essbase cube from source to deployment. The session also covers the differences between various products used to build and load Essbase cubes. Throughout the presentation, tips and tricks will be presented.

Session 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM
EPM Development Panel
Oracle Corporation

Session 3, 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Allocations and Profitability Analysis: The Key to Improving Performance
Ron Moore, MTG
Profitability analysis is one of the most common Essbase applications for a reason. It's one of the most important things you can do to improve business performance. Profitability analysis doesn't stop at direct costs. You have to allocate indirect costs to calculate fully loaded profit. Allocations are fundamentally multidimensional so Essbase is an ideal place to do allocations and profitability analysis.
In this session we will discuss the objectives of profitability analysis and identify the advantages of using Essbase. We will describe simple allocations, waterfalls and reciprocal allocations and present several alternative design structures. Then we will present some calculation examples.

Session 4, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Top Ten Hyperion Planning End User Features That You're Not Using
Tracy McMullen, interRel Consulting
Interested in shortening planning cycles, improving the accuracy of plans and forecasts, or enhancing business predictability? Hyperion Planning is a centralized, Web-based planning, budgeting, and forecasting solution that drives collaborative, integrated, event-based planning processes throughout the enterprise with key features including workflow and process management, flexible modeling, and powerful reporting and analysis. But are you using it to its fullest capabilities? This presentation will cover the Top Ten Planning end user features that you may be missing out on. Whether you are a new or existing end user or administrator, this key presentation is guaranteed to show you features that will improve the budgeting and forecasting process and overall experience. This session will cover some new 11.1.2 new features that you should also be using that you may never have heard existed.

TUESDAY
Session 5, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Best Practices: Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management at General Dynamics
Kathy Josephson, General Dynamics
See how General Dynamics benefits with their new profitability product - HPCM. Understanding profitability and cost in your business is fundamental to improving performance. Observe how General Dynamics faced many challenges of large allocations, identification of stages of allocations, and creation of allocations. Hear best practices on how they were successful, and learn some key lessons on their implementation success with a demonstration of how they are using the  product in their environment.

Or

Supersize your EPM user adoption: Come learn about Oracle's training solution UPK
Mary Myers, ISA Consulting
In this session, participants will learn how to develop comprehensive training programs using Oracle's UPK (User Productivity Kit). Mary Myers, ISA Consulting, will demonstrate UPK's native capabilities and how to develop custom content using your organization's Oracle Hyperion data and metadata to meet the specific training needs of your EPM end-users.

Session 7, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Beginner's Guide to Oracle Data Intergrator
Scot Martin, Cash America
Learn about the new method of loading data and dimensions: ODI (Oracle Data Integrator).

Or

BI Experts Panel
Session 8, 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM
Deploying Essbase in the Supply Chain to Increase Profitability at Calix
Tony Banta, Calix
Calix, an industry leader in providing cutting-edge telecommunications equipment and management software, wanted to expand their leadership in the supply chain by more effectively managing both strategic and day-to-day aspects of manufacturing operations. Attend this session and learn how the company moved from a spreadsheet-based, labor-intensive system to a new, state-of-the-art performance management and cost modeling system that combines a number of technologies including an Oracle database, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), Oracle Essbase, Dodeca, and OBIEE. Also learn how the new system gives Calix the information necessary to make informed decisions quickly and prioritize actions based on business impact, and thus, gives the company a competitive advantage by improving margins in their highly competitive industry.

Or

Hacking Essbase: Stupid Essbase Tricks That Void Your Warranty (Parts 1)
Edward Roske, interRel Consulting
In this two-part, two-hour session, Edward presents all his hacks and workarounds for Essbase discovered over the years.

Session 9, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Benefiting of Oracle Data Integrator in a heterogeneous environment - A challenging scenario in Telco Industry.
Gurcan Orhan, Turkcell Technology R&D
Turkcell is a telecommunication operator which is the leader of Turkey and third in Europe. Project NODI is a data warehouse approach especially built for Network Operations Division in Turkcell developed in Turkcell Technology. NODI has a variety of source systems including files, Sybase IQ, Sybase ASE, MSSQL and Oracle and about 25TB of disk space.
To give the vision of Turkcell's Network Architecture, Turkcell managed to reach 300M text messages and 16k text messages per second in the first day of Ramadan feast.
Sybase Power Designer is used to model complete physical and logical architecture.

Session 10,  4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
10 Reasons Why You Don't Have to "Code" or "Customize" Planning
Tracy McMullen,  interRel Consulting
Nervous about changing the underlying relational tables? Updating the validatedata.jsp page? Never fear! This session will come to your rescue. This session will show you the supported ways to meet some of your requirements that don't require Web developing or DBA skill sets. While this may be the "anti-Kscope" presentation, be sure these topics will help you deliver the best possible Planning solution to your organization with the minimal amount of maintenance as you upgrade to newer versions. Consider this to be your "before I can go outside the box, I better learn where the edges of the box are first" session of Kscope11.

WEDNESDAY
Session 11, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
ASO Fundamentals
Rudy Zucca, 123OLAP
This session is perfect for new developers trying to get familiar with ASO. Whether you have experience with Block Storage or not, this session is designed to go over the fundamentals of design and architecture of Aggregate Storage type databases, including: • ASO architecture • Best fits for ASO vs BSO currently • Restrictions in ASO • Basics of Outline modeling in ASO • Aggregations and retrievals in ASO • Basics of MDX.

Session 12, 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM
Have it Your Way: Building Planning Hierarchies with EPMA or Outline Load Utility
John Martin, Edgewater Ranzal
The Metadata Load Utility is a configurable tool used to load dimensions and exchange rate data into Planning. The tool is a viable alternative to using ODI as it can be configured to run by scheduled batch, and can be encrypted. By the end of the presentation, the user will have ready to use scripts that can be used and easily configured to load metadata into any System 11 Classic Planning Application. Since HAL (Hyperion Application Link) has been discontinued, there have not been many options for loading of metadata. ODI is one option, but for just about all applications, metadata can more easily be uploaded using this utility. For EPMA applications, the ADS file process will be shown, and the process for integrating with Interface tables will be explained.

Session 13, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Seeing Oracle Financials in Multi-Dimensions - A Makeover Story
Eldon Liu, ADI Strategies, Inc.
Companies running Oracle Financials have the same reporting challenges. They need to develop a method to reference account and cost center structure into 'cost type' accounts, which is used to prepare their financial statements. Additional complexity is added when these financial statements are required to be prepared in various 'views', i.e. Internal, Tax, and Audit. As an Essbase solution, the above can be met by embedding mapping logic into calculation scripts though it's difficult to maintain by business users. This presentation introduces a framework based on Oracle/Hyperion technology that'll not only address Oracle Financials' reporting challenges, but also provide business users direct/easy access to maintain 'cost type' references. It further expands Essbase's analytic capability by supporting drill-through to all 'cost type' accounts and views.

Session 14, 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM
Retail Analysis and Reporting with Oracle Essbase at Sally Beauty
Heather Wine, Sally Beauty Holding, Inc.
Attend this informative session where the presenter will share Sally Beauty's success story of using Essbase for analysis. While everyone knows that Essbase is the number one financial reporting solution in retail, not everyone knows some of the other analysis for which Essbase is perfect. Whether it's flash sales by store and SKU, product profitability, customer segmentation, SKU analysis, store sales (comp and non comp), weeks of supply, pricing models, or more, retail companies around the world are using Essbase to meet all of their needs. In this one hour presentation, you will see Sally's real-world examples of reporting, analysis, modeling, and planning that you can do with Essbase, God's gift to retail companies everywhere.

Session 15, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tech Support Panel
Oracle Corporation

Session 16, 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM
Oracle EPM Killer Apps Survey and Panel Discussion
Ron Moore, MTG
The objective of the Killer Apps Survey and panel discussion is to survey a broad spectrum of the Oracle EPM community to: identify the most valuable existing applications; determine how pervasive the most valuable apps are, assess the "next wave" of EPM initiatives, determine how effective organizations set EPM objectives, and establish best practices designed to realize the business benefit of Oracle EPM.

THURSDAY
Session 17, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Scripting the JAPI: The Grooviest Thing Ever to Happen to Essbase
Joe Aultman, AutoTrader.com
Automating Essbase tasks is a job every company wrestles with. It is often accomplished with shell scripts (or Perl scripts) and MaxL. But there is a better way. With Groovy (an extension of Java) the full power of the Essbase Java API can be accessed from a scripting environment. Even better, Groovy's features and dynamic typing make working with Java libraries simpler and easier. This session introduces Groovy and the JAPI, then uses them to perform common Essbase automations. Essbase administrators with automation needs and Java developers with Essbase interest will benefit from this session. You will see how Groovy tames the JAPI and delivers its power in an exciting, usable way.

Session 18, 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Planning Application Design for the World's Largest Planning Implementation: How to Establish a Planning Environment for a Large, Heterogeneous Planning Community
Ryan Sullivan, Harvard University
Learn how Harvard University and Performance Architects established a robust staging area for the largest Hyperion Planning installation in the world, permitting decentralized and unique planning approaches for a diverse organization with distinct planning approaches - and how you can apply this type of approach to your Planning environment and efforts.

Session 19, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM
What is HPCM - Best Practices
Russell Papparotto, Information Software Solutions
HPCM is one of Hyperion's newest and fastest growing applications. This session will combine an overview of HPCM and best practices in implementing the solution.