Article
Solving real-world business challenges with Oracle EPM
May 07, 2025 · Authored by Prasad Joshi
Organizations today, regardless of size or industry, face persistent challenges within their financial business processes. These obstacles hamper operational efficiency and growth, which delays decision-making and ultimately impacts overall business performance. From financial consolidation to reporting, budgeting and forecasting, the need for streamlined, accurate and timely financial operations is more critical than ever. Below are the real-world challenges organizations face in their financial processes, alongside practical solutions with Oracle Cloud EPM and the measurable value it delivers.
1. Challenge: Inefficiencies in multi-entity financial consolidation
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
Situation: ABC Corp, a US-based organization with subsidiaries in Canada and Mexico, is rapidly expanding across borders. However, beneath the surface lies a recurring challenge: month-end financial consolidation. Each cycle turns into a massive effort, with finance teams spending days collecting, translating and aligning financial data from multiple systems and currencies. Despite their best efforts, the process is prone to errors, delays and frustration.
This process introduces several challenges:
- Disparate data sources make it difficult to standardize and reconcile information
- Manual processes increase the risk of errors and rework
- Complex adjustments slow down reporting
- Security risks arise from the use of offline spreadsheets and shared files
- Lack of visibility and data traceability hinders transparency
- Delayed insights affect timely decision-making
Solution strategy: Implementation of Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Service (FCCS), a cloud-based platform that automates the entire consolidation process, addressing the issues of disparate data, manual work and security risks.
Business value
- Data automation: Ensure data accuracy, reduce human errors and facilitate a centralized workflow
- Global consolidation: Currency translation, intercompany elimination and consolidation
- Real-time reporting: Real-time balance sheet, profit and loss (P&L) and cash flow reporting
- Secure governance: Role-based user security and audit trail reports
2. Challenge: The burden of manual account reconciliation
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
Situation: At BTH Corp, the finance team braces each month for the same exhausting routine of account reconciliation. What should be a routine control process becomes a stressful, manual and inconsistent task. From reconciling and bank balances to general ledger entries, the team downloads data from multiple systems, each with its quirks. Spreadsheets become their main tool, but as discrepancies arise, they’re forced into digging through mismatched records, outdated files and unclear audit trails.
This leads to a range of challenges:
- Manual data collection from various systems, each with its own inconsistencies
- Data discrepancies in invoices, payments and balances that fail to match across systems
- Lack of standardization in reconciliation methods, causing inconsistent outcomes
- No audit trail, making error resolution nearly impossible
- Delayed close cycles due to the manual, fragmented process
- Increased labor and resource costs with no real-time visibility or system of record
Solution strategy: Implementation of Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud provides standardized workflows and real-time visibility. The solution helps in improving accuracy and accountability while guiding the finance team to close faster with fewer errors and greater efficiency.
Business value
- Data automation: Ensure data accuracy, reduce human errors and facilitate a centralized workflow
- Regulatory compliance: Built-in controls and tracking improve compliance with regulatory standards
- Faster closing: Faster month-end close and improved resource productivity
- Secure governance: Role-based user security and audit trail reports
4. Challenge: Disconnected month-end close process
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
Situation: CNC Corporation’s month-end closing process involves coordinating tasks across subledgers, ledgers, consolidation and reconciliation systems. However, the process is anything but coordinated. Analysts across functions operate in silos with no shared roadmap, no central task tracking and no real-time visibility. As deadlines approach, stress escalates due to missed handoffs, delayed approvals and critical dependencies on key individuals, resulting in inefficiencies and repeated last-minute firefighting.
The process creates below challenges:
- Inefficient data tracking workflow management leads to duplicate efforts and missed steps
- Approval bottlenecks and delays due to email communication rather than an automated workflow
- Increased risk of non-compliance due to no proactive alerts about issues or delays
- Manual communication and handoffs lead to confusion, delays and missed responsibilities.
Solution strategy: By implementing Oracle Close Manager within the FCCS suite, organizations can streamline their entire close process. The solution offers centralized task orchestration, automated handoffs and integrated approval workflows.
Business value
- Time efficiency: Automated data updates and workflows reduce reporting time and effort
- Standardized reporting: Consistent and professional report formatting
- Data accuracy: Real-time data syncing ensures the most up-to-date reports
- Rapid distribution: Faster report distribution and stakeholder access
- Smarter decisions: Timely insights empower leaders to make faster, more informed decisions
5. Challenge: The cost of clinging to Excel for planning
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
Situation: A retail company where each department manager handles budgeting independently, using complex Excel files. These spreadsheets are filled with multi-layered formulas that calculate costs based on different drivers. Everything is done manually, including data entry, formula checks and verification. There is a lack of ‘what-if’ scenarios, collaboration issues and an absence of modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve the company’s planning and efficiency.
Challenges impacting their planning process:
- Fragmented and disconnected systems, leading to misaligned operations
- Manual calculations and data transfers
- Lack of centralized visibility and collaboration
- Limited real-time insights and scenario planning
- Outdated tools hindering modernization, failing to adapt plans to market conditions
Solution strategy: Oracle’s EPM Planning enables collaborative, driver-based budgeting and forecasting that allows decision-makers to test ‘what-if’ scenarios and provides them with the insights needed to plan proactively and strategically.
Business value
- Integrated accuracy: Unified data sources and automation ensure accurate planning inputs
- Process automation: Replaces manual work with intelligent, automated workflows
- Collaboration: Centralized planning environment fosters cross-functional collaboration
- AI-driven forecasting: Enables ‘what-if’ analysis and scenario planning
6. Challenge: Lack of transparency and control in cost allocation
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
Situation: A mid-sized manufacturer and a leading producer of electronic components is struggling to allocate expenses accurately across departments. Their allocation engine provides the finance team with no visibility into how costs are assigned, making actual reporting difficult and planning nearly impossible. Any changes to the allocation logic require the information technology (IT) team’s support and weeks of turnaround time. The allocation logic only applies to actuals in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system; budgeting and forecasting teams cannot test or model alternate scenarios.
Challenges faced in cost allocation:
- Lack of traceability and visibility with zero transparency into how costs are allocated
- Rigid, code-intensive ERP processes, hence the reliance on IT
- Disconnected actuals and forecasts, leading to planning blind spots
- Manual workarounds using spreadsheets, increasing error risk
- Risk of misallocations & compliance issues
Solution strategy: Oracle Profitability and Cost Management offers a robust solution to bring transparency, flexibility and control back into the hands of finance. It empowers teams to model multiple allocation scenarios, align actuals with planning and make faster, insight-driven decisions.
Business value
- Transparent audits: Clear traceability of allocations makes audits easier and builds stakeholder trust
- Agile efficiency: Flexible, user-managed models reduce dependency on IT and accelerate turnaround time
- Financial integrity: Improved allocation accuracy helps mitigate compliance risks and strengthens financial reporting
- Insightful reporting: Better visibility into costs supports more strategic planning
7. Challenge: Fragmented metadata governance across financial systems
Listen to how this challenge impacts business operations here.
The town of Harmonyville relies on multiple financial systems to manage its operations. While each system is crucial, they operate in silos with separate administrators managing metadata independently. Key hierarchies like cost centers, funds, departments and reporting structures were shared across systems but not integrated. A simple update like adding a new cost center means manual entries across five different systems.
Challenges faced in metadata governance:
- Manual and lack of centralized metadata entry across multiple systems
- No synchronization between applications, leading to inconsistent hierarchies
- High risk of data inaccuracy and compliance issues
- Time-consuming and labor-intensive to identify the source of discrepancies
- Slow and unreliable metadata updates impacted reporting accuracy
Solution strategy: Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM) offers a centralized platform for creating, managing and governing metadata across systems. With seamless synchronization to all subscribing applications, it reduces manual effort, eliminates duplication, ensures consistency and improves data reliability.
Business value
- Metadata accuracy: Centralized control improves metadata quality and consistency
- Efficient maintenance: Streamlined workflows cut down manual efforts and speed up metadata updates
- Compliance: Standardized metadata governance strengthens data security and regulatory compliance
- Scalable architecture: Centralized integration reduces IT burden and scales with organizational growth
In conclusion, organizations across various industries and sizes face common challenges in their financial business processes. These obstacles can impede growth, operational efficiency and decision-making capabilities. By tackling challenges in financial consolidation, closing, budgeting, forecasting, allocations and reporting, Baker Tilly can empower your organization with the knowledge and tools to optimize your financial operations.
We help organizations transform complex financial and operational challenges into streamlined, scalable solutions using Oracle’s suite of powerful tools. Baker Tilly is a premier Oracle PartnerNetwork Member, with global capabilities across Oracle’s Cloud platforms, including Analytics, EPM, ERP, HCM and SCM.