For many companies the annual budget is the single biggest investment in improving business performance. Most companies’ budgets are adequate for financial control but relatively few can be used for powerful strategic planning. In addition, in most cases the process is more time-consuming and labor intensive than necessary. So how can we make the process more strategic and at the same time make it faster and easier? The answer lies in improving the calculation logic.

Essbase calculations can be used to:
- reduce effort by providing managers automatic “baseline” forecasts as a starting point
- implement more frequent re-forecasts or continuous planning
- link budgeting to strategy by focusing on strategic drivers
- implement driver-based budgeting

In this course you will learn the Essbase functions and structures that are most important for forecasting, projections and budgeting. Then you will apply your new skills to hands-on examples including:

• Revenue
• Workforce Expenses
• Direct Costs
• Other Indirect Costs
• Linking budgets to strategy
• Continuous Planning
• Currency Conversion

Last you will apply the techniques to your own budget models and leave the course with tangible progress toward implementing the techniques at your company.

Prerequisites:

-Essbase Bootcamp or equivalent including basic calculations
Note: MTG also offers basic calculations and calculations refresher courses to prepare you for this class.

Itinerary:

DAY 1: We present calc material relevant to your specific requirements.
DAY 2: We assist you in applying the new material to your applications.

Course Outline:

Introduction
• Defining business objectives
• Gap analysis

Defining Requirements
• Needs analysis method and checklist
• Financial control requirements
• Forecasting requirements
• Strategic requirements
• Other requirements

Best Practices for Optimization, Design and Data Integrity
• Data suitability
• Usability and useful output
• Maintenance
• Optimization
• Data Integrity

Outline Design Examples
• Basic designs
• View dimensions
• Multi-cube designs
Revenue
• Exponential smoothing
• Regression
• Sales pipeline
• Burn rate
• Penetration curves
• Spline

Direct Costs
• Regression
• Lookup cubes

Workforce Expenses
• Top-outs
• Step Functions

Continuous Planning and Rolling Forecasts

Currency Conversion

Linking Budgets to Strategy
• DCF: Key Value Drivers

Techniques and Functions covered include:
• Rolling Forecasts
• Burn rate modeling
• Step Functions
• Sales pipeline modeling
• Exponential smoothing
• Regression
• Workforce overhead forecasting
• Controlling block creation
• Automatic baseline forecasts
• View Dimensions
• Lookup cubes
• S-curves (penetration curves)
• Rule of 78
• @XRANGE
• @TREND
• @CORRELATION
• Custom macros
• @XREF
• @SPLINE
• @MDSHIFT

Your Registration Includes:

-Instruction
-Course manual
-Up to 2 hours of follow-up problem solving support

Cost:

-$1500.

Call or E-Mail us at training@mtgny.com for additional information.

Also available as a PRIVATE ON-SITE CUSTOM WORKSHOP. Call for rates.

Topics include:
• Multi-dimensional field properties
• Dynamic field property definition
• Dynamic ranges in numeric attributes
• Substitution variables
• Using duplicate member names
• and more…

Other topics covered:
• Quick review Business Intelligence architectures
• Recent BI warehouse trends; challenges to Essbase
• Warehouse / Cube culture gap
• BI in the Cloud
• Multiple reasons to expand the Essbase footprint
• Benefits to the business of novel Essbase models
• How to work with a line of business
• Merging metrics from cubes to warehouses:
advantages, methodology
• Near real time BI

This presentation is being made in partnership with Sterling Analysis.

About the Presenter: Bill Sterling joined Arbor Software at the birth of Essbase as a field sales technician. As a member of the Arbor Field Services Group he was responsible for technical sales, mentoring and certifying partners, troubleshooting and tuning Essbase models, and teaching Essbase classes. When IBM chose to resell Essbase, he trained the IBM technical sales team world wide. At the merger of Arbor and Hyperion Software he joined the Hyperion consulting ranks. Subsequently he was asked to join IBM and spent 9 years in IBM lecturing and training on Essbase and mentoring pre-sales personnel. He co-authored the OLAP chapter in IBM Data Warehousing in 2003. Currently he is founder and Principal of Sterling Analysis, a Business Intelligence consultancy.

In this module you will learn:
- About the VBA development environment. It’s components, how to navigate around in it and how to use it.
- What a procedure is, what a Function is and the difference between them.
- A look at the Essbase API and the declarations that are available for you.
- How to record a macro.
- How to write code for a number of basic Essbase actions

About the Presenter: Larry graduated with a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Larry started his career developing on-line pathology systems for a major pharmaceutical company. He then transitioned into developing software for complex electronic control systems related to the power industry. In 1985, Larry began a 23 year career with IBM focused primarily on a financial and accounting applications. He advanced through IBM and ultimately was a project manager in which he managed a portfolio of Essbase and Web Application development projects. In 1997 Larry was introduced to Essbase and has been developing and leading teams that build sophisticated MS-Office tools which interface with Essbase ever since.

Learn to:

• Create block storage databases
• Build rules files
• Analyze data in Microsoft Office by using Smart View

Audience:

• Database Designers
• Database Administrators
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Developer

Learn To:

• Create block storage databases
• Develop database outlines manually and using rules files
• Load data
• Analyze data using Smart View
• Calculate block storage databases

Audience: Database Designers, Database Administrators, Business Intelligence Developer, Developer

Learn how to configure, secure, optimize, and maintain the Essbase environment for both block storage and aggregate storage applications. Whether you are a new or seasoned Essbase user, you will benefit from the Essbase experience and best practices built into the lectures, student guide, numerous exercises, and case study, and this course will prove to be a valuable addition to your administrator’s survival kit.

Learn To:

• Design and manage Essbase security
• Optimize Essbase system caches
• Perform backup, recovery, application migration, and task automation
• Configure the block storage and aggregate storage kernels

Audience: Database Administrators, Database Designers