29 June 2005


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Oracle announces financial consolidation hub

Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub is a new solution in the Oracle Corporate Performance Management suite of analytic applications. Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub integrates data from disparate sources to create a single, global view of financial information that can be used to facilitate compliance with accelerated reporting, expanded disclosures and certified internal controls now required by Sarbanes-Oxley, the United Kingdom's Combined Code and other global governance mandates.

Automation
By automating the consolidation cycle from subsidiary data submission to the dissemination of consolidated results, Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub helps reduce the risk of errors from manual procedures and enables users to rapidly close and report results. An extensible workflow-driven framework enables users to stay informed through proactive notifications and detailed audit trails that track every stage of consolidation. Oracle provides the ability to perform "one-touch" consolidation, enabling users to consolidate hundreds of entities with literally the press of a button. Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub's multi-dimensional reporting capabilities allow users to spend more time on value-added analysis to spot trends and probe cause and effect with real-time drill back to transactional system data.

Adaptation
As barriers to global competition have fallen, more companies are seeking out business opportunities around the world. These strategic activities can lead to very complex multinational accounting requirements that reflect global differences in laws, business practices and economic conditions. At the same time, the push towards convergence between United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) continues, resulting in evolving compliance mandates that demand flexible consolidation systems. Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub enables users to easily handle changes in corporate structure and to keep up with emerging accounting regulations. Companies can grant as much autonomy as desired to their subsidiaries and affiliates and each subsidiary can submit its sub-consolidation independently, and the system will enable companies to consolidate information in accordance with corporate standards and practices.

Foundations
Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub is built on a unified enterprise data model, utilized across the entire Oracle Corporate Performance Management solution, that brings together all types of financial and operational data. With this cross-enterprise data model, users can achieve consistency of information throughout their entire performance management cycle-from scorecarding and modeling to planning, budgeting, and forecasting, to financial consolidation and reporting. Oracle's single data model helps reduce maintenance costs and eliminate latency between copies and extracts, allowing customers to have the best-quality information with low cost of ownership.
"Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub gives us a single source of truth to support our budget comparison process," adds Raul Gonzalez Lima, director of corporate financial reporting for Grupo Televisa and vice president of the Enterprise Sector of the Mexican Institute of Public Accountants. "When it comes to analyzing the performance of our business units, all the operational managers will be on the same page because they will be equipped with monthly actuals and not just projected budgets. No one will be able to claim that their figures are different, because everyone will be operating on the same version of the financial truth."
"The best-run companies use information as a competitive advantage, whether it's to meet global regulatory mandates, gain operational efficiencies, or capitalize on new growth opportunities," said Steve Miranda, senior vice president of applications development at Oracle. "Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub delivers a single source of accurate, high quality data that can transform any company into an information-driven enterprise. Companies choosing to standardize on Oracle Financial Consolidation Hub will not only be able to exploit better information, but can gain added cost savings by streamlining the consolidation process and eliminating multiple vendors."



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