An Episode and Article in the EPM Intelligence Oracle AI World Series featuring Mike Russell (Oracle EPM Solution Engineer)
Key Takeaways
- Oracle EPM enhances Excel: Smart View keeps finance teams in Excel while adding the power, performance, and governance of Essbase and EPM Cloud.
- Cloud-first AI is driving the next wave of finance transformation: Oracle’s innovative forecasting, narratives, and agentic AI lives in the cloud, enabling faster insight and smarter decisions.
- EPM ROI is driven by lower total cost and less manual work: Fewer point solutions, no infrastructure overhead, and reduced overtime translate into measurable business value
What Is Essbase?
Essbase, aka Extended Spreadsheet Database, is the foundation that allows teams to move beyond fragile, formula-heavy spreadsheets. Rather than relying on nested lookups and manual calculations, Essbase uses a multidimensional hypercube to perform aggregations, allocations, and complex math natively.
As Mike Russell explains, the power of Essbase lies in shifting the workload away from spreadsheets and into the calculation engine itself:
“Imagine a spreadsheet with 60 tabs, but instead of index-match, VLOOKUPs, and IF statements doing all the work, the cube is doing the heavy lifting for you.”
The value of Essbase:
- Enables slicing and dicing data across entity, period, account, product, and region
- Eliminates spreadsheet performance bottlenecks
- Allows complex business rules to be calculated in seconds
Smart View And How Excel Connects To EPM
One of the biggest myths about EPM modernization is that it requires taking Excel away from finance users. Mike is clear: that never happens.
Smart View creates a direct, secure bridge between Excel and Oracle EPM Cloud, allowing users to:
- Pull live data from the cloud into Excel
- Keep spreadsheets lightweight and performant
- Continue using familiar Excel workflows
At the same time, users can move seamlessly into the web interface to access:
- Forms and workflows
- Visualizations and dashboards
- Embedded AI and machine learning capabilities
Moving Essbase From On-prem To The Cloud
While on-prem systems remain supported, Oracle’s R&D investment and innovation now lives in Cloud EPM, where AI, automation, and advanced analytics are delivered natively. Modernization does not require abandoning Excel or finance processes; it helps execute those processes faster, more controlled and with lower overhead.
From a finance leadership perspective, cloud Essbase delivers clear value:
- Lower total cost of ownership with no infrastructure, storage, or processing constraints
- Standardized consolidation and close capabilities available out of the box
- Scalability without capital investment or upgrade cycles
What’s New With AI In EPM
Oracle’s latest EPM innovations go beyond automation, embedding AI directly into forecasting, commentary, and operational workflows. Teams can incorporate external signals like CPI, GDP, and currency data into forecasts, while generative AI helps surface insights and draft performance narratives that serve as a starting point for analysis.
As EPM evolves further, agentic AI introduces a new model. One where intelligent agents proactively surface findings and coordinate next steps across systems:
“It’s like the dog with the bone — ‘Hey human, I went and found this for you. Whatever you want me to do with it, I’ll do, but I went and found it.’” — Mike Russell
This approach accelerates insight and execution while keeping humans in control. Finance teams spend less time searching for issues and more time acting on them.
Measuring ROI And Total Cost Of Ownership For EPM
When executives ask, “How do we justify the investment?”, Mike points to total cost of ownership, not just productivity gains.
Organizations often underestimate the cumulative cost of operating fragmented finance environments, including:
- Maintaining multiple point solutions across planning, consolidation, and reporting
- Infrastructure, server, and upgrade expenses tied to on-prem systems
- Overtime and manual reconciliation effort during close and forecast cycles
- Talent attrition and replacement costs driven by repetitive, spreadsheet-heavy work
Oracle EPM consolidates these costs into a single, scalable platform that reduces complexity while improving control and visibility. Over time, many organizations see net savings, alongside faster closes, more reliable forecasts, and better use of finance talent.
To support decision-making, Oracle’s Customer Success Services help customers quantify ROI upfront: providing clear cost, savings, and timeline assumptions before implementation so finance leaders can move forward with confidence.
Choosing The Right Implementation Partner
At EPMI, we help organizations start with clear goals, unify their data, and empower leaders to make better business decisions using Oracle’s built-in AI and enterprise solutions.
FAQs
1. Do users have to stop using Excel with Oracle EPM?
No. Smart View allows Excel to remain the primary interface while connecting directly to cloud data.
2. Is Oracle EPM Cloud only for Oracle ERP customers?
No. Oracle EPM is source-system agnostic and integrates with SAP, Microsoft, and other ERPs.
3. What makes Agentic AI different from traditional automation?
Agentic AI autonomously orchestrates tasks across systems while keeping humans in control.
4. How long does it take to see ROI from EPM?
Many organizations see ROI within the first few planning or close cycles through efficiency gains and reduced costs.
Watch the AI World Series on YouTube!