Case Studies

A long-time leader and one of the most widely recognized consumer brands in the food and beverage industry they have grown to over 3,500 locations with over 60,000 store and 1,200 corporate employees across North America. The chain’s commitment to maintaining a close relationship with franchisees and the communities where it operates has helped generate immense customer loyalty. They are dedicated to satisfying the changing tastes of customers through continuous product innovation. As consumer tastes grow, so do the choices. The current menu spans a broad range of categories that appeal to customers throughout the day.

They have been using Hyperion Planning (HP) and Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) for their corporate financial reporting, financial & operational planning and reporting.

Challenge/opportunity
Corporate Chain Sales Reporting, Forecasting, Budgeting Financial Planning Activities were still being done using numerous Excel spreadsheets and MS Access databases.

Solution
The GoLiveSystems team using our RAPID GoLive™ Methodology implemented and deployed Hyperion Planning for Chain Store Sales Reporting and Budgeting. Also we installed the Warehouse Sales and Financial Planning and Budgeting modules for both Operational and Financial departments.  To complete the project we deployed a consolidation process using Hyperion Planning

Results
Implementing Hyperion Planning resulted in dramatic savings of time and effort in producing Weekly Chain Sales Reporting. The Chain Sales Budgeting and Planning has successfully been rolled out to 125 District Managers resulted in shortened budgeting and forecasting cycles. Warehouse Forecasting, Budgeting and Reporting efficiencies and accuracy have also been greatly improved. Centralized, Operational and Financial Forecasting and Budgeting replaced disconnected Excel and MS Access based planning. Budget Consolidations are now being done rapidly and consolidated results reviewed and reported to key executives.

As the World’s number one distributor of Building products, with over 45,000 employees and  4,400 branches in over 25 countries.
With 220 branches coast-to-coast and more than 175,000 products, the Canadian operations are the most diverse supplier of products and customer solutions in the country. Their client base includes servicing everything from oil sands projects to retail showrooms.

Challenge
They use Hyperion Planning and Essbase for Financial Reporting, Financial & Operational Budgeting & Planning.
Now need to implement a Hyperion Planning solution for the corporate office to replace the current Hyperion Enterprise applications. Opportunity is to migrate from Hyperion Enterprise to Hyperion Planning System 11 and develop a robust Monthly Forecasting and Budgeting system.  The solution will speed up consolidations and enable end user Monthly Forecasting and Budgeting in other regions in Canada.

Solution
GoLiveSystems is implementing Hyperion Planning in Phases. Phase I covered the migration of Hyperion Enterprise to Planning System 11 and migrating all the historical data into Planning. A robust integration process was also built using ODI to efficiently load and consolidate monthly data into Hyperion Planning from PeopleSoft GL. The current phase is focusing on building an enterprise wide monthly forecasting and budgeting system (Phases 2 and 3). Phase 4 will implement Management Dashboards for senior Management.

Result
Implementing Hyperion Planning and Essbase resulted in dramatic savings, in time and effort in producing monthly Reporting packages.  Consolidation and reporting cycles were shortened. Consolidation time was reduced from over 20 minutes to less than 2 minutes each. A highly automated integration process enabled end users to perform consolidations in a flexible and fully audited process. End users now have quick access to the latest financial information using SmartView and Hyperion Reports.


One of Canada’s largest airlines, providing service to and from lower density markets as well as higher density markets at off-peak times throughout Canada including certain destinations in the continental United States.

The Airline uses Hyperion Planning Fusion Edition for Budgeting, Forecasting, Planning and Reporting. They have been depending on an older version (v4) of Hyperion Planning that is hosted on their mother company’s servers for performing its Planning and Forecasting activities. Their objective was to repatriate the Planning Application from the mother organization’s UNIX servers and upgrade to System 11 Planning in a Windows, MS SQL Server and a virtualized infrastructure using VM Ware.

Working closely and understanding the Airline team’s planning needs GoLiveSystems repatriated and upgraded Hyperion Planning on the client’s servers, including adding a robust integration processes to extract and load data into Hyperion from the mother company’s GL (E7). The full solution was implemented in Development and then successfully in a Production environment on a VM Ware virtualized infrastructure.

Repatriating Hyperion Planning from their mother organization enabled the Airline’s Finance and IT departments complete control and autonomy in managing and supporting Hyperion Planning in-house. It was GoLiveSystems’ experience that by supporting Hyperion Planning on VM Ware it produced a significant reduction in hardware and maintenance costs. By upgrading to System 11 Planning and Essbase resulted in dramatic savings in time and effort in producing annual budgets and Outlook forecasting. End users now have quick access to the latest financial information using SmartView and Hyperion Reports.