10 Things to Know About Converting to EPMware from EPMA

Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA) is a module inside the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) suite that is used to manage metadata, such as hierarchies and structures, across various EPM applications. However, once finance teams upgrade to Oracle EPM suite 11.2.x, EPMA is no longer included in the toolset.

Although Oracle recommends EPMA users switch to the free version of DRM (DRM Lite) as a replacement for EPMA, DRM lacks significant functionality that finance teams need, including direct integration with target systems and the ability to read and feed from source systems, which makes DRM Lite a less-than-optimal alternative to EPMA. 

In addition, all those built in validations from EPMA that trapped real time metadata errors will need to be completely rebuilt from scratch in DRM, a giant development process. 

Technically, EPM users don’t need a separate metadata management solution because they can manage metadata manually or in “classic” mode, which is great if you aren’t concerned with efficiency, automation, or validating changes.

The good news is that you aren’t stuck with either of these options. EPMware provides an alternative to EPMA and DRM that checks the box for just about everything you would want in a metadata management solution.

Keep reading to learn more about what you’re “giving up” when you convert from EPMA to EPMware. We think you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Five common challenges and limitations of EPMA

Overall, EPMA is an effective tool for managing metadata in the EPM ecosystem, but in addition to the end-of-life issue, EPMA has several limitations that may impact data quality, process efficiency, and user experience.

Integration Issues

Although EPMA integrates easily with on-premise Oracle EPM applications (HFM, Essbase, and Planning), integrating with Oracle EPM cloud or non-Oracle enterprise systems can be a giant undertaking. Users may encounter data integration and interoperability issues that impact the efficiency of financial processes.

Customization and Flexibility

EPMA supports basic metadata sharing; however, organizations with more complex financial structures (ragged hierarchies) may find EPMA makes it difficult to customize configurations to meet specific business requirements or adapt to changing needs.

Data Quality and Consistency

Requesting metadata changes in EPMA may require manual intervention from multiple departments to support the data flow between systems with inconsistent mapping tables and consolidation rules, which increases the risk of introducing errors and inconsistencies into the data.

Five advantages of converting to EPMware from EPMA

EPMware takes a different tact to managing metadata. We have unified metadata management and data governance into a single platform that ensures your data is accurate, auditable, and trustworthy across every target application and system your organization relies on.

Here are a few additional ways that EPMware is fundamentally different from Oracle EPMA:

Plug-and-Play Adaptors

Our plug-and-play business system adapters enable data-model agnostic metadata sharing across all on-premise Oracle Hyperion and cloud Oracle EPM applications, many other ERP and CPM applications, and your data warehouses like Power BI and Snowflake.

Real-Time Validation

EPMware’s real-time scripting engine validates the accuracy and completeness of metadata before it is deployed, saving hours of manual intervention and reducing errors and inaccuracies. Required properties, character length, invalid characters, and many more are built into the platform, greatly expediting time to configure and integrate.

Built-In Governance

Our built-in governance workflow engine enforces governance policies that route change requests to the required stakeholders for approval and enrichment, eliminating the need for time-consuming, error-prone manual change request processes. Built in email notification templates allow approvers to quickly approve/reject proposed changes.

Flexible Metadata Deployment

The EPMware platform uses a centralized deployment interface to release metadata to subscribing applications, you can easily deploy metadata on-prem, in the cloud or to interface tables and data warehouses from a single solution.

Dimension Mapping

EPMware creates a centralized hub that visualizes, establishes and synchronizes changes across applications, ensuring changes made in one application are deployed upstream and downstream to other applications.

A high-level look at the simplicity of migrating from EPMA to EPMware

Whether you are navigating EPMA end-of-life or you simply want a more effective way to manage metadata, migrating from EPMA to EPMware is simple and straightforward.

We cover the conversion in more depth in the blog How to Convert from EPMA to EPMware, but here are the highlights:

Step 1: Upgrade to EPMA 11.2 to convert your Oracle applications to classic mode.

Step 2: Register your Oracle applications in EPMware.

Step 3: Use EPMware’s one-click import feature to migrate metadata from the classic applications to EPMware. (This takes about 5-7 minutes per application.)

Step 4: EPMware’s built-in application intelligence capabilities automatically translate metadata during the import.

Step 5 (optional): Introduce a data governance workflow for reviews and approvals.

Ready to make the switch from EPMA to EPMware?

Converting from EPMA to EPMware’s unified metadata management and data governance platform not only provides an efficient and cost-effective alternative to EPMA but also increases the accuracy and integrity of your metadata thanks to EPMware’s seamless integration, real-time validation, and built-in governance capabilities out of the box.

Schedule a demo with the EPMware team to see firsthand how EPMware outperforms even the biggest names in the metadata management space.