POET, a leading biofuel company specializing in the production of ethanol and ethanol co-products, needed a platform to support its performance management initiatives and ultimately the company mission, which required generating fully integrated income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow projections over a five-year planning horizon. It needed a system that could provide short-term detailed operational budgeting capabilities for various aspects of the business (i.e. SG&A, capital planning, project planning) while also delivering a flexible solution to allow for higher level long-range planning. In search of these overall process improvements and efficiencies related to the budgeting and long-range planning processes, POET turned to Oracle and Ranzal to deliver a best in-class solution using Oracle’s suite of EPM applications. A guide through POET's process using the “right tool for the right job” mantra, to unleash the true power of Oracle’s Enterprise Planning suite including Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance, Hyperion Planning (including Workforce, Capital and Project Financial Planning), Essbase, and Financial Data Management Enterprise Edition.

2. INTEGRATED BUSINESS ANALYTICS
Getting to the Answers for Improved Business Performance
Business Analytics Solutions Provider: EPM, BI, and BD Technologies
True Power of Oracle’s Enterprise Planning Suite Unleashed at POET
Ryan Meester – Managing Director, Edgewater Ranzal
Lezlee Herdina – Director of FP&A, POET
June 27, 2017

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Agenda
Introductions
Enterprise Planning Overview
POET Case Study
High Level Demonstration
Q & A

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Enterprise Planning Solutions Should…
 Translate strategic objectives into operational
goals and targets
 Seed operational plans with strategic targets
 Update strategic plans using the most current
operational plans and forecasts
 Update strategic and operational plans easily
and frequently
 Perform powerful what-if and ad hoc analysis
 Integrate all planning processes into a single
centralized environment

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What tools are at your disposal?

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Enterprise Performance Management
Define, Measure, &
Innovate Your Business

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Enterprise Planning
Capital Assets
Planning
Workforce
Planning
Financial
Statement
Planning
Financial
Detail
Operational
Detail
Predictive Modeling & Simulation
Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting
Project Financial
Planning

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POET Introduction Vision
POET Vision

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Why was change needed?
Banks, Boards and Balance Sheets
+ Capital Management
• How big is the war chest?
• What is the business cash need?
+ Strategic Initiatives
• M&A Opportunities
• Cellulosic ethanol
• Other technology improvements…
+ Industry Volatility
• Ability to react quickly to commodity price
swings and understand their impacts
• Having a playbook ready for the situation
Process was Inefficient and Inflexible
+ Required 266 spreadsheets to create a
consolidated 3 year forecast and 166
spreadsheets to create the monthly forecast.
+ Forecast consolidation took two days
+ Couldn’t:
• Push through commodity price changes in real
time;
• Effectively coordinate consistent, credible
information flow between impacted parties;
• Easily control consistency of assumptions;
• Effectively generate reports;
• …

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The Evaluation Process
1. Define core business processes
2. Define project requirements
3. Examine the potential solutions
4. Select a sustainable enterprise wide
system
5. Select a knowledgeable implementation
partner that could best integrate our
needs with the system

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POET’s Initial Business Requirements
• Plants/Corporate Business Units
 Seamless integration of financial and operational data
 Platform for process improvement – greater automation in monthly processes improving
efficiency and increasing time for value-add analysis
 Improved communication, including ease of reporting
• FP&A
 Single source of the truth
 Reduced reliance on Excel models and associated version control issues
 Improved data governance – clarity of data model with common definitions to facilitate
planning and reporting processes
• Executive
 Operational and financial dashboards for performance measurement
 Scenario analysis to drive M&A and strategic business decisions
 Greater emphasis on cash perspective

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Guiding Principles for Solution Architecture
• Right tool for the right job (RTRJ) – while each toolset can do many things,
architecture is created to leverage the strengths of each product in the
Oracle/Hyperion software stack
• Minimize application switching – the corollary to RTRJ – try to minimize the “hops”
between applications to avoid confusion
• Keep it simple – overly complex applications make for great “shelf-ware”
• User experience is critical – avoid over-engineering
• Forecasting applications should only contain data required to support the
forecasting process
• Reporting applications store historical and additional data for analytics
• Data integrations should be seamless to end users
• Significantly reduce the dependence on offline Excel models

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The Solution

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Application Summaries
Planning Applications Brief Description
BU P&L Detailed SG&A account planning at the Cost Center and GL account level
Workforce (PLN-WFP) By person headcount planning for all non-plant related human resource expenses
Capex Asset planning for all capital expenses. Also used for book and tax depreciation
calculations.
Projects Detailed project financial forecast (including human and capital resources)
Assumptions / Staging Single application for assumptions that are controlled centrally that drive the Plant or
BU models to be collected and managed.
Other Applications
HSF Plant / BU Financials Where Plants and Business Units complete their full financial model (IS, BS, CF) and
perform scenario analysis for the budget, forecast and long range planning process
Management Reporting Essbase cube that is the primary point of reporting and analysis – includes Actuals,
Monthly Forecasts, Annual Plans, Long Range Plans, and other Operational Metrics in
support of the planning process

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Demonstration

16. Business Analytics Solutions Provider: EPM, BI, and BD Technologies
…One Year Later!

17. Business Analytics Solutions Provider: EPM, BI, and BD Technologies
Accomplishments
1. Seamless integration of financial and operational data following a common
data model across multiple platforms
• Countless hours saved by retrieving financial and operational data from management
reporting cube
2. Greater efficiency in planning and reporting processes
– We spent 65% of our time building and 35% of our time analyzing monthly forecasts. We
now spend 35% of our time building it and 65% analyzing it.
– Forecast consolidation previously took two days, now takes less than two hours.
– Month-end process shortened by two days.
3. Single source of the truth
• reduced reliance on Excel models and associated version control issues
– Commodity price assumption control
4. Improved data governance – clarity of data model with common definitions to
facilitate planning and reporting processes
– Audit trail in HSF allows multiple accountants understand how a forecast is being calculated

18. Business Analytics Solutions Provider: EPM, BI, and BD Technologies
Accomplishments
5. Greater emphasis on cash perspective
– Short-Term able to automate current sources and uses to maximize efficient use of cash.
– Long-Term cash forecast at the consolidated level required approximately 30 linked excel
spreadsheets. Hyperion provides a Smart view report to be refreshed and retrieve all data,
eliminating the need for linked spreadsheets and allowing more time for value-added analysis.
6. System is facilitating potential consolidation of legal entities
– Ease of producing information for reporting and analysis and for negotiations
– Ease of “what if” reporting using current and future org structures
7. More confidence in the numbers
• Better visibility into what is generating them
• Consistent methodologies for generating forecasts
• Improved change control.

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• Take better advantage of OBIEE tool. We haven’t yet successfully incorporated data from other systems
not required for forecasting purposes that could be very valuable for BI reporting into it.
• Project Financial Planning needs to be implemented. We put it on hold for a number of reasons,
resource constraints, lack of clear requirements, etc. This summer we will be clearly defining the
requirements and come up with an implementation plan.
• Get processes in place to really develop SmartView SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) to fully take
advantage of the tool.
• Reassessing where we are still using excel spreadsheets. Do we really need them? What still needs
to be automated?
• Making sure our documentation is current and maintained.
• Limitless ways POET can improve our world…
…What’s next?

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Lessons Learned / Keys to Success
• Gather requirements and identify the best fit
– Take the time to evaluate the full suite
– Try not to replicate complex logic in multiple systems but rather take
advantage of the strengths of each (i.e. Cost Center detail in Planning, Mgmt
Reporting in Essbase, BS/CF modeling in HSF)
– Get the appropriate persons involved in the design process
• Create a common point of intersection between HSF, Planning & Essbase
– Chart of Accounts
– Entity Structure
– Common modeling methodologies
– Discrepancies to be resolved ensures communication link between the
applications
• Leverage Essbase for comprehensive management reporting across
applications
• Take your time and do it right; Don’t replicate what you have.

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Give us $.02 and we will give you $5
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