Application Design

Do a Requirement Analysis

A requirement analysis helps ensure that you meet the needs of end users.

Understand your users’ expectations.
- Understand the requirements of customers and users, especially planners and users who will enter data.
- Know what processes they want in the application.
- Understand the current planning process and if users are coming from an Excel-based solution or using a relational application.
- Clearly documenting user expectations helps in mapping current processes to new planning applications, ensuring better usability and performance.
Know their measures of success.
- Know what they want in terms of usability.
- Know their expectations for performance of forms and calculations, and if they require calculations that are centralized or driven by end users.
Design the application to meet their expectations.
- Evaluate their current pain points, what they want to accomplish, and their goals as they move to this new application.
- Do not simply map current processes to the new application. Instead, take the opportunity to achieve better usability and performance.

Plan for Scalability and Performance Requirements

Planning ahead helps ensure that the application can adapt to an increased number of users and data size.

Plan for your future needs and long-term requirements, including the number of concurrent users and the application's growth over time.
Consider how your application will grow over time. Ask what will the size of the application be after two to three years and which dimensions will grow. Planning for those requirements in advance will help you make optimal choices when designing your application.

Plan Application Design and Integration

Separate planning and data entry requirements from reporting requirements.
You will typically use hybrid BSO for complex calculations and ASO for instantaneous aggregations.
Know the level of detail you want for your plan or forecast.
Understand all data sources, both within and outside of Planning.
Separate functionality into different cubes or applications where appropriate. It’s best not to model everything in a single monolithic cube.
Keep integration requirements in mind during the design phase to help meet your needs for the future.
Evaluate the out-of-the-box modules offered by Oracle EPM and consider using those industry best practices instead of creating a custom solution. The benefits include quick implementation and being set up for long-term success.

Decide on a Single Application or Multiple Applications

Determine whether to go with a single app or multiple apps. Review these scenarios to determine the best approach for you.

Table 3-2 Scenarios for Single and Multiple Applications

Requirement	Single Application Scenarios	Multiple Application Scenarios
Number of administrators	One administrator can manage the whole planning process. For example, the same administrator manages Workforce and Financials.	There is a separate administrator for each planning process. For example, data in Workforce is not visible to the administrator of Financials.
Planning business processes	Planning business processes are targeted for a single region or multiple regions. There are no variations in the planning process, such as the dimensional model and time granularity.	There is a difference in planning processes by region, or there are regulatory issues or data latency issues that require deploying separate applications in regional data centers.
Daily maintenance	Daily maintenance is not triggered during normal working business hours and does not affect application usage.	Different regions with different time zones or working hours make it difficult to schedule daily maintenance. This requires a separate application for each region.
Performance and scalability	Performance and scalability requirements can be handled with a single application.	There are requirements for performance or scalability requirements such as a large number of users or complex and time-intensive calculations.
Number of cubes	All the planning business processes can be implemented with the maximum number of cubes supported in an application.	The number of cubes supported in an application is not sufficient to implement all of the planning business processes in a single application.
Integration	The planning processes requires real-time integration.	The planning processes require infrequent or batch integration.
Users for planning processes	There are overlapping users for different planning processes.	There are separate users for different planning applications.

This example shows a sample scenario of using multiple applications.

Figure 3-1 Example of Using Multiple Applications

Even if your planning processes are spread across different applications, you can give a connected planning experience to your end users. For example, you can provide single sign-on, and you can move data between the applications using Oracle Enterprise Data Management to provide a seamless integration experience.

Figure 3-2 Example of Seamless Integration Between Applications