Triometric survey from UK Oracle User Group Series EPM & Hyperion reveals that poor application performance impacts user productivity, working hours, reputation, helpdesk operations, and costs

Egham, Surrey – 29th  June 2010 – In a survey conducted for Triometric at the recent UK Oracle User Group Conference Series EPM & Hyperion, more than three quarters (79%) of respondents revealed that Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) and meeting deadlines for financial reporting is ‘critical’ to their organisation, yet only one third (35%) use a tool to monitor its performance. Attendees went on to claim that this has significant implications for their business. The leading three concerns shared by two thirds (65%) of the group were reduced user productivity, employees being forced to work harder, or longer hours to compensate and meet market reporting deadlines and finally, the negative impact of poor performance on their team or department.

The survey, conducted among the 111* end-user organisations at the event in mid June, also highlights a series of other important repercussions to poor HFM performance and delayed financial consolidation; including an increased volume of helpdesk calls (63%). Over half (51%) of respondents feared a negative consequence on their personal career progression or reputation, while 46% cite a loss of opportunity cost savings and 43% identify wasted resource or human capital.

Matthew Goulden, Managing Director at real user monitoring software company, Triometric explains, “The potential issues don’t end there if and when there are issues with such an important enterprise application. A third (33%) report that it impacts the day-to-day running of their business, 38 per cent say that there can be share price fluctuations or stock market repercussions and 43 per cent claim that internal service level agreements (SLAs) are missed or harder to meet.”

“It is not surprising then that 86 per cent of the users interviewed at the user group event went on to agree that having visibility of the real end user experience of HFM’s performance would add value to their business,” continues Goulden. “There are dozens of web, network management and application performance management (APM) tools on the market, but only Triometric can deliver the vital insight into the users’ actual experience of web-based applications. This is an incredibly important component of the speedy and precise identification of issues, particularly if they are potentially duplicated across multiple sites, offices or countries.”

Indeed, the survey respondents reported that they waste a disproportionate amount of time trying to identify the root cause of a problem, as opposed to fixing it. Of those with no APM tool reporting to user level, almost a third (29%) spends 70-80% of their time doing just that. A further fifth (22%) spends 60% of their time finding rather than fixing; that's more than half (51%) spending 60-80% of their time that way. This compares to more than two thirds (68%) those that already have an APM tool in place, who spend just 60% of their time or less.

Nick Hatch, IT Service Delivery Manager at Old Mutual Group Head Office, who presented at the user group event adds, “Running a lean IT operation with optimum uptime is an important priority for any organisation, but during our financial reporting period it is absolutely critical. Time can get extremely tight and it becomes vital that nothing goes wrong or slips at an early stage,” he continued. “We can’t be delayed on the end date of reporting to the market, full stop. If our systems don’t perform as we need them to, people then need to work longer hours to get the job done and we are left with less time to review and check the end result. Triometric came recommended as highly experienced with Hyperion as well as competitively priced.”

For further information about Triometric or the survey, call +44 (0)1784 497360 or email [email protected]. Triometric’s Enterprise Analyzer is used by organisations such as HSBC, Mondi, Old Mutual Group and Regus to monitor high value content web sites as well as enterprise-wide applications such as Cognos, Oracle HFM and SAP. Available as part of a systems ‘health check’ or as an ongoing monitoring tool, it has a unique ability to report right down to application level; from web forms to data grids and specific activities such as calculates, translates and consolidates performed on them.

*Excluding partners and exhibitors