Oracle has announced availability of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion Edition R11, a financial modeling application that allows executives to understand the full financial impact of alternative corporate strategies.

The key enhancement in the new release is the integration with Oracle Crystal Ball, a spreadsheet-based application for predictive modeling, forecasting, Monte Carlo simulation and optimization. The combination of Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance and Oracle Crystal Ball is intended to help organizations better manage risk and uncertainty in capital investment and financing decisions.

"Crystal Ball is a predictive modeling tool that we have had for about two years now. It is actually a spreadsheet add-in and the secret behind that is what's called Monte Carlo simulations," John O'Rourke, senior director, Enterprise Performance Management product marketing, Oracle, explains to 5 Minute Briefing.

Crystal Ball enables users to create a whole range of outcomes with the Monte Carlo simulation, which allows a user to define various assumptions and variables to the model and then run a simulation, O'Rourke notes. In seconds it can run about a thousand iterations of the model, changing those input assumptions, and then provide the user with a bell curve distribution of outcomes. Based on the results, the users can start to adjust some of the input assumptions and see what kind of impact that has on the possible outcomes, to increase their chance of success and lower the risk in making a decision.

It is "a great tool for doing risk-based analysis and modeling," states O'Rourke, who adds that the combination of Oracle Crystal Ball and Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance offers users the ability to have the Monte Carlo simulation capability on the robust and complex financial model that they have built.

Additionally, the release also features new integration with Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, allowing for automated data sourcing from systems like general ledgers, budgeting and consolidations systems. This enables users to drill back to the source system, providing an audit trail and more confidence in the data.

Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance is part of Oracle's EPM system, which unites performance management applications, pre-built business intelligence applications and BI tools, into an integrated system for managing and optimizing performance across business functions. For more information about Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance Fusion Edition R11, go here.