EPM (LowCode) NoCode

Since i joined back the EPM world, i reconnected with many people on Linkedin Old and New, and now have, after almost 2 months, a much better and refreshed understanding of the new EPM generation solutions from Oracle.

Needless to say, the changes are enormous and I will probably post,sometimes in the future, an article dedicated to the crazy giant steps of AI.

But for now, i am pleased and surprised to see that trends i experienced in ServiceNow, are also happening in EPM. AI of course is one, but the one i did not expect was LowCode NoCode.

I spent many years working as a consultant on HFM applications. I must have worked on more than 70 customers across various geographies. Now my education was Business and the first few years of my career was in Finance and Controlling. So needless to say, i went the hard way to learn VBScript and other scripting languages.

Today, when i read posts related to EPM, mostly non Oracle, i still see the old same topics. To be fair, Oracle EPM also has Groovy to expand the platform, but it is rather see as an exception rather than a rule. And so it should be.

When we look at upgrading customers using HFM for many many years to the more modern Oracle EPM platform, we can on average get rid of 70-80% of the code they used to have in HFM to achieve the same results.

How? well this is where lowCode NoCode comes in. Oracle has redevelopped its solutions to provide OOO most of the expected funtionalities. Just select what you want to do, define a POV, perhaps some exceptions and apply it where required.

And this is not only HFM, this is across the board, since all modules are on the same platform, same technology, same architecture, same database.

The results, again as it should be, is that the customers do no longer need an army of developers or consultants to maintain their or understand their apps. Of course, Consultants are always very useful to understand best practices, define strategies or advise on what to use where and when. But the solutions in place are no longer black boxes. It also allows applications to be kept alive and up to date with business changes in a much easier manageable manner!

So LowCode or rather mostly NoCode in EPM should not be minimized. It gives greater control, independance, lower TCO and better agility!

I hear sometimes: Yes but with coding you can do so much more!! Sure, in HFM i did create an app that did solve Sudoku puzzles! But is that really why one buy specialized apps?

Finally, Oracle has introduced to emplify this and help reduce the need for coding even further. All our customers have access to a Cloud Customer Community of 100 of thousend of users, with whom they can exchange of course, but more importantly submit their ideas and features/fonctions needs.

They can also vote on other people's ideas. Since most app have reduced their coding to the minimum and since Oracle releases on a monthly basis, you can see some of your requested features be introduced in weeks or months, and this without being at risk of disturbing non existant customization!

EPM NoCode: This is the way! and AI Agents have already understood that, but this is a story for another time!