From Outdated Budgeting
to Enterprise Financial Intelligence
A leading regional health system in Washington State replaced an outdated legacy planning system with a modern Oracle EPM environment — and built something far more valuable in the process.
A System That Was Holding the Organization Back
A leading regional health system in Washington State was running its entire financial planning operation on Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA) — a legacy system that had quietly become a bottleneck at every level of the organization.
Budget managers could only see rollups twice a day. There was no web-based data entry. No version control. No workflow to move budgets from analysts up to executives. Planning across workforce, units of service, gross revenue, contractual adjustments, net patient service revenue, operating expenses, and capital expenditures was either missing entirely or scattered across disconnected spreadsheets that no single person fully owned.
The system couldn't budget at the line item level, couldn't spread data automatically by month, and timed out regularly during the budget process — forcing users to re-enter work they had already completed. Leadership had no visibility into planning assumptions. Finance had no ability to track changes between budget rounds. And every budget cycle, the same manual workarounds were applied to the same problems the system was never designed to solve.
"The organization needed a modern enterprise planning platform. More importantly, they needed a partner who understood both the Oracle technology and the business of healthcare finance — and who would still be there long after go-live."
Listen First. Build Second. Stay Third.
The lead architect came in not just to implement a system, but to listen first. Working directly with Finance Directors, Revenue leaders, Budget System teams, and Hyperion Administrators, the engagement began with structured discovery and requirements documentation — sitting with the people who used the system every day, understanding where it failed them, and designing something that would actually work for how they worked.
The full implementation of Oracle Hyperion Planning replaced OFA BSR and PRM. Multi-dimensional budgeting was built across the full healthcare financial planning hierarchy. A process management workflow was built to move budgets from Analysts through Managers to Finance to Executives with full visibility and version control at every step. Reporting was delivered through Oracle Smart View, Financial Reporting Studio, and Oracle Workspace.
But the real work began after go-live. As the health system's needs evolved, the lead architect was called back — not because something had broken, but because something needed to grow:
- Revenue driver-based modeling was redesigned around MD FTE and clinic visit calculations, with a working days spread methodology developed collaboratively through a LEAN RPIW event with the health system's own Corporate Finance team
- Multiple Oracle Essbase cubes were built for Labor reporting, integrated directly with the health system's payroll system to give Finance and Operations a single, trusted source of truth for headcount and labor costs across every cost center
- Workforce Planning was brought fully into the Oracle environment, replacing the last remaining spreadsheet-based processes
- EPM integration was extended to support an affiliated regional hospital, adding a new layer of complexity that required careful architectural planning
- When the health system began its transition into a national health system, the same trusted architect was there to support the payroll and EPM administration integration work required to bring two large organizations together
Every engagement was different. The approach was always the same — understand the need, build it right, and make sure the people who rely on it can stand behind it.
A Complete Oracle EPM Environment — Built to Last
Fifteen Years of Shared History
Some Client Relationships End at Go-Live.
This One Was Just Getting Started.
What began as a single implementation grew into something that rarely happens in enterprise consulting — a relationship where the boundaries between client and partner quietly dissolved, replaced by something closer to shared ownership of a common goal. The health system's Finance team didn't just use the system. They shaped it. And the architect didn't just build it. He stayed.
"Real-time rollups replaced twice-daily batch updates. Version control replaced guesswork. A structured workflow replaced informal handoffs."
Labor reporting — previously disconnected from the financial plan — was integrated directly with the payroll system, giving Finance and Operations a shared view of headcount and costs that they had never had before.
Most enterprise EPM implementations require a full redesign within 7 to 10 years. This one never did. Not because the system was perfect at go-live — no system is — but because every enhancement, every new requirement, every organizational change was met with the same care and attention as the original build. Budget cycles came and went. Leadership changed. The organization grew, affiliated with new partners, and ultimately became part of one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States. Through all of it, the architecture held.
That kind of longevity is earned, not built. It comes from years of showing up — through the straightforward engagements and the complicated ones, through the changes nobody planned for and the ones everybody did. It comes from knowing the system well enough to improve it, and knowing the people well enough to know what they actually need.
Fifteen years later, the work continues. And so does the relationship.