Australia's Downer EDI Taking Control of Growing Operations with Hyperion System 9 Financial Management.

Engineering and Infrastructure Services Group Speeds Process of Consolidating Data from ERP Systems while Improving Accuracy of Reports Across Enterprise

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- With help from Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management (BPM) software, Australia's Downer EDI Ltd., an AUD $5 billion engineering and infrastructure management leader, plans to exert the same level of control on its fiscal reporting, planning and budgeting that it does on its major customer projects. Central to this effort is an integrated financial management infrastructure built on Hyperion System 9 software.

Faced with the challenges of a rapidly growing organization, Downer EDI sought to establish a standard framework that would enable the company to manage performance, track and report financial results, and meet regulatory requirements for its many divisions, business units and geographies. After evaluating several solutions, the company purchased licenses of Hyperion System 9 Financial Management and Hyperion System 9 Financial Data Quality Management software.

Hyperion's unique ability to integrate financial management, consolidation, planning, data quality management and scorecard applications into a unified solution made Hyperion System 9 the clear choice for Downer EDI.

"Very few solutions have the breadth and depth that Hyperion offers," said Peter Reichler, chief financial officer of Downer EDI. "And since two of our seven divisions already used and trusted Hyperion software, the choice was relatively easy."

For Downer EDI, whose fiscal reporting processes must comply with Australian securities regulations, an important part of implementing Hyperion System 9 Financial Management is placing controls on record-keeping and reporting processes. "Successfully operating within specified controls - such as time or budget - gives companies in our industry a competitive advantage," Reichler said. "We needed to apply that same discipline to our reporting."

For instance, it is common practice for Downer EDI's finance workers and managers to manually load and consolidate their financial data into Excel spreadsheets - a time-consuming method that leaves too much room for error. To solve this, Downer EDI intends to quickly and efficiently extract financial information from the company's core ERP systems. With financial data residing in multiple Oracle, JD Edwards and SAP systems, the company will make strategic use of Hyperion System 9 Financial Management to consolidate disparate ERP data. Working in conjunction with Financial Management, Financial Data Quality Management software's data preparation server will ease the process of validating and verifying the financial data.

"The ability to extract data directly from an ERP system is quite crucial," added Reichler. "ERP systems provide a disciplined structure for data, and Excel spreadsheets don't always reflect that structure. With Hyperion, however, we can preserve the integrity of our ERP data in a format that, to the end user, closely resembles the look and feel of a spreadsheet."

Working directly with Hyperion in Australia, Downer EDI intends to start rolling out Hyperion System 9 Financial Management and Financial Data Quality Management to users early next year. "Hyperion software works out of the box, and it isn't difficult to use," said Reichler. "In terms of a key financial control, this is the best piece of software I can find."

About Hyperion

Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL) is the global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than 12,000 customers in 90 countries rely on Hyperion both for insight into current business performance and to drive performance improvement. With Hyperion software, businesses collect, analyze and share data across the organization, linking strategies to plans and monitoring execution against goals. Hyperion integrates financial management applications with a business intelligence platform into a single management system for the global enterprise. For more information, contact us.

"Hyperion" and Hyperion's product names are trademarks of Hyperion. References to other companies and their products use trademarks owned by the respective companies and are for reference purpose only.