Howard E
Johnson MBA
Independenet
Hyperion Consultant
Independent
Essbase Consultant
314-406-4022
Mr. Johnson has been a business intelligence consultant for the past 13 years and completed over 40 successful projects. He is a Hyperion Certified Essbase Consultant, Hyperion Certified Trainer, and possesses a Marketing / Logistics BS degree and an MBA degree. In addition, he has trained various clients including Hyperion consulting staff and has also presented at “Dimensions”, the Hyperion technical tradeshow.
Industries covered:
Consumer goods manufacturing, grocery retail, credit card processing, telecommunications, earth moving equipment manufacturing, gas services, fast food, retail, publishing, office equipment manufacturing, glass container manufacturing, non-profit medical association, defense contractor, pet products manufacturing, and post secondary education institution
The benefits received from these projects have included:
-Same day consolidations for > 300 user budgeting/reporting system
- Multi user live field level allocations
-Reduction of general ledger reporting turnaround by 70%
-Greater data consistency (gross profit has the same meaning throughout the organization)
-Data integration (consolidation of data from multiple systems (eg. Multiple GL’s)
-Dynamic reporting systems (accommodate reorganizations)
-Multiple consolidation paths
-Increasing the self-sufficiency of business departments
-Allocation of expenses in manners previously not possible
Technical Skills:
Hyperion System 9 Installs System 9 upgrade
Hyperion Reports Hyperion
Planning Analyzer
Essbase VBA MicroControl(DOS Hyperion)
HAL Hyperion Partitioning Hyperion API
Training Summary (teach for Hyperion as a subcontractor):
VBA Essbase Programming Essbase
Objects Essbase API
Essbase BootCamp Course
Work Experience:
Performance Material Manufacturer (
Hyperion System 9 Architect / Consultant (Feb 07)
·
System troubleshooting identifying issues causing
the instability of the environment.
·
Performance tuning and optimization evaluation
resulting in the reduction of a Planning database from 36 gig to 8 gig after
following just 2 recommendations.
Pharmaceutical Manufacturer (Perrigo,
Hyperion System 9 Architect / Consultant (Oct 07 – Jan 07)
·
Lead Architect for implementation of Hyperion
Planning 9.2.03 project
·
Responsible for the design and build of the global
budgeting system utilizing Hyperion Planning 9.2.03.
Medical Claims Processing Company (Magellan Health,
Hyperion System 9 Architect / Consultant (Mar 07 – Sep 07)
·
Performed upgrade from Essbase 6.5 to System
9.3. This involved hardware
specifications / acquisition resulting in the purchase of 2 additional 4 way,
16 gig ram, Microsoft Enterprise servers for the project. The software included Essbase, Financial
Reporting, Web Analytics, and the web and application servers.
·
Performed the software installs on the servers
(production and development) and also facilitated the client installs with
infrastructure. Documented all install
steps and procedures. The post install
tweaks required for the software to function were well documented and handed to
the client.
·
Performed work flow improvements to save one
administrator 1 ½ hours worth of work daily.
This involved the creation of automations for ftp’ing and ETL
processes. In addition, 2 additional
Essbase Applications were created to save financial analysts a combined 6 days
of manual processing each month.
·
Delivered self created EssUtility (custom Excel VBA
addin) and provided training. The use of
this utility greatly streamlined the creation / maintenance of reports. Many manual tasks were automated resulting in
more timely reporting of information and easier maintenance.
Extended Long Term Health Care (Sava Senior Care,
Hyperion Planning System Architect / Consultant (Sep 06 – Dec 06)
·
Streamlined one planning system currently in
production by reducing the business rules from 16 to 2 thereby greatly reducing
ongoing maintenance.
·
Revision of a work in process planning app that
never made it into production. This
revision included removal of dimension, rewriting business rules, web forms,
and creating new ETL process for data from Planning to Peoplesoft.
·
Created scorecards / dashboards in VBA that
automatically generate PDF files for distribution to the regional managers. These are now created in under 1 hour for the
entire company.
·
Performed documentation, technical training, and
knowledge transfer of all Hyperion Planning systems and related processes. This client will be self sufficient for the
next planning cycle.
Insurance / Financial Services Company (Nationwide,
Hyperion Reporting Environment Security (Sep 05 – Jun 06)
·
Security architect for portal reporting system with
expected user base of 10,000+
·
Gather requirements and design system to enforce
Sarbanes Compliance with regards to a public business unit data consolidating
with private business units.
·
Security utilizes LDAP authentication and includes
the following products: Performance Suite, Spreadsheet Services, Analyzer,
Hyperion Reports, and Essbase 7.3 (utilizing extensive security filters)
Extended Long Term Health Care (Sava Senior Care,
Hyperion Planning System Architect / Consultant (Jun 05 – Aug 05)
·
Came onto project when it was close to go live. Validated entire system design and made
modifications where necessary.
·
Redesigned all business rules to perform allocations
and eliminations.
·
Modified planning outline design for performance
considerations
·
Created ETL feed from Essbase / Hyperion Planning
into Peoplesoft that meet performance requirements. (10 minute window,
including sign flips, sub totals, etc.)
Hyperion Planning Budgeting System (Sara Lee Bakery Division,
Hyperion Planning System Architect / Consultant (Sep 04 – May 05)
·
As lead architect, designed and implemented a
budgeting system that consisted of 3 planning applications and 4 native essbase
applications.
·
Created the ability to perform high level
allocations in the sales application.
Business users were able to enter data at a very high level of customer,
product, and entity where the system would push the values down to level 0
across the 3 dimensions at the same time.
This enabled the sales forecast to link into the production plan for
each bakery.
·
This system enabled Sara Lee to perform both their
sales forcasting and manufacturing planning at a customer, product, bakery
level. Without Planning, this would not
have been possible in the previous system.
·
Created all hal integrations, business rules, and
calc scripts for the initial rollout for production and provided production
support for 5 months after go live.
Telecom Switch Datamart (Birch Telecom,
Essbase implementation manager (May 04 – June 04)
·
Implementation consultant for a rapid 6 week proof
of concept project. Involved software
installation on linux and windows hardware and Essbase model design and
implementation. The equivalent of 13 dimensions of data were delivered to the
users via 5 Essbase cubes.
·
Made changes to planned hardware for both dev and
production by adding ram.
·
Held multiple design sessions with 6 different
departments within Birch. Laid out
sample project plans for each model discussed.
·
Created proof of concept model for spreadsheet based
budgeting system using Essbase and VBA.
Weil, Gotschal, and Manges (Weil, Gotschal, and Manges,
Essbase Administration (Jul 03 – May 04)
·
Essbase administrator for period of 7 months. During this time, I upgraded Essbase from 6.1
to 6.5 p2. Purchased a new production
server and migrated the environments. Also
maintained and tuned 14 cubes that were in production.
·
Designed an allocation system which allocated all
expenses to the employee / department level based on their hour / department %
entered.
·
Trained end users.
Eliminated Esscell references in workbooks. This improved end user retrieval times from
45 minutes to 25 seconds for a given report.
·
Trained end users in proper report design and VBA
automations.
·
Interviewed 20 candidates for my position. This process took 7 months. The client discovered they needed to pay a
bit more money than they were expecting to pay.
It is also difficult to find good talent out there for Essbase
administration.
·
Created online repository for end users covering
creating reports and VBA coding.
Credit Card Processing Company (MasterCard, Purchase, NY)
Planning Version 3.0– Planning infrastructure project manager (4/03 – Jun 03)
·
Project manager for the infrastructure of the Hyperion
Planning project. This included all
software install and configuration settings on 3 different planning
environments and 2 different Essbase, test, development and production.
·
Identified and resolved multiple issues with project
design that would not have enabled the Planning system as designed to go into
production. (Watchdog over implementation team lead by Hyperion)
·
Designed and developed all interfaces required for
feeding and extracting from Planning.
The file layouts for Planning interfaces are especially unforgiving and
must be perfect to load without error.
·
Provided system tuning to reduce consolidation and
retrieval times for all Planning components, from Essbase to the web
servers.
Global Oil Energy Company (Noble Energy,
Planning Version 2.2– Planning Developer for Budgeting Project (11/02 –
Feb 03)
·
Responsible for the setup and design of budgeting
system using Hyperion Planning 2.2, Analyzer 6.1, Reports 2.0, HAL, and Essbase
6.5.
·
Redesigned existing forms. Performance of Planning forms is highly
dependant upon form layout. Forms
performance times have improved from 2 minutes to 10 seconds depending on
design.
·
Performed installs and various upgrades of each of
the planning components. Design of end
user interface and model design based on user requirements.
Sewer Slipline Manufacturer and Implementor (Insituform Technologies,
Inc.,
Essbase 6.1 – Essbase Front End Development for Finance Personnel (9/02
– 11/02)
·
Redesigned their Essbase reporting system to remove
a dimension and reorganize another. This
enabled their reports to be much more flexible and dynamic in nature as well as
reduce the consolidation times.
·
Designed and trained finance personnel on VBA
template creation and automation. They
are now able to perform same day consolidations in hours as opposed to 3
days. The finance department has a
thorough understanding of this code and requires no support from IT.
Baby Products Manufacturer (The First Years,
Essbase 6.1 – Essbase Tuning and Administration (01/02 – 10/02)
·
Salvaged Essbase allocations project gone
wrong. Revived an application that was
at 30 gig and took 24 hours for one of 12 allocations. Final model takes 7 gig and performs 12
allocations in 13 hours.
·
Built allocation model that performs 8 separate
allocations down to by customer by product.
This is directly impacting how The
First Years is staffing each of their product line planning departments.
·
Prototyped various user interfaces combining
relational data with Essbase utilizing excel with vba, analyzer, and ArcPlan.
·
Identified the need to purchase partitioning to
combine financials for 3 separate cubes.
Many of the intricacies of the partitioning were addressed before the
move to purchase took place. (which dimensions needed to be in sync, what this
meant to current production models)
Retail Convenience (SSP – Circle K,
Essbase 6.0 – Essbase calc scripting (10/01 – 1/02, 4/01 – 7/01, 4/99 –
8/99)
·
Essbase DBA role, created 2 essbase cubes.
·
First cube was read / write and contained data from
their g/l and end user data entry.
·
All facets of essbase were used, load rules, calc
scripts, report scripts, and esscmd automations. Built custom excel interface for users to
enter and report on data.
·
Second cube, read only holds sales for every store
by every upc for every day.
·
Essbase 6.0 was implemented to utilize the essbase 6
feature of attributes. Without the use
of attributes, the 5 dimensional cube that takes 5 hours to calc would have
been a 12 dimensional cube that would have taken > 24 hours to calc.
·
Also automated the loading and calcing of essbase
through esscmd and a scheduler.
Aggricultural BioTechnology Company (Monsanto,
Hyperion Planning 2.0 – Performance Tuning - Essbase calc scripting (4
months, 7/01 – 10/01)
·
Created allocation and conversion calc scripts that
were too complex to use the business rules tool. Created calc scripts that are
run upon form submission. (200% faster than the default calc scripts)
·
Loaded and performed calculations on rate metrics
essential for volume and package size conversion calculations in addition to
currency conversion calculations.
Telecommunications (Sprint PCS,
Essbase optimization and automation (4 months, 12/00 – 4/01)
·
Reduced database calc time by 40% and helped develop
various essbase automations.
·
Performed upgrade on HPUX essbase 6.x (difficult
environment to run essbase on, not recommended)
National Grocery Retailer (01/00
– 08/00 WholeFoods, Austin Tx)
Budgeting / Reporting PeopleSoft sourced Forecasting System (7 months)
·
Project manager for regional controller
forecasting/reporting system.
·
Forecasting values were gathered at corporate which
were then pushed out to the regional controllers for forecasting purposes.
·
Enabled corporate setting of forecasts which were
then modified by 7 field controllers by location, period, and by 15 separate
accounts.
Budgeting / Reporting PeopleSoft Sourced Budgeting System (7 months)
·
Lead Architect and Project Manager for 120 user
read/write budgeting/allocation system.
The implementation team consisted of 3 Essbase consultants and 1
functional lead from the client.
·
Functionality included high level forecasting being
pushed down to detail. End user
allocation system further pushed out to field personnel. The field users consisted of 120 store
managers each being able to modify their budget by subteam, by accounts, by
period. This system allows for during
the day, live regional consolidations.
·
Built interface to build cubes from PeopleSoft
Oracle tables (including building dimensions from PeopleSoft trees and
extracting data)
·
The system built was to replace a failed attempt at
using PeopleSoft Budgets for budgeting.
Functionality that Budgets could not deliver was delivered using a
custom Essbase solution.
Gas Utility Company ( 09/00 – 01/00, 2 months Ameren,
Budgeting / Reporting PeopleSoft Budgets
·
Designed the cubes and reports for the PeopleSoft
Budgeting module. Due to the limitations
of the PeopleSoft Tools data mover, 16 separate cubes were required for
deployment.
·
The reports were designed with the emphasis on
reducing paper and providing online viewing.
Cognos and Excel were chosen for the reporting tools. Cognos would
enable browser based viewing through the web and Excel would enable the
creation of formatted financial statements.
·
The performance requirements were not going to be
met with Essbase 4.2, so the system was patched to upgrade to Essbase 5.0 to
utilize the advanced Essbase features.
Specifically, 4 14 dimensional models needed to be fully loaded and
calced within a 6 hour window. This
would not be possible without the use of Essbase 5.0.
International Beverage Company (11/00 10 day prototype, Anheuser Busch,
Software Selection
·
Selection of Olap server standard: Performed
pre-sales assistance for the demonstration of Hyperion’s Essbase
capabilities. Performed a one day
prototype that typically takes three days to complete. The model included daily deliveries from
three regions of distributors to all retail outlets. Due to both the performance and ease of
deployment, Hyperion’s Essbase was chosen.
Post Secondary Education Institution (2/99 – 3/99,
Budgeting / Reporting
·
Project manager for a course profitability budgeting
/ reporting system that was developed in under 6 weeks. The ability to perform expense allocations at
the course level based on credit hours, # of classes, and number of students
was created. Costs such as facilities
and maintenance, faculty salaries, department support staff, and utilities were
allocated at the class level based on credit hours.
·
Financial Aid by student were combined with courses
taken to create Financial Aid awarded by student by university program. Such analysis as which programs were
receiving the most levels of financial aid was created.
·
Business questions answered: “Do we need to raise
tuition?” Which programs are the least profitable?” “What is the breakdown of
University Financial Aid by class?”
Telecommunications Company – Sales Quoting System (4/98 – 10/98, 6
months, WorldCom, Jackson MS)
Reporting – Data Gathering
·
Created customer-pricing model to analyze profit
margins by product, which enables the consolidation of revenue and expenses by
many different means. Since 200
customers are processed each week, there was no way to consolidate these
analyses in an automated fashion. The
model developed allows for the consolidation of an entire year’s worth of
customer pricing quotes.
·
Productivity improvement: A customer analysis quote
previously took 3 days, currently takes 1 hour with the developed system.
Telecommunications Company – Revenue Reporting (4/98 – 10/98, 6 months,
WorldCom, Jackson MS)
Budgeting / Forecasting / Reporting
·
Project manager for consolidation / reporting system
to eliminate the re-keying of data for reporting purposes. This system accepts inputs from 6 different
sources including G/L feeds, spreadsheets from multiple departments, and paper
reports from another consolidation system.
By automating the loading of this information into a single database,
report production time was reduced by 3 days.
·
The previously used reports have been modified to
pull data from the newly created multidimensional database. This resulted in
quick implementation and a seamless transition from the old way of doing
things. Previously, spreadsheet links
existed in order to consolidate the organization’s financials. All spreadsheet links have been eliminated
resulting in much smaller, cleaner spreadsheets, that greatly reduce the
possibility of corrupted files and incorrect financials being reported.
Global Earthmoving Equipment Manufacturer (Caterpillar,
Budgeting / Reporting
Led project development team
to design and implement consolidation / budgeting / reporting system to replace
the existing spreadsheet based system. This
involved identifying the business processes in involved in the annual budgeting
process.
·
This system reduced the budgeting cycle time by a
factor of 3, eliminated errors from consolidation, provided a great level of
data integrity, and also incorporated various levels of security for
departmental security across the corporate entity.
Telecommunications Company (Digital PCS) (Sprint,
Budgeting / Reporting
· Member of three person implementation team, which developed a customized budgeting system for a nationwide product in eight weeks. This budgeting system, currently in use by over 200 field offices, consists of three Essbase databases utilizing Excel as the front end. Users have the capability to load data and see consolidations real time.
· Created an end user template development system consisting of an Excel addin and spreadsheets. This system reduces the need for IS support by enabling the development of planning templates by financial analysts.
Gas Services Company (MCN,
Budgeting / Reporting
·
Member of two person implementation team which met
with affected users to determine design requirements to create a reporting /
budgeting system for the gas services business.
·
Created Essbase reporting system, which eliminated
two information gathering systems and the re-keying of data. In one week’s
time, developed over 40 management reports for external reporting, internal
reporting, accounting, and financial analysis departments.
·
Created an EIS GL reporting system in Essbase and
Excel which included stop light indicators for tracking key controllable
expenses Worked with accounting manager to ensure the system created would meet
the needs of principal officers in the corporation.
·
Created industry specific measures through calc
scripts to gauge performance of the various fast food outlets by location by
cost center, which could be reported by various consolidation paths.
·
Cost Reduction: Through the elimination of fed ex
charges alone, the project paid for itself in 16 months.
Major Retailer (Southern and Eastern Coasts) (
Reporting
·
Created calculations used to monitor business
performance at the store level by week by subclass.
·
Performed the functions required to connect a
corporate planning system, Arthur, with Essbase. This system enabled the budgeting and
planning of sku level data for over 80 department stores.
·
Created automation procedures to allow the seamless
integration of data from legacy systems into a modern reporting system.
Fortune 500 Journal and Medical Book Publisher (Mosby,
Reporting
·
Decision Support project manager. Determine resources needed to convert all
existing reports from mainframe to client server based reporting with the
SmartStream decision support system.
Utilized multidimensional tools to create client based multidimensional
databases. Each of these databases
allowed interactive analysis while eliminating 25 reports per database.
·
After meeting with financial accountants, determined
reporting system requirements in addition to tool selection, which included
both multidimensional and relational database systems.
Fortune 500 Office Equipment Manufacturer
Project Scoping
·
Met with financial personnel to determine reporting
requirements.
·
Scoped out the resources required to complete
conversion from a mainframe based reporting system to client server.
·
Created project plan for implementation of the
reporting system involving tool selection and resource planning.
National Non-Profit Medical Association (AMA,
ERP Selection Process
·
Member of ERP member package selection team. Met with all affected users in the
organization to determine business and reporting requirements.
·
Provided analysis to determine the level of
customization required for implementation for various ERP packages. Recommended
ERP package purchase for accounting, finance, and reporting functions.
Fortune 500 Container Manufacturer (Owens
Reporting
·
Member of a financial systems and purchasing
implementation project team at a major plastic and glass container
manufacturer. Played a major role in the
design and development of the financial control and data analysis reports.
·
Worked with financial personnel to identify and
develop reports including credit, general ledger, and financial reports. Development was performed through the use of
various decision support tools including relational and multidimensional
databases.
·
Administered the $8,000,000 Smart Buys Vendor
program which reduced the company’s new store and remodeling costs $857,000
through volume discounts with key vendors.
·
Developed a reporting system where time to report
planned purchases of 320 visual elements for 8 divisions was reduced from 1
week to 4 hours.
·
Reported financial information for all store
companies including sales, earnings, merchandise, sales promotion and other
related areas to senior management.
·
Consolidated and reported daily planned sales for
all department store locations.
·
Consolidated inventory transfer information for an
aircraft project to meet government auditor requirements, which created a
$200,000 increase in progress payments.
·
Developed decision support reporting system, which
enabled finance personnel to download large amounts of information from the
mainframe without programmer involvement.
This resulted in a savings of 6 days for the reporting cycle. This system is still used today, having been
developed 4 years ago.
·
Analyzed and proposed computer and software
purchases for the Cost Performance Group.
Major Fast Food Retailer (Multinational) (Mc Donalds,
Prototype
·
Developed a ground-breaking Essbase prototype for a
fast food retailer seeking to replace their legacy system as part of a year
2000 conversion. Various functions such
as spreading, consolidating, and reporting were addressed.
·
Involved use of the Essbase API and VBA to perform
advanced functionality.
Pet Products Manufacturer (Multinational) (Ralston Purina,
System Analysis
·
Performed model analysis of an eleven dimensional
Essbase manufacturing resource planning system for the largest pet products
manufacturer in the world. Summarized
findings and recommendations in a document for all-levels of personnel
(executive to analyst).