The Cincinnati, Ohio-based bank is also implementing Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management to perform financial consolidation, reporting and analysis in a single application, enabling reduced risk and facilitating compliance. These components of Oracle Fusion Middleware provide Fifth Third Bancorp with enhanced visibility, analysis and flexibility to help improve operations and rapidly capitalize on business opportunities.

Fifth Third Bancorp is expanding the company's longstanding use of Oracle's Hyperion applications to create a comprehensive enterprise performance management (EPM) infrastructure. The bank uses the software - which it has and continues to integrate with its Oracle Financial Services Applications
(OFSA) - to help establish a single financial data set across all business units, accelerate financial processes, enhance forecasting, and reduce risk and financial compliance costs.

Enhancing Business- and Department-Level Analysis and Planning

Fifth Third, which manages more than $104 billion in assets for nearly six million customers, first implemented Hyperion Planning in 2004, creating a foundation that enabled it to manage - not simply measure - business performance. The bank also improved reporting and planning processes, eliminating 1,200 spreadsheets, while increasing management accountability via new levels of data transparency.

"With multiple business units and thousands of users that access financial information from different systems, it is critical to establish and maintain a single version of corporate financial truth," said Bret Furtwengler, vice president, Financial Systems, Fifth Third Bank. "Oracle's Hyperion applications enable a single, accurate version of business information that we can analyze from multiple vantage points for increased forecasting and financial management. The latest release of Hyperion Planning reflects continued innovation that is vital as we expand our reporting and forecasting models to meet evolving requirements."

When the rapidly growing company re-engineered its planning process, it looked to upgrade its Hyperion Planning implementation to provide users with greater flexibility in modeling while allowing centralized administration of data and formulas to facilitate standardized reporting and high-level analysis across multiple departments, regions or businesses.

"Our upgraded Hyperion Planning system will make it even easier for users to work with Fifth Third's planning tools," said Furtwengler. "In the Hyperion environment, individuals will be able to perform all of the functions they previously completed in an off-line Excel spreadsheet - eliminating the need to cut and paste data and formulas while improving data consistency."

Hyperion Planning will enable Fifth Third users to create multi-dimensional views of business planning and forecasting data to highlight high-level business performance trends and drill down to review granular financial information. The upgraded system will also enable a single point of access and easier navigation between financial applications and reporting content, making planning tasks easier to perform and accelerating user adoption.

Strengthening Financial Management Best Practices

Fifth Third is also expanding its financial controls and selected Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management to streamline the financial close and reporting process, and reduce internal control risk. Hyperion Financial Management will support the financial consolidation cycle by providing data collection across multiple states, consolidation reporting and analysis in a single, highly scalable software solution. The Web-based application will integrate seamlessly with Fifth Third's other Hyperion applications and also supports standard third-party products.

The financial services organization will also utilize Hyperion's Smart View capability, which integrates the Hyperion applications with Microsoft Office, allowing end users to access EPM content through Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint for added convenience. Using this functionality, Fifth Third will ultimately enable users to instantly refresh data within their Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint documents without rekeying, saving time and helping to ensure data integrity.