EPM Conversations — Episode 10, A Conversation with Jodi Hill, Pattern Recognizer and Outlier

We’re all wired to see patterns

We live in patterns: seasonal, political, historical, and even atomic. Many live a life blithely unaware of them, which is to their disadvantage, for understanding those patterns is key to what makes us human, drives culture and society, and informs economics. We happy few in the performance management world figuratively live and die by the patterns in data. If careful observation of clients, customers, and conferences is an accurate guide, we are largely cut from the same professional and educational cloth. This is not always true. Those of us who come from outside that pattern have different perspectives, values, and insights. Jodi Hill is one such outlier.

Her path to a job in business strategy is atypical and is driven by its unconventionality: from Army translator to accountant to consultant to strategist is surely out of our norm. So too is an educational journey from the Defense Language Institute to a BS in accounting to multiple Masters in predictive analytics, public policy, and health economics. No matter how diverse this may seem at first glance, it is held together by the thread of transforming data into information by seeing, interpreting, and understanding patterns. I’ve

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EPM Conversations — Episode 9, A Conversation with Matthias Heilos, CEO of Finance Technology Innovations

Data, data everywhere, and none of it in the right place or in the right format

Performance cannot be managed (see what I did there?) without data. And yet data –because it is in the wrong format, because it is in the wrong place, because it is poorly defined, because we don’t have the ability or the resources or the time to transform it into what our systems need – is ever a challenge. Data is, quite simply put, hard. FinTech Innovations aims to alleviate that challenge and make data easy.

See a problem, fix a problem

The performance management world is small (which suggests that alas this podcast’s audience will necessarily follow suit unless we figure out how to break out – we’re working on it): I’ve known Matthias for at least a decade although when I first met him he was (I think – it was a while ago) an independent consultant.

How did Matthias go from that most independent (and arguably isolated) place to software entrepreneur? What made him leave HFM and FDMEE (apologies to all of you bass players out there – just listen and you’ll understand) behind and focus solely on the manifold

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EPM Conversations — Episode No. 8, A Conversation with Tom Shea, CEO of OneStream Software

From Enterprise administrator to CEO, from market disruptor to Magic Quadrant leader

We at EPM (or should that be CPM?) Conversations are – unsurprisingly – pleased beyond belief to have OneStream Software CEO Tom Shea as our very special guest. We think you’ll be pleased as well.

OneStream is in the moment and of the future. How did that happen? Who made that happen? What is its genesis? Where is OneStream right now and where will it be in the future? Why is it such a success? This podcast answers all and throws in more than a few surprises.

OneStream as a rocket ship

Certainly its rise has been meteoric. What has enabled OneStream to evolve so quickly from an industry insurgent to a market visionary? I could opine (those of you who have had the misfortune to cross Yr. Obt. Svt.’s path have long known that I have many opinions, performance management and otherwise, some of which are even correct) on why that is but ultimately that’s just a geek’s take on a force somewhat larger than him.

Better instead to listen to the man himself as he takes us all on a journey from CPA to

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EPM Conversations – Episode No. 7, A Conversation With Kevin Lawrence, Marketing Analytics, Corporate to Guerilla

Not EPM, not CPM, but analytics of a marketing kind

This podcast is dipping its collective and metaphorical toe outside of the warm and cozy confines of performance management with a conversation with a guest whose job, passion, and personal interest is understanding the relationship of human behavior with business through the lens of marketing analytics. Join us, won’t you, on this fascinating conversation with Kevin Lawrence that is most definitely not within the scope of traditional EPM but most definitely within the scope of your interest.

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The journey to marketing and analytics

Kevin’s had an interesting path, one that isn’t really the norm in our ~~profoundly boring and all too predictable~~ fascinating EPM world: from the arts to nonprofits to the Fortune 100 to Find The Loose Brick.

Numbers without an understanding of the nexus of business and people are meaningless. Kevin’s professional life has deeply informed how he and his clients understand how you and I interact with corporations and their products, services, and oh yeah: each other.

The past actually is prologue

For you wee lads and lassies who weren’t around to hear this song when it first came out to witness the change in tools

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EPM Conversations — Episode 6, A Conversation With Mike Nader, EPM’s Very Own Data Analytics Polymath

Hah! EPM doesn’t get a lot of polymaths, does it. Yet Mike is exactly one of those.

A polymath is, “a person of great and varied learning” although Mike is too modest to agree with that description. If you but listen to this conversation, you (and he) will see that it is a fair characterization.

NB – The above graphic isn’t for n00bs but instead for veteran EPM practitioners who recognize the graphical genius of the long-gone and much-lamented Arbor Software’s training decks. Mike has several ties to this as you’ll hear.

But wait, there’s more

In addition to Yr. Obt. Svt., this conversation also has Natalie Delemar as our guest host and regular John Booth. This varying cast of characters is what I hope is the (or at least a) future of EPM Conversations. Tim, Celvin, John, and I are wonderful (ahem) hosts but there’s much, much, much more to EPM than us, cf. our guests and Natalie.

I’ve known (at least I was at the same conference although as I really and truly worked 100 hours that week in addition to presenting and working a booth so if I did meet Mike I have no recollection

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EPM Conversations — Episode 5, A Conversation (no, a rap!) With Chris Turner

Different? You want different? Music? Humor? Freestyle Rapping? Maybe something related to EPM?

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Maybe. Actually, yes, quite a bit really.

Chris Turner is his name

You read that right: EPM Conversations has a number of firsts in this podcast:

A conversation with the artist and performer Chris Turner.
A freestyle rap about EPM. Really. We have the best and simultaneously the only rap on this subject extant. I look forward to others contributing to this genre. And then a rap battle. It’s the obvious move.
A podcast where your hosts are largely unable to form coherent sentences or at least keep up with the guest. We tried but we’re not that facile with language as you’ll hear when Chris covers EPM in all of its glory as well as the episode itself.

A note before we get into the content of this conversation: if you are of a timid and retiring nature, easily offended at adult language and commentary, then I fear this isn’t for you. However, I think the number of 11 year olds who listen to EPM Conversations rounds down to zero and you are all grown up so I merely warn that if you are one of

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EPM Conversations – Episode No. 4, a conversation with John Booth

What could be better than the Three EPM Conversations Cohosts?

What whole number is greater than three? Four, totes obvs. And here we are, with Yr. Obt. Svt., Celvin Kattookaran, Tim German, and now John Booth.

John and I did the very first EPM-in-the-cloud presentation at Kscope11: EPM 11.1.2.something-or-other running on AWS. John did all of the heavy lifting and I did…something. No matter, he still talks to me as you will gather below if you but listen.

John has been a writer in the Developing Essbase Applications books, is an ACE Director alumni, a contributor to the late and lamented Essbase Network54 message board, a frequent conference presenter, and always has a provocative and interesting viewpoint on the state of the industry, the value of performance management applications, and where on earth the Earth is heading. Heady stuff, no?

That’s quite an introduction and one that is well deserved. I am very happy to share that John will be a regular cohost on EPM Conversations.

With that, this episode’s précis:

Start – 8:10 Introductions
8:10 – 11:00 Running Hyperion on Lesser-Used Operating Systems
11:00 – 13:15 Whatever Happened To Exalytics?
13:15 – 22:55 Specialization in Infrastructure
22:55

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EPM Conversations – Episode No. 3, a conversation with Abhi Nerurkar, co-founder of EPMware

One out of three ain’t bad

We were lucky enough to land Abhi Nerurkar, one of the three co-founders of EPMware, a software company specializing in Master Data Management (MDM) and Workflow, for our very first vendor conversation.

A note: we didn’t speak with Abhi’s partners, Tony Kiratsous and Deven Shah, as we’re simply not set up/not experienced enough to manage a six way conversation. We have to work on that but I hope that Deven and Tony understand/are deeply appreciative of not being bored to death/annoyed beyond endurance as I fear such a large group would produce.

Just what don’t you know about software development? Well, if you’re like us: everything.

We – you, me, Tim, Celvin, The Man in the Moon (probably not) – we all use software as part of our job, else why listen to this podcast? But do we know anything about writing, managing, and selling software on a commercial basis? Unless you work for a vendor and are at the coal face at that, I can answer this one for you: no, not at all. It’s fascinating. Listen for the term “wireframe” and be as astonished as Abhi was when

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EPM Conversations – Episode No. 2, Part 1 & 2, a conversation with Essbase Lady, Natalie Delemar

Two (actually four) for the price of one (which incidentally happens to be free)

Our freewheeling conversation with Natalie Delemar continues apace. The conversation was so chock full o’ content (or, arguably, nuts) that we simply couldn’t make it just the one episode.

It was quite the free ranging conversation with really no holds barred. If you were looking for a wee bit of controversy (nicely put and argued – we are an antidote to negativity), here are your episodes. Our podcast hosting service has this option for each episode:

I was tempted. <grin> Seriously, no bad words, nothing NSFW, just opinion with compelling arguments for and against with a fantastic guest.

As always, there are a plethora of ways of hearing us: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Buzzsprout (our provider), Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Deezer, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, and Castbox. Celvin adds these and he is a podcasting madman – there are probably others that I’m not aware of.

And of course you can listen directly on www.epmconversations.com.

As noted, there are two episodes. Here’s the first, EPM Conversation – Episode No.

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EPM Conversations – TWTWTW

That Was The Week That Was, it’s over let it go, 52 times a year the week is done and over with before you know

Launched on the 30^th of September, as of the 8^th of October (there is your week) EPM Conversations had 155 downloads across lo our many podcast aggregators:

Let me note that, totes obvs, none of this could have ever happened without an audience – that’s you. If you haven’t listened to us, please do so – it’ll be worth your while. If you have, thank you for a podcast is nothing without listeners. EPM Conversations can be a valuable part of our professional EPM world, but only with your participation.

Our first week’s global audience seems to be shaping up nicely with a not-everyone-in-the-world-is-a-North-American cast:

While there is understandable disappointment that neither McMurdo Station nor Dakshin Gangotri nor Halley Research Station are yet among our audience, we are patient. We may need to be.

South America? I actually lived in there as a child although I have to confess there was no internet or (gasp) Celvin or (gasp, again) Tim for that matter when I lived there. There wasn’t even any

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