It seems as though I’ve known Neviana seemingly forever, but it can hardly be more than 10 years. Neviana quite simply packs more into a decade-plus of friendship than many pack into a lifetime – she is that kind of dynamic personality.

Beyond her charisma, she harbors a fierce vision and ambition and drive: EPM, analytics, ODTUG board member, and now chatelaine of Aquila’s Nest Vineyards, in Newtown, Connecticut.

Celvin and I are fans – we think you will be as well.

Join us, won’t you?

The latest OneStream Splash (that would be 2025’s) is behind us and interesting it was.

While I’ve typically live-ish blogged Splash (and what was once Open World and of course ODTUG Kscope), I was largely (completely0 unable to attend sessions because I was ensconced in a fancy suite in the Nashville Westin conducting Black Diamond Advisory’s BDA Splash Podcast (yes, Celvin and I are on multiple podcasts – it’s a tough life). The show is a series of interviews with OneStream customers and employees in a talk show format. I like to pretend I’m a significantly geekier Dick Cavett.

What I and my objectively taller, younger, smarter, and subjectively better looking brother from completely different parents did was record our thoughts each night in the hotel lobby.

While – maybe – our thoughts will pique your interest (I hope you’re ready to hear Artificial Intelligence again and again and again interleaved with a mild amount of scepticism and yes there are other products in the OneStream world), I’m sorry to share that the sound in a marble hotel lobby can be quite dramatically variable. Regardless, we think you’ll be able to understand our conversation.

Join us, won’t you?

Tim and his company, Applied OLAP, has been in the Performance Management space for 26 years. That’s longer that many of the people in this space have worked, longer even than some of the people in this space have been on God’s green earth. That longevity isn’t accidental, but rather the result of a vision, a not unmeasurable amount of determination, a focus on continual product improvement, and oh yes – a pretty damn cool product – Dodeca.

I think so highly of the product, I wrote a chapter about it in my second book, Developing Essbase Applications: Advanced Techniques for Finance and IT Professionals. I will also note that this book is out of print and Amazon are pricing it at $170. Perhaps the Dodeca chapter is partially responsible?

Tim has been the visionary, developer (in the beginning, although he now claims he “does no work” which I am pretty skeptical of), and constant cheerleader for Dodeca and Applied OLAP’s other products.

Tim is always at ODTUG’s Kscope and holds ongoing events where new and existing customers – if you haven’t been to one of them or indeed Kscope, you owe it to yourself to do so.

In the meantime, have a listen to Tim in this episode and the one to come.

Join us, won’t you?

I have been characterized by some (my coworkers, my friends, my family, me) as being a tad cynical. Part of that cynicism is borne from experience, part of it is seemingly intrinsic to my nature. I find that I am often not disappointed when it comes to a certain level of disbelief.

At the same time, I am beyond pleased and maybe just a little bit less jaded when I see people not behave in a self-interested way and instead come together for the benefit of all, even if the “all” is our little world of Performance Management. That is exactly and precisely what this podcast contains. It is heartening.

Three recruiters, three companies, three varied (and that is understating the case) backgrounds, in just one podcast. Maybe I don’t hang around mature adults enough? Maybe these are just special people? Both?

In alphabetical order, Freya Bull of Codex, Patrick Cronan of WorkTrust, and Austin Perez of Specialized Solution Services, all came together to talk about who they are, what they do (and how it affects you, Gentle Listener), and the value they bring to all of us. Connecting the dots indeed.

I think Performance Management geeks are just that – geeks. We plow the same furrows year after year, seemingly content in our little world, coming from a functional finance or technical world. I’ve met an awful lot of people in this space and the origin story, while interesting, is often quite similar.

The guests of this podcast are anything but: national level athlete, politics (no, not what goes on in your company, but real US politics), and restauranteur. You’ll have to listen to understand their journey.

You’ll also have to listen to understand the value that these three recruiters bring to the podcast and their perspectives on work. It really is a very different and very interesting episode.

Join us, won’t you?

Matt Bradley, SVP of Development at Oracle will likely be well known to listeners; he’s a familiar face to customers and partners and can often be found talking about Oracle’s EPM strategy at conferences and other events.

Matt has worked for Oracle not just once but twice, led a healthcare decision support company way back when we still called it decision support, and joined Hyperion as the development for Planning on Valentine’s Day 2000. Listeners old experienced enough to remember the very first release of Hyperion Planning can thank Matt.

We talk about the future of on-premises Oracle EPM and Oracle’s policy of offering a rolling ten-year runway to customers who haven’t yet decided to move to Cloud for some or all of their business processes, how many customers remain in that position (via a gentle dig at a notable competitor’s market penetration), and about why that might be. Speed to a revised plan is becoming more and more crucial and we Matt shares his thoughts about how this can be supported via ML, IPM and Gen AI features. These features are a definitive break from the EPM past which have enthused the development team. We also learn about where that team sits in the world, how developers are selected and how the EPM development group works together with other Oracle teams.

Matt also talks about his customers, describing just how much (or little) of a customer’s activity can seen by Oracle – they can measure the adoption of new functionality, for example – and the way that newer entrants to the workforce have brought with them higher expectations of user experience that match what they see in non-enterprise application software.

Finally we talk about life outside of work. Raised in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland and educated in Belfast, Matt and his family now reside in Dublin (but the Californian one). Matt is married to his high school sweetheart whom he met while performing in a stage production of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? - which, respectfully, your hosts would not have guessed given a dozen attempts. Matt shares his tastes in literature, film and his admiration for (arguably) Northern Ireland’s greatest footballer of all time.

Spend an hour with Matt (and us) by listening to the entire episode.

Join us, won't you?

Oh How The Tables Are Turned

I trust you’ve listened to Part the First of the interview with Gabby. This episode is better. Why? Simply because Gabby starts interviewing us and we get a taste of what it’s like to be on the other side of the metaphorical table.

I’m not going to reveal any more than that – it’s simply too good and if you don’t end up laughing at Gabby’s interrogation techniques and our squeamish answers, well, you must be bereft of humor.

Join us, won’t you?

I (and the rest of your EPM Conversations hosts) first knew Gabby from his time in Essbase product management, a role he has long left. Celvin and I (50% of your host population) have been out of the Oracle space since 2017 so it’s difficult to remind ourselves that nothing stands still, and certainly not a dynamic personality like Gabby. Forgive us two if some of our questions dwell overmuch on the past, where Natalie’s and Tim’s are focused on today.

However, Gabby’s past story is one worth exploring as it informs the present – from the military to multiple startups to Big Red. Throughout it, he’s his inimitable self, bringing humor (yeah, this is the plug for the first episode, but wait till the second episode – it’s…incredible, and it doesn’t make sense unless this episode is heard first) and a playful wit to the performance management space.

HyperRoll and its first home in Oracle Express, ASO, the lawsuit, HyperRoll’s purchase by Oracle. just what exactly is Hybrid Essbase (the number of hours we’ve debated just what is happening under the covers), Essbase’s place today and tomorrow, working at small and large firms alike, helping out idiots who write multiple books on Essbase, and philosophy. That’s an awful lot to cover in an hour, hence this episode as part one of two.

Join us, won’t you?

EPM Conversations has been lucky to have a variety of Performance Management guests: vendors, people from other places and tongues, fantastic players in our little technological space, and of course the Women in EPM series. All of them are great (even the ones where Yr. Obt. Svt. is a guest), insightful, interesting, and often quite funny. In short, they are the stuff that technology podcasts dream of.

What we have not had is a consultant who does not primarily have a technical bent. By that I mean, EPM Conversations is a technical podcast, it is presented by four consultants (although our participation switches round as our guests’ background dictates) who (mostly, although as you’ll hear in this episode that isn’t 100% true) are techies first and foremost. This episode’s guest, Sharon Wang, has an element of a technologist’s perspective, but at her core she is a management consultant focused on organizational change within the context of technology. Without – hopefully – sounding like a hick from the sticks, I find that utterly fascinating. It also opened my eyes about yet another professional path not taken in my so-called career because of the breadth that this dual focus brings to work, but such are the fortunes of war and of life.

Oh dear, that makes consultants sound like monsters who care not a whit for their poor clients. Of course that cannot be true lest said consultant wants a very short time in the workforce, but regardless putting oneself in someone else’s shoes can be difficult, particularly if you haven’t walked a mile in someone else’s shoes. Yes, two idioms referencing shoes in one sentence but they work.

Sharon has that experience in industry and so understands the needs and goals of both sides of the project table. Consultants work with clients during project implementation but then, if the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, they leave at project end. The customer then owns the application. What happens then? A good consultant, a consultant who understands the customer’s world – in other words, an emphatic consultant – understands these potential outcomes and their likelihood. In my (gasp) 28 years of consulting I’ve sometimes been witness (surely never party) to a distinct lack of empathy; pain ensues. A consultant that understands the other side of the conference table never lets that happen.

We technologists often view technology as the lever to move the organizational world and we are often successful in that approach. However, in my (gasp, yeah, again) 28 years of consulting, I have seen (alas, this time sometimes as party to, but always against my better judgement and will) projects that only focus on the system and not the people. Sometimes clients need only a better mousetrap, other times they need a wholesale change in the way they think and work. Sharon (and I might note Natalie does as well) sees that gap and how to fill that.

Join us, won’t you?