As Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence systems become adopted as the core decision support mechanisms within organizations, the need for transparent, fact-based decisions increases.  It not enough for these systems to provide the voluminous amount of data to the end user for analysis, but to tie data and decision inputs to the collaborative decisions that these systems support.

Although the organizational adoption of this style of decision making may face challenges, the technological groundwork is already in place.   Oracle’s addition of Annotation Service to Financial Reporting 11.1.x allows the capture of shared information against reporting objects and data.  This tool allows for threaded discussions and comments within EPM Workspace.

Let’s take a look at how users can utilize this tool against a Financial Report for a Planning application.