We are recently implementing Essbase studio at a Consumer goods company that had OBIEE with OBIAW license. They do not have Hyperion Planning License.
Note that OBIEE comes with Essbase studio license. You can then use this license to create an Essbase cube based of a data warehouse schema. We used OBIEE license to spin off a profitability ASO cube based on data warehouse.
All the allocations down to product/SKU number were done in relational database. Client deferred the HPCM license for now for budget reasons.
Essbase studio implementation is quite simple. First create connection for warehouse and Essbase. Bring in all tables from warehouse and create a mini schema (connection of facts and dimension tables). Manipulate you dimension elements and hierarchy. Then create essbase cube schema and deploy Essbase cube. We used the customized SQL to build data load since SQL generated from Essbase studio was inefficient and slow. Try to make a clean join between your fact and dimension tables. Follow all rules of SQL query optimization.
One of the issue we found was that sometimes Essbase studio did not load/deploy all properties for Essbase ASO cube reflected in relational database. E.g. members formula and consolidation operators. We did refresh at dimension element and cube schema level. That did not work, We had to delete cube schema and rebuild it again from scratch. That resolved our issues. Apart from rest everything was smooth.
Many ratios were built into ASO cube to give better insights e.g. COGS/NetSales, Gross Sales/Net Sales, Net Sales/Unit, Advertising Expense as a Percentage of Net Sales, SG&A expense /net Sales etc.
Please feel to reach out to me in case of any questions on implementation.