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IBM Planning Analytics
What Is IBM Planning Analytics?
IBM Planning Analytics automates your essential planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. But it also provides self-service analytics for business users and flexible, multidimensional modeling for your finance team. Starting from a customizable planning workspace, IBM Planning Analytics discovers insights automatically directly from your data and empowers users with the speed, agility and foresight they need to deliver better business results.
Who Uses IBM Planning Analytics?
Suitable for organizations of any size and in any industry, it is a performance management solution that helps automate operations across planning, forecasting, analysis and more.
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IBM Planning Analytics
Reviews of IBM Planning Analytics
Excellent budget planning tool
Comments: We have a good experience using it to do budget planning, analysis and forecasting.
Pros:
The Excel integration helps us make budget planning and reports. The automated data processing tool is very useful and flexible.
Cons:
The learning curve is a little bit high due to lack of documentation. At first, we found this tool difficult to use.
Alternatives Considered:
Great CPM enterprise software
Comments:
We had great experience using IBM Planning analytics implementing the workforce planning, and marketplace planning. It is stable and robust, supporting enterprise level planning and forecasting.
The integration with cognos analytics make the reporting side easier.
Pros:
1. Good performance especially the enhanced processing engine in the recent versions; 2. Robust reporting capability and integration with other IBM software such as IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft office; 3. Capability of integration with Watson and SPSS.
Cons:
1. Although feeds and rules are the cores of IBM Planning Analytics, it makes the developer really hard to design and troubleshooting, wondering if the complexity can be encapsulated with a more business driven approach; 2.Comparing to other software, IBM Planning Analytics lack of new features in the recent couple of years.
IBM Cognos TM-1
Pros:
This product allows our Finance team to forecast. Being able to tie the data to our data warehouse allows our users to slice and dice the data they way that they need.
Cons:
This product is hard to maintain at times. Being a place that doesn't have trained individuals on how to use this, we have to turn to outside vendors to help us out quite a bit. Doesn't seem to intuitive and is hard to finds information on the internet.
Review of IBM Planning Analytics
Comments: It has been a good choice as far as functionality.
Pros:
- ease of use with Excel, word and PowerPoint applications
Cons:
The overall cost is higher that other products because of the license
IBM Planning Analytics for Planning and Reporting in Finance Depts
Comments: I have built complex models in TM1 for both Management and Statutory Accounts. I have built planning models in areas such as property valuations, ship building project costing, airline route profitability, currency conversion, activity based costing, public finance initiative scenario comparison, etc
Pros:
TM1 aka Planning Analytics will consolidate data in real-time. As soon as a budget figure is changed at the bottom of the hierarchy you can see the impact of that change on all higher level numbers, and on any related values for which calculations can be defined in its rules language. It can easily cope with Currency Conversion, Rate based Planning, Allocations, Activity Based Costing, etc. The multi-cube architecture means that if you change a value in eg the Price cube you can see the impact on other related cubes, such as Sales and Profit and Loss. It has real time links to Excel making it easy to build Excel sheets that can be used as input templates for budgeting, where entering a number instantly updates the underlying TM1 cube and which can also be used for sophisticated reporting. The Excel workbooks can be easily published to TM1 Web where are then accessible to anyone with a web browser. Data can be both entered and reported on, in the web.
Cons:
The Planning Analytics Workbench PAW is not as capable as Power BI for Dashboarding. However, the modelling and planning capabilities of TM1 are superior to those of Power BI.
Trustworthy as TM1
Comments: Predictive insights uncovered automatically with just a few clicks
Pros:
It's powered by TM1 another great solution of IBM. Eliminate manual tasks derived from the constant and tedious use of spreadsheets. It provides dynamic planning and analytics workspace to model real-time scenarios. Once I export it to Excel as a formula driven file, all I have to do is edit the cell that it is pulling from and the result will vary depending of the desired result.
Cons:
Must wait some time while files are processed. Also penalize heavily errors. But once is set the results are great.
Awesome tool to manage budget and planning
Pros:
Its multi task software, so no need to buy different software to manage your organisation planning, reports are exporting to excel so easily modify it as you wish
Cons:
Bit difficult to setup, no more articles over the internet, you need to ask some techies for one time setup. Later anyone can handle it
A predictive/analysis software at fist class
Pros:
If you need to perform Budgetting activities having several cost centers and managers from which you need to collect budget data, this is the solution to your need.
Cons:
The direct support supplied by IBM is more a commercial than technical support, by the way there is plenty of IBM partners supporting it
I've been a TM1 consultant and administrator for the past 5 years.
Pros:
It is a very power tool if used in the right situation in the right way.
Cons:
Ability to create complete UI and getting data out of it.
BI Product
Pros:
The overall product provides a central system and removes the need to purchase many different platforms.
Cons:
The security setup is complex and difficult to do out of the box. Once setup, it works great with Acitve directory
TM1 Review
Comments: TM1 is a great tool to have as long as the organization's system interfacing are setup to work reliably and the databases are designed to interface with each other. If these conditions are not ideal, then TM1 will not add as much value to the organization as it is designed to.
Pros:
The biggest advantage of using IBM Cognos TM1 is the ability to fully incorporate budgets and planning into the accounting system and the ability to use Cognos and Costpoint and other softwares to expand, analyze and extrapolate these budgets, planning and forecasts.
Cons:
TM1 heavily relies on data feed from other systems whether it be Cognos, CostPoint or T&E and any small issue during the data interface can skew the analysis and often result in errors and misleading financial analysis.
The best budgetting sw ever seen
Comments: I devellopped twice TM1 and my customers were always happy
Pros:
IBM Cognos TM 1 is the best solution for budgetting & modelling; it has a strong adherence to each budgetting process due to its flexibility
Cons:
The price is a little high for those companies having small business; the interface could be improuved
Best Customer Service
Comments: IBM has the absolute best customer service. Each time we had an issue there was someone from their IT Support to help right away. We spoke with a guy named Steve once that fixed us up perfectly. Thank you IBM and thank you Steve!