Planning Analytics

Posted on behalf of Paul Bard, Senior Marketing Writer, IBM Planning Analytics

Support for IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.x ends on September 30, 2019! 

Are you still using IBM TM1? If so, we hope you love it, as most business professionals do. But you can get even more functionality by upgrading to TM1’s successor, IBM Planning Analytics. And if you’ve been procrastinating, please be aware that support for IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.x ends on September 30, 2019. So procrastinate no longer!   

An upgrade designed around your needs

As much as you like IBM TM1, we think you’ll like IBM Planning Analytics even more. That’s because we listened to feedback from TM1 users around the world and put everything we learned into IBM Planning Analytics. We took the powerful, in memory calculation engine of IBM TM1 and added capabilities that make your planning, budgeting, forecasting and analysis faster and more flexible than ever before. 

Bostik, one of the world’s largest makers of industrial adhesives, upgraded from IBM TM1 on premises to IBM Planning Analytics on Cloud and saw reporting speed and performance “drastically improved.”  

IBM Planning Analytics provides a unified web, Excel, and mobile experience for both finance and non-finance users. It goes beyond automating manual tasks and improving process efficiency. It offers cognitive capabilities that help you uncover predictive insights directly from internal and external data. 

Here are some of the key enhancements that make this upgrade so worthwhile: 

• IBM Planning Analytics Workspace – the interface that revolutionizes TM1
  Workspace is the new face of TM1. This customizable interface supports reporting, analysis and write-back with an interactive viewer that makes it easy to navigate multi-dimensional cubes and share results with co-workers. It’s been praised by customers and analysts alike for its ease of use, and it lets you create compelling visualizations quickly, with more than 25 different charts, graphs, maps, and scorecards. Workspace is also mobile, so you can work with it on your iPad or other tablet device. 

Deployed to more than 6,000 users at German railway company Deutsche Bahn, IBM Planning Analytics is “very easy to use” and helps users understand the data, without having to master the technical side. 

• Seamless integration with Microsoft Excel
  This Microsoft Excel add-in is the successor to IBM Cognos Analysis for Microsoft Excel (CAFE). It gives you Excel access to the IBM TM1 database with superior performance over wide-area networks. It lets you retain full Excel functionality and formatting when moving data between TM1 and Excel, and integrates smoothly with Workspace, sharing a common UX, Cube Viewer, and Set Editor.  

Figure 1: Work with IBM Planning Analytics in the familiar Excel interface. 

• Hierarchies for more flexible modeling
  The “hierarchies” capability in IBM Planning Analytics provides both technical advantages and business-user benefits. You can model attributes such as customer, product, region or sales channel and drill into them without having to create a new dimension or add elements (members) to the hierarchy. You can also see the intersections of several hierarchies within the same dimension and drill down to find data points never before possible.
• Deployable on cloud or on premises
  If you need an on-premises planning solution, you should be aware that IBM Planning Analytics is available in an on-premises version, IBM Planning Analytics Local. You choose the deployment method that suits your needs.
• No long migration process
  New capabilities are great, but upgrades are still a headache, right? Not here. In spite of the solution’s new name, the upgrade to IBM Planning Analytics is not really a migration. You simply install it and go, using your current model and mode of operation.  

Remember, support for IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.x ends on September 30, 2019. So schedule a 30-minute upgrade strategy call and/or product demonstration with your IBM representative. And visit the IBM Planning Analytics website to learn more about why so many of your peers have already made the switch.