ActivTrak headquartered in Austin provides their workforce behavior and performance tracking analytics solution.
$0
user/month
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
IBM Planning Analytics, powered by IBM TM1®, is an integrated planning solution designed to promote collaboration across the organization and help keep pace with the speed of modern business. With its calculation engine, this enterprise performance management solution is designed to help users move beyond the limits of spreadsheets, automating the planning process to drive faster, more accurate results. Use it to unify data sources into one single repository, enabling users to build…
This is excellent software if you wonder what your team is doing when you aren't there. If you want to improve your team's workflows and efficiencies so they get more done with less fatigue, this is a great thing to have. This is not spyware. It isn't designed to capture keystrokes. It is designed to help your team improve performance and for management to understand what they are doing and help them improve. If you want to micromanage your team, then don't use this.
I would be likely to recommend IBM Planning Analytics, particularly in scenarios where comprehensive financial and operational planning is essential. For instance, in our construction company, it is awesome for optimizing resource allocation across multiple projects, creating detailed project budgets, and conducting risk analysis to mitigate project uncertainties.
Alerts for when someone is not working during scheduled hours (although this may already exist and we don't utilize it as I know the alarm feature is pretty comprehensive)
Because of our IT configurations, a lot of weird "groups" show up on the dashboard which looks a bit confusing
Not having to create a group for 1 employee to see their own data, just allow each user to see their own data once their access account is created
IBM Planning Analytics was an upgrade from an older version of TM1 that is experiencing some growing pains, some functionality is harder to reach than it has been in the past
It is easy to learn as a surface user with created reports, but it does require some technical skills to make advanced calculations and reports if there is no reliable consultant available, much like Excel
We are in agreement that the tool is very handy as a security companion. The system collects and retain relevant historical data to be queried when you desire e.g. in security reviews once a week.
Since IBM Cognos Express is suitable only for medium data warehouse environment, we are not sure if this tool solves the long term need as the business keeps growing rapidly. So its a 50/50 ratio to renew Express license. But having said that, the components of IBM Cognos Express are also available in other Cognos BI suites like Cognos 10.x version. So we will probably upgrade our environment to IBM Cognos 10.x which comes with more new features.
ActivTrak is a great product that just keeps growing. Having used it for quite some time, we have been able to see ActivTrak grow and evolve as a product. The ActivTrak webinars are also helpful to get to know and learn the product. ActivTrak really just works with little effort needed after the initial installation
For developers, admins and end users looking for flexibility, IBM Planning Analytics would rate very highly on usability. For example, a developer has access to a highly performant built-in ETL (Extract Translate Load) tool and scripting language called Turbo Integrator that can (among other things) bring in data via flat file or direct connection from many data sources, move data around Planning Analytics, perform batch calculations, export to files or other data stores. In the rare situation where limitations are encountered there is a well documented REST API. Admins and end users benefit from the intuitive PAW (Workspace) interface as well as the rich Excel integration through Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE). Since flexibility inherently comes with a little more complexity, so an organization with simple and "cookie-cutter" requirements may rate Planning Analytics a little lower.
Support is always fast and the agents are ready at all times to help when an issue arises, if the tier 1 agent isn't able to provide a solution to the issue they're asked about they quickly escalate the issue to tier 2 or 3 to ensure that the appropriate support is given to the issue at hand to have it quickly solved. No issue we've had so far has taken more than two days to be solved.
Although I find the IBM Planning analytics documentation quite time consuming, their support with email and call is something i can term as very considerate and patient, I have had few calls about the features and how i would want to implement them within my projects, and the teams have been super helpful to resolve my issues
We selected ActivTrak for the features we were looking for. One of the main reasons was the deployment for Chromebook's and of course the price. During our demo held with each party, we were impressed with presentation from ActivTrak. One thing we would've liked is for ActivTrak to also be available for deployment to Android phones.
Anaplan does not handle sparsity; this is very problematic for large volume data sets (many 0's). There also are limitations to the number of dimensions that can be used in a module. If more dimensions are required, then separate modules need to be built and intertwined. IBM PA does not have these limitations.
Defensive capabilities immediately avoided data exfiltration from an outgoing employee.
Trends for underperforming or underdeveloping users can be spotted, analyzed by managers, and used within their overall development management to help staff reach their best potential.
Costing for targeted use is relatively low and therefore a "no brainer."
