ActivTrak is a cloud-native workforce intelligence platform that transforms work activity data into actionable insights for employee monitoring, productivity and performance management, and workforce planning capabilities. Deployment enables organizations to start collecting data in minutes.
$0
per year (maximum of 3 users)
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.1 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…
For our use case, the data collection, reporting, and ease of use made it easy to choose ActivTrak. It works great for ensuring that users are actually using their computers, working, and being productive. It is a great tool for a hybrid or full remote work environment.
IBM Planning Analytics is good for small to medium-size jobs or less complex projects. It can generate reasonably comfident results if input datasets are well prepared and cleaned. IBM Planning Analytics is not quite good when it comes to large-scale datasets, or datasets from various sources (for example data dumped from different databases.
ActivTrak gives me a breakdown of hours during which my employees were actively working, when they were active online but unproductive, when they were inactive, and when they were not online.
ActivTrak gives me a detailed breakdown of the software, platforms, and programs my employees worked on/in during each block of the day.
ActivTrak provides a detailed breakdown of how I spend my time each day to help me improve my productivity.
We had to really dig to figure out how to find the alarms for the potential mouse jiggler. Had I not really researched, I wouldn't have known that one of my employees was using it. The alerts should be more visable
The software is expensive, and I didn't like that I had to pay even more money to get screenshots of my employee who was using a mouse jiggler. While I really appreciate that I had the option, and it gave me the proof I needed, I think it should be included in the upfront cost.
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
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
I am unsure, to be honest. I have not had much exposure to different productivity software. I lucked out by using Active Trak first. I do not feel the need to investigate or review other productivity software. I would recommend ActiveTrak to other companies, users, or those searching for productivity software.
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.
Real-time productivity metrics and detailed workforce analytics have allowed us to better understand our workforce and make adjustments for better productivity.
Because we were able to curb bad habits, team behavior is at an optimal level.
Since our productivity level has gone up, the return on our investment in staffing has risen.
