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…
$825
per month 5 users
ReconNET by Trintech
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
ReconNET is a corporate performance management solution from Trintech. ReconNET automates account reconciliation, including high-volume reconciliation, with the goal of helping users tighten controls, reduce risk and increase process efficiency.
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.
It is well suited in scenarios where customers have tremendous volumes of data to deal with and where the reconciliation of the information is of paramount importance to businesses and stakeholders. We use it primarily for balance sheet reconciliations that come with features, such as exception management, which is great for focusing on the few that matter the most at the end of the day.
The ReconNET tool has a great audit-trial system that captures every detail in the life of a record and helps eliminate any manual intervention. It's fully SOX Compliant, and helps track any changes in the data from an audit perspective.
The automation helps us focus entirely on the exceptions, which helps eliminate attention from the mundane tasks to areas with potential problems.
Exception management and automated posting to the GL are great features that help streamline many of the routine, mundane, and yet time-consuming activities, freeing up time to focus on issues at hand.
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
It takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of the tool to set up the reconciliations, but its not necessarily a drawback, since this applies to every other automation tool out there. However, once someone gets the hang of it, it's pretty user-friendly to run it on a daily basis.
Since automatons can only be built on a set logic, at times certain items that show up as exceptions are not truly a cause of concern. However, since it's always better to flag too many potential exceptions than too few, it's not a true drawback.
It has quite a few features, such as multi-currency reconciliation, bank deposits, disbursements, automated postings to G/L, etc. which could be of great value for various requirements for clients. It is especially useful where volumes of data are too large to deal with. The uses might not be phenomenal for low volume reconciliation requirements.
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.
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.
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
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.
Each automation tool has its own set of features, but the fact that ReconNET is built for reconciliation purposes sets it apart from the rest. The ease of usage once the user gets a hang of it, the extensive audit trial, and the ability to focus on exceptions rather than the necessity to scroll through a bulk of irrelevant information, all provide the key-user with the critical decision-making ability.
It definitely has a positive impact on ROI with freeing up resource availability and usage on the most pressing tasks at hand. For example, focusing on exceptions rather than reconciling from scratch.
Another positive impact on the ROI can be realized with the detailed audit trials on sensitive information.
Strong Financial Reporting is the backbone of any industry, regardless of the sector it operates in, and having an automated reconciliation tool such as ReconNET helps you attain the key objective of integrity of information in a timely fashion, to support the close process.
