Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review When you find yourself growing and finding success faster than you can keep up with, SPS Commerce will save your life and your reputation. The services they offer are easy to understand, they are available with suggestions and ideas for better ways, personalization is available to best suit your needs or the needs of your customers so that you can really shine and relieve the worries that come with growing pains. SPS also helps to keep information accurate with less human touching to cause errors.
Read full review Pros Forecasting after taking into account seasonal trends and exceptional transactions Unlike spreadsheets, there is no fear of an user making changes to the mastercopy accidentally. Each user gets his or her own workspace to analyze. For entities operating in multiple countries, connects seamlessly with IBM Cognos Controller for taking into account variation in currencies Read full review We can easily create and send order confirmations. We respond to the corresponding receiving departments with timely and accurate ASN's. Once the order has shipped, customer service utilizes the invoicing function. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review We have quite a few people here who use this portal, and we have it set up to receive an email when an order is available to print. As of now, you can only add a few recipients to receive those emails; it limits you. Invoicing is challenging at times as you have to remember to go in and invoice. If you forgot, it is hard to find the order to invoice, as it seems to disappear. We still haven't figured out how to have some of the invoicing features auto-populate, so there isn't so much to fill out. I wish some of those features were easier to use, or find if you have them. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review If I can drop it, I will this year. We gave it a decent try for over 4 years and it has gotten worse with each added connection.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review Phone support is generally very good and you can get a person on the phone within a few minutes. Their emailed customer support however is very poor and often goes several days or longer before receiving a response, if ever at all
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review We reviewed many, SPS Commerce Fulfillment was the best "bang for our buck" with the level of growth we have been experiencing. The list of services they offered were exactly what we needed to be able to move our business to that next level of professionalism where we were growing faster than we could prepare ourselves for.
Read full review Return on Investment One of the advantage is on its ability to ease budget and planning Secondly,the fact that it allows for forecasting means based on such insights means that organisations are able to prepare for future eventualities Thirdly, since it can accommodate data from multiple sources means that one is able to carry out best business practices like planning. Read full review I enrolled in a product I ended up not using because the vendor that required it ended our working relationship and SPS refused to offer a refund. After I canceled it, they continued to charge our account for three more months of service. The interface is simple and easy to understand and use, so it saved time when preparing shipments. Read full review ScreenShots IBM Planning Analytics Screenshots