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IBM Planning Analytics

IBM Planning Analytics

Overview

What is IBM Planning Analytics?

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…

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 49 features
  • Financial budgeting (92)
    9.5
    95%
  • Forecasting (92)
    9.5
    95%
  • Scenario modeling (91)
    9.5
    95%
  • Management reporting (91)
    8.8
    88%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Essentials

$825

Cloud
per month 5 users

Standard

$1,650

Cloud
per month 10 users

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/products/planning…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $825 per month 5 users
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Product Demos

Headcount and Staffing Planning with IBM Planning Analytics

mediacenter.ibm.com

Sales and Operations Planning with IBM Planning Analytics

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Demand Planning with IBM Planning Analytics

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Integrated Financials with IBM Planning Analytics

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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.9
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.8
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.3
Avg 8.2

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

7.9
Avg 7.6

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.1
Avg 8.7

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.4
Avg 8.0

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting

These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning

9.4
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.

8.5
Avg 8.1

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.7
Avg 8.2

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

9.1
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

8.9
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is IBM Planning Analytics?

IBM Planning Analytics is an integrated business planning solution that blends spreadsheet flexibility with database control and governance. It helps users to deliver faster, more accurate plans, forecasts, and budgets that can pivot to address changing market demands for FP&A, Sales, Supply chain, HR, marketing, IT and Sustainability.

It includes:

  • Built-in reporting -> Supports scorecards and metrics including ad-hoc reports and compelling visualizations.
  • User Interfaces -> A web interface, with spreadsheets.

  • Predictive forecasting ->Predictive and AI capabilities for faster, more accurate forecasts

  • Simple integration -> Integrates with an existing tech stack, including spreadsheet-based planning, ERP, CRM and any APIs.

  • Real time insights with TM1 -> Built on TM1 technology to give users faster, flexible analysis with the high-performance at scale

  • Flexible Deployment Options ->On-premise, cloud-based, or as a Service on AWS



IBM Planning Analytics Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features

  • Supported: Long-term financial planning
  • Supported: Financial budgeting
  • Supported: Forecasting
  • Supported: Scenario modeling
  • Supported: Management reporting

Consolidation and Close Features

  • Supported: Financial data consolidation
  • Supported: Journal entries and reports
  • Supported: Multi-currency management
  • Supported: Intercompany Eliminations
  • Supported: Minority Ownership
  • Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
  • Supported: Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Reporting and Compliance Features

  • Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
  • Supported: Management Reporting
  • Supported: Excel-based Reporting
  • Supported: Automated board and financial reporting
  • Supported: XBRL support for regulatory filing

Analytics and Reporting Features

  • Supported: Personalized dashboards
  • Supported: Color-coded scorecards
  • Supported: KPIs
  • Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
  • Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
  • Supported: Benchmarking with external data

Integration Features

  • Supported: Flat file integration
  • Supported: Excel data integration
  • Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Additional Features

  • Supported: AI forecasting

IBM Planning Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of Workflow managementScreenshot of Income statementScreenshot of Margin analysisScreenshot of Metrics managementScreenshot of Income statementScreenshot of Expense analysis

IBM Planning Analytics Videos

IBM Planning Analytics Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mobile Web

IBM Planning Analytics Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

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 sophisticated, multidimensional models that drive forecasts.

IBM Planning Analytics starts at $825.

Anaplan, SAP Analytics Cloud, and Workday Adaptive Planning are common alternatives for IBM Planning Analytics.

Reviewers rate Multi-User Support (named login) and Role-Based Security Model and Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of IBM Planning Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(237)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 98)
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Frances Berger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Planning Analytics is a robust and flexible application used for planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting in our Fortune 500 organization.<br>We are long time users of the product, implementing in 2007. We implemented in order to bring standardization and efficiencies to our one year planning process - inital rollout to 10+ users. That initial implementation was a great success.<br>Since that time we have have greatly expanded to approximately 300 users in the Finance organization - expanding our use case to expense and capital budgeting and projections, labor planning, revenue budgeting and forecasting, and executive and management reporting.<br>
  • Flexible product that can easily be customized to various business needs
  • Integration with Excel - the foundation of most Finance organizations
  • Good dashboarding interface in Planning Analytics Workspace
  • Quick response time for complex calculations
  • Simplification of rule writing interface
In my experience, Planning Analytics flexibility makes it well suited for all aspects of planning, budgeting and forecasting.It has also been useful in our organization to aid in developing proforma financial views related to merger or acquisition activity. The web interface Planning Analytics Workspace also provides good dashboarding capabilities for management reporting.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
we are using for capex planning, Head count planning, Infra allocations, cost allocations, revenue planning, financial reporting, management reporting. we also used for month end reporting, forecast planning and long range planning. This tool will help us to load transactional data in to the system.
  • consolidation
  • allocations
  • forecast planning
  • not good front end user interface
  • not easy to debug
  • organizing in to groups for processes
forecast planning
Rolling forecast
Budgeting
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It has been a couple years since we deployed IBM Planning analytics in our organization. We use it to optimize how we allocate our resources, including labor, equipment and materials according to availability and demand and to help manage our budget. It allows us to create detailed budget plans, track expenses and forecast future spending accurately.
  • Automation of manual planning, budgeting and forecasting.
  • The visualization and dashboards are customizable and valuable.
  • Integration with excel
  • In the construction field we are on site most of the time and we need to have a native mobile app. IBM Planning analytics has no mobile app.
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.
Alexander Schnell, MTA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Breakaway Technologies has successfully harnessed the power of IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to revolutionize its forecasting processes, particularly in the Gross to Net (G2N) domain. With a decade-long history of use and continuous software enhancements, such as the integration of hierarchies, Workspace's workbench, and advanced forecasting tools, the Services department at Breakaway Technologies has found invaluable support. Their success metric, comparing Watson's forecast accuracy to traditional methods, consistently demonstrates Watson's superiority. This streamlined approach prioritizes automation, simplification, and customization to meet clients' dynamic needs, aligning with a philosophy of minimal regulations and high-level transparency, driving impressive results in the field of forecasting.
  • Forecasting
  • Reporting
  • Uses Artificial Intelligence
  • Planning Analytics does not have a native mobile app. This can be a limitation for users who need to access their plans on the go.
  • An easier way to share and collaborate on plans with other users, both within and outside of the organization.
  • The Planning Analytics user interface can be complex and difficult to learn, especially for new users. It would be helpful to have a more modern and streamlined interface, with more intuitive navigation and controls.
Pros: Performing what-if analysis and scenario planning and managing large datasets.

Cons: The user interface can be complex and difficult to learn, especially for new users.
Saurabh Singhal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it for yearly budgeting and monthly rolling forecast for 18 months.
Used in whole APAC-MEA region
Business user do financial planning it it and submit the final numbers for group reporting.
We face server capacity issues at the time of peak usage.
We looking for better dashboards and reporting in PAW as we recently shifted to PAW
  • What-if Analysi
  • Bottom-up Consolidation
  • Workflow management
  • User and application/cube/cell level security
  • Interactive Dash-boarding/Reporting
  • Connecting seamlessly with SAP ERP
  • Scheduling the automated jobs
IT works well with large data set.
User friendly with introduction of PAW
Cloud and AWS connectivity make it more flexible and fast.
Can handle large numbers of user without any security lag
Connect well with upstream and downstream systems.
JOSE REFUGIO VELASCO | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Planning Analytics is used within the company for the following cases:

Preparation of the annual budget of income cost and expenses
Get actual and comparative revenues, costs and expenses vs budgets
Analysis and determination of profitability by products (real & budgets)
Financial and operational KPI's

This integrates different companies and branches. Having the information faster, ordered and analyzed allow us to make timely decisions.
  • Integration of data form different sources
  • Data consolidation and visualization
  • Elaboration of dashboards
  • Easy to learn environment
  • the most aesthetic report design and create more flexible models
  • correlate data more simply like other programs
Good aspects of PAW
  • Efficient, dynamic and simple collaborative work
  • Very efficient and simple data consolidation
  • development of dynamic and practical reports and KPIs
  • intuitive and confiable platform
  • Online and real time information
Points to improve
  • data correlation in the simplest data module
  • more types of report designs and templates
  • data creation more simplified calculations

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use IBM Planning Analytics to implement complex solutions for other companies. It is a very useful and dynamic solution that allows for flexibility within the model. Many companies with large amounts of data have a problem within their business analyzing data. IBM Planning Analytics helps to see the data in a format that is easy to comprehend and understand.
  • Data Analysis
  • Financial Reporting
  • Data Management
  • Training
  • Easy of use for non technical users
  • Dashboarding
The best scenario for IBM Planning Analytics is loading data into the application and analyzing and reporting on the data at a high level. TM1 allows for a variety of ways for users to see and understand their data which is extremely helpful. I think that for smaller scale models or simplistic scenarios it is not as appropriate or useful.
Rajeev Bagra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
While IBM's Cognos Analytics is great for data visualization and forecasting, IBMS Planning Analytics is geared towards financial aspect. So even though Cognos Analytics and Planning Analytics are two different subscriptions, there are many similarities as well. Such as AI Chatbot that answers queries after doing computation. And for that no SQL coding needed. Interesting point to note is that IBM Planning Analytics is not just meant for accounts department. It can be tailored for almost any kind of business category such as human resource where HR manager will be interested in analyzing cost of each staff. Similarly marketing department can benefit from getting a view of how each marketing executive contributing to the firm's target sales/revenue.
  • 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
  • They might consider merging Cognos Analytics, Planning Analytics, Cognos Controller into single subscription. The same will reduce confusion.
  • There is initially a steep learning curve despite no coding knowledge needed. Try to make the learning process easier.
IBM Planning Analytics is an enterprise software and might not be feasible for freelancers/small business owners with price starting @150$ per user/per month.
James Downey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
IBM Planning Analytics is used for financial performance management activities related to planning and reporting Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cashflow, and KPIs.
  • Data exploration
  • Data aggregation
  • Data visualization
  • Driver based planning
  • What-if scenario modeling
  • multi-dimensional modeling
  • Hierarchies and consolidations
  • Foreign currency
  • Debugging code
  • High availability
  • Mobility
IBM Planning Analytics is particularly well suited to the following: Financial management planning and forecasting of the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow Complex Allocation models that require sequential processing across hundreds of thousands of dimensional elements Detailed Workforce and Revenue Planning Predictive forecasting to seed future year plan periods. IBM Planning Analytics is not well suited to the following use cases: A transactional data store (e.g., it is not an ERP). Storage of images and video files.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
IBM Planning Analytics is the most versatile, performant, scalable and flexible multi-dimensional OLAP engine on the market that allows the building of analytical business applications for reprorting, planning and modelling. With its highly flexible engine it allows to build solutions that are well suited for all sorts of business sizes. Having implemented IBM Planning Analytics solutions with hundreds of customers around the globe, we have seen the power of the engine on how it solves real business problems, without having to compromise on complexity due to technical limitations. In combination with a business partner that knows the tool well, clients will be able to do driver-based planning, what-if scenario modelling, AI-infused planning and analytics, self-service analytics and so much more. Wheter in Finance or in Operations, IBM Planning Analytics is well catered to support the analytical requirements of each department at any scale and size.
  • Handle very large data volumes.
  • Scale to a large number of users.
  • Not having to compromise on business complexity.
  • It can be run by business users.
  • Availability of highly qualified consultants to support businesses.
  • REST API allows for an open eco system and a variety of solutions to extend the product.
  • Vast integration possibilities.
  • AI-infused engine with IBM Watson.
  • Developer User Interface.
  • Tools to monitor, maintain and run applications.
It can be used for the following use cases Integrated financial planning and reporting for P&L, Balance Sheet and Cashflow Operational planning such as Expense, Capex, T&E, Marketing or IT planning Driver-based modeling KPI calculations S&OP applications Dashboarding, Reporting, and Analytics Self-service analytics Predictive planning (AI-infused) well suited for FP&A and xP&A.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used IBM Planning Analytics at Fortune 50 companies as well as relatively small startups. IBM Planning Analytics was able to provide solutions across functions including finance, supply chain planning, and customer service support. We were able to automate tasks that took multiple man hours and reduce the workload to a matter of minutes. With the system providing great value across so many different parts of the business, the ROI showed IBM Planning Analytics was almost a no-brainer to implement.
  • Consolidation of data into a single source of truth and record keeping
  • Easily show variance analysis across actuals to multiple different what-if scenarios
  • Give the ability to slice-and-dice data in ways that weren't easily accessible before, pivot-table on steroids in simple terms
  • 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
IBM Planning Analytics has huge potential in almost any organization to streamline processes and pull multiple different data sources into a meaningful connection that can help tell the story of why, not just what. It's very good at consolidations; be that accounts on an P&L, months into a year, subsidiaries into a company structure, etc. It is not meant to be a standalone database of flat-data, it isn't necessarily a replacement for data warehouses. It's not an ERP. But it is very, very good at what it can do, and very flexible at how far it can be pushed. If you are an FP&A guru wanting to empower your team to bring your value to the next level, this is the program to do it with.
Maria Montana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Very impactful planning and chain supply management system and its sales data analytics creation in real time capability is effective. IBM Planning Analytics also offers excellent process planning ability and easy on reporting.
  • Easy data planning.
  • Effective real time capability.
  • Financial data management is amazing.
  • Excellent on reporting.
  • Just implementation process to new user.
  • Tools functions adjustment.
  • Technical support improvement.
Quite reliable sales and marketing data insights gathering and its integration to multiple data sources is excellent and data visualization through IBM Planning Analytics is perfect.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization is both a customer of IBM Planning Analytics, and an implementation Services provider. Internally we use it for financial planning and analysis (revenue & expense planning including workforce and capacity planning), management reporting, sales forecasting, cash forecasting and bonus & commissions calculations.
  • Loads large volumes of data very quickly from external sources
  • Scales to support very detailed models - e.g. SKU level products or many years of history
  • Has very powerful and feature-rich Excel integration
  • Powerful calculation engine that can be used for complex allocations (for example)
  • It's very flexible, so it is possible to use it incorrectly
  • Even though PA can be owned by the business, it requires a little investment to learn
  • The new Workspace-based modeling UI does not (yet) have all the features needed
In our experience IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is the most functionally complete, powerful and scalable planning platform on the market, and can handle anything from financial and management reporting use-cases, to large-scale integrated revenue and expense planning, and AI-infused predictive forecasting. Any company with a large integrated business planning vision that is pursuing an xP&A strategy that brings together all kinds of planning across the business including financial, supply chain and sales will find that IBM Planning Analytics is the only tool that can easily and efficiently (1) connect directly to large data sets and pull in data (2) perform complex calculations including allocations and predictive forecasts, and (3) be expanded (if needed) using it's well-engineered and well-documented REST API. The only situation where it may appear to be less appropriate is at organizations with very simple standard financial planning requirements, with (perhaps) just one or two data sources. While IBM Planning Analytics can certainly serve such needs and is surprisingly affordable from a software pricing point of view, its flexibility and power do add more complexity to the user experience.
Aria Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Planning Analytics helps my entire department with its artificial intelligence, allowing good analysis, planning, forecasting, decision making, and reporting. We have large processing capacities that cannot be achieved with a manual system. It is a robust system that provides confidence, is scalable, has robust cognitive processing features, and robust NLP functions. In addition, it greatly increases the efficiency in the department with the integration of Excel and with a good processing speed and instant calculations. IBM Planning Analytics adapts to the capabilities of the company with respect to the volume of processing. We are constantly growing and we always have IBM.
  • Robust NLP and cognitive processing capabilities
  • It is capable of processing a high volume of information without affecting performance
  • It is scalable and robust thanks to its artificial intelligence functions allowing good analysis, planning, forecasting, decision making, and reports
  • By evaluating the capabilities of IBM Planning Analytics, we have determined that it is an ideal software for all industries with a wide variety of tools such as cognitive processing and NLP functions
  • Implementation is complex in almost every stage, from start to finish
  • The technical support is not the most attentive, and the solutions they offer us to improve the implementation are not the fastest
  • The usability of IBM Planning Analytics is not the best; we must have experience to be able to run the functions without help
IBM Planning Analytics is a robust and scalable tool with a very good track record, my experience is three years and I consider it appropriate for this complex and changing industrial world, it must be considered that with IBM Planning Analytics it will take a long time to be able to see the fruits of your labor. If you are looking for a quick solution, I don't think IBM Planning Analytics is the most appropriate, but if you are willing to go through the difficult and slow implementation process, I think you are in the right place.
January 30, 2023

Making panning simpler.

Siddhant Tiwari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The planning analytics permits our association to get a total perspective on our whole monetary interaction and pursue the choices that best accommodate our capacities. It has produced genuine computerized changes in our organization, as our business targets are accomplished. We are using it to care for practically any issue related to analysis, planning & finances.
  • Quickly and easily gathers data from various sources, including ERP systems and external market data.
  • Accurately forecast future financial performance up to an extent.
  • The ability to integrate data from multiple sources allows us to gain a more comprehensive understanding of our financial performance, which helps us to identify areas for improvement.
  • Data visualization capabilities could be more intuitive and user friendly.
  • Data integration can be improved as the process can be time consuming and complex.
  • More customizable forecasting and predictive analytics tools, which would allow us to better tailor the product to our specific needs.
It is well suited for budgeting and forecasting with complex financial structures.
Shivam Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
As a operational user, it helps me to customized user interface that helps to evaluates and solve the actual problem. We can test different business scenarios and evaluate the impact it has on different actions. It also has a option of intelligent queries that allows quicks analysis and report creation based on business terms.
  • It enables multidimensional of large and historical data sets.
  • It has a good design that offers wide range of garphics such as images, chart and shapes.
  • It helps to build models that integrates any business driver into plan and budget.
  • Automation is good but can be further improved.
  • it should integrate multiple products so the ease of use can be improved.
  • There is some area of improvement in AI intelligence to provide more accurate suggestions.
It specifically helps in predictive forecasting by using statistical and predictive analytics to identify and access the trends. It also reduces the time required for forecast so that I can focus on process optimization. The algorithms assess all the values and applies the best possible algorithm that have more accuracy and less errors. Based on the experience it helps in both individual and organizational level.
January 05, 2023

My new planner

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using IBM Planning Analytics with Watson for many forecast and planning now, mainly for marketing and financing. We plan based on past data that how much we need to invest on marketing channel specific to different marketing campaigns, which ran in past. We are also making it single source for financial decisions and data and accordingly we use forecast to plan ahead. Main benefit is reduction of manual work and now data is more reliable.
  • Reducing manual work
  • Saves time
  • Reliable
  • Dashboards and reporting
  • UI
  • Documentation
  • Cost
If you are planning to create a robust source for financial planning and reporting, you can use this. Its good in reducing manual work and make the reporting more reliable. Multiple user can use at same time and thus producing same results , which when done in excel manually always create different results for at least 1 person.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Planning analytics is being used in my current organization to create Optimized dashboards for reporting, for tracking KPIs, and make decisions based on the custom visualizations, making it easier to explain to the clients. We have primarily focussed our reporting to identifying the research points, improvements in the pipeline, and better planning to direct our projects to the areas of high concerns and co-related factors.
  • Dealing with complex datasets
  • Dashboard optimization
  • Better than traditional BI tools for frequently updating data
  • UI is a bit complex, could be made more easier
  • Documentation needs to be imrpoved
IBM planning analytics has come in handy to us to create faster and much more comprehensible visualization with ease, helped us to identify the concerning and co-related points. Predictive capability seems quite good, with scenarios and what-if analysis it becomes easy to address the glitches that might occur and still have a reliable prediction output.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Implemented for HR, for Finance and Supply Chain. If well implemented the value is priceless for the company
  • Reporting
  • Data crunching
  • More custumable web interface ?
  • Expansive
Well suited for scenarios, planning budgeting.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We build models for our clients using IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to alleviate time in reporting and planning. Most of the current processes are time-consuming excel reports. We use elements, hierarchies, processes, cubes, tables, tabs, etc. to format the data to the client's liking and then format it into a user-friendly view in IBM Planning Analytics with Watson.
  • User interface
  • Ability to design/format
  • Navigation screen
  • Bugs
  • Ability to layout buttons
  • screen resolution
IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is a great tool for users stuck in time-consuming processes for creating reports or planning for the new year. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson has the ability to format table views into reports so that the client can save hours of their time with new data flowing into the model, unlike excel. In IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, the user can build financial reports, forecasting models, reporting books, and so much more!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is a very good business performance management suite used for planning, budgeting, forecasting, and also different kind of analysis. The good thing is, the data are performed in real-time, without the loss of data, and also multiple users can work at the same time. Frequent updation of data is a great feature.
  • Real time updation of data
  • Simultaneous use
  • No loss of data
  • ETM Tool
  • server management tool
  • monitoring tool
It is well suited to almost all manufacturing industries that are producing products like make-to-order, configure-to-order, make-to-stock, engineering-to-order, and almost everywhere it is useful. Planning, monitoring, and different kind of analysis can be performed by multiple users simultaneously without the loss of data, this is a great feature.
Clean Gontijo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I use the Planning Analytics with Watson platform to consolidate contributions from the various areas of client companies, accelerating the process of collecting and processing the information necessary for each budget cycle. With the application of the Planning Analytics with Watson platform, I can gather all the business rules necessary for the preparation of financial statements in a single repository.
  • Elaboration of several scenarios and the option to adopt them when validated.
  • High-speed data processing.
  • Flexibility to apply business rules.
  • Information search engine for cube data.
  • Mechanism for promoting artifacts from non-productive environments to the productive environment.
  • Documentation generator.
The Planning Analytics with Watson platform is recommended for companies that need to collect information from several areas and/or need to process complex consolidations in large volumes of data. It is a platform that manages to store all business rules in a single repository, in addition to eliminating technology infrastructure costs.
Diego Santos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Today we use the platform to ensure our budget and forecast projections. The platform helps us, with its robust engine, and what if scenarious capacity, to maintain a constant level end detailed level of data, that is followed by all the team leaders of the company, throwout the year.
We have increased our results and governance on the budget from many consecutive years now.
Our main application calculate the HR budget, revenew and costs.
  • Simulate various scenarios
  • Work with a enormous amount of data
  • great interface for users and API conections
  • In some cases, such as security applications, I prefer to use Architect. I think that PA Workspace still have some room to enable security for users.
For me, IBM Planning Analytics is very well suited for applications that demand a great volume of data, needs various scenarios and simulations results. It is well placed for mid and big companies, that have a decentralysed operation, because every consolidation will remain in just one repository, avoiding multiple sources for the same data.
But I think it is not a solutions that should be placed for clients with just BI needs.
November 29, 2022

It's PAWtastic!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am an a PAW/PAfE/TM1 administrator, a TM1 modeler, an IBM Planning Analytics with Watson (IBM PAW) Dashboard creator and provide support for all PAW questions and troubleshooting. I love how user friendly the PAW interface is - a big improvement from modeling in Architect!
  • Auto-complete (CTRL+spacebar) functionality in Rules and Process writing
  • Workbench is a MUCH improved user interface than Architect
  • Increased options for creating useful Visualizations on-the-fly
  • Bring back Architect's ability for SYSTEM-recommended "Reorder Dimension" cube optimization
  • Empower Admins to "turn off/hide" Applications & Plans tile from appearing on the home page and within the pop-out menu bar if the organization doesn't want to use it
  • Ability to make an dashboard object's borders thicker (currently only have very thin border options that you can barely see)
  • Lots of improvement needed for the Applications and Plan section to be "useful"
  • Lots of confusion around the 2 save buttons. Users unclear on which one is for book and view. Add wording for clarification. For example, on the left save button add words "Save BOOK" -- "Save BOOK As" and "Save BOOK as template" --- then on right save button do the same adding "Save VIEW to server"
  • Ability for Admins to hide the Forecasting and Sandboxing buttons or disable the functionality
I would recommend TM1 admins, modelers and end-users to start using IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. It's a great improvement from Architect and TM1web! There is a slight learning curve, but I've found new hires to even the most advanced TM1 users are able to pick it up quickly.
November 29, 2022

Best in class analytics

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We leverage IBM PA internally for revenue forecasting, financial reporting, and resourcing planning. It enables self-service analytics and ensures a single source of truth for data. The platform allows for integration across different business areas to eliminate siloes in planning processes. Our most common implementations are for financial planning and analysis, as well as supply and demand planning. IBM PA has a powerful engine that handles data sparsity very well and is customizable to solve each business' needs accordingly.
  • Financial Reporting
  • Scenario Planning
  • Dashboarding
  • Data integration
  • Improved error messages in log file
  • Automatically create feeders for rules
  • Better server monitoring and alerts
It is most appropriate for enterprise companies; it can handle large volumes of data very well and a large end user base.
It is also appropriate for smaller / medium sized firms, but the price point may not be feasible for these companies. If there was an "express" version or bundle for these firms, I think it could be beneficial.
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