Benefits of IBM Planning Analytics on the Cloud for Budgeting and Consolidations
January 15, 2020

Benefits of IBM Planning Analytics on the Cloud for Budgeting and Consolidations

Jared Koepp | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Planning Analytics

We currently use IBM Planning Analytics for financial and sales budgeting and forecasting. We use it to calculate our complex allocation methodology to see a budgeted and forecasted P&L during our budget season. We also load actual results to have comparability during the budget season as well as after. We're currently working on building consolidations within IBM Planning Analytics to broaden our analytics capability as well as streamline our business. Some of our sales groups within our organization use IBM Planning Analytics for sales reporting since it has robust security and customized reports which can be accessed from the web. We also incorporate the detailed sales budget which is constructed within IBM Planning Analytics.

Pros

  • Security: IBM PA has a robust security model which allows for very detailed security.
  • Speed: IBM PA can calculate complex formulas quickly to allow for faster analysis.

Cons

  • Dashboarding: IBM PA dashboarding is minimal compared to other products on the market.
  • Bursting: Allowing reports or dashboards to be automatically sent out via email.
  • Sped up our annual budgeting and forecasting.
  • Made our budgeting process more accurate.
We considered OneStream when evaluating consolidation tools. We decided to use IBM Planning Analytics because our consolidation needs aren't very complex. We already have licensing. It'd streamline our budget process, and we have a majority of the consolidation elements already built into IBM PA today.
Having IBM Planning Analytics on the cloud has been a great improvement from our on-prem environment. We had little to no assistance from our local IT team when it was on-prem. Now on the cloud, I can submit a case and get a quick response and resolution. IBM PA takes care of all of the server maintenance and updates.

Do you think IBM Planning Analytics delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM Planning Analytics's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Planning Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IBM Planning Analytics go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Planning Analytics again?

Yes

Suited for:
  • Need for customization
  • Complex formulas
  • Large amount of data
  • Security is a priority
  • Cloud-based
  • Data entry
  • Budgeting/Forecasting
Less Appropriate:
  • Basic sales reporting
  • Dashboarding
  • Non-complex business which can be done via Excel

IBM Planning Analytics Feature Ratings

8.3
Long-term financial planning
9
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
9
Scenario modeling
Not Rated
Management reporting
6
7.2
Financial data consolidation
7
Journal entries and reports
Not Rated
Multi-currency management
7
Intercompany Eliminations
7
Minority Ownership
7
Local and consolidated reporting
7
Detailed Audit Trails
8
7.5
Financial Statement Reporting
7
Management Reporting
7
Excel-based Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
8
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
7.4
Personalized dashboards
8
Color-coded scorecards
7
KPIs
7
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
7
Benchmarking with external data
Not Rated
8.0
Flat file integration
8
Excel data integration
8
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
Not Rated
7.0
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
6
Report Formatting Templates
8
7.3
Drill-down analysis
8
Formatting capabilities
6
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
8
8.5
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
6.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
6
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
8.7
Multi-User Support (named login)
8
Role-Based Security Model
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
9
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
8.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
8
Mobile Application
8
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated

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