Item: IBM Planning Analytics
Rating: 10
Author: lee lazarow

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Planning Analytics is used as an overall planning and reporting tool. It includes summarized modules associated with financial reporting (income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow) and detailed modules associated with revenue (by customer), staff planning (by person), and capital planning (by asset). It also includes allocations, eliminations and currency analyses. Overall, the model is used to help automate tasks associated with planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis.

Pros and Cons

Fast processing.
Ad-hoc analysis.
Complex calculations - nothing that it cannot do.

Web interface.
Ability to store complex calcs means training is required.

Return on Investment

Easy to import and link to external data.
Easy to pre-seed and perform budgeting.

Scenario Planning and What-If Analysis

Scenario planning is a requirement for the business. IBM Planning Analytics allows for multiple scenarios. It allows for public scenarios that everyone can see and also allows for personal scenarios that only one person can see (called sandboxing). Sandboxes are used to create personal what-if scenarios before submitting the results to the overall plan.

Alternatives Considered

Workday Adaptive Planning, Anaplan and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

Other tools include Essbase, Outlooksoft, and BPC. When comparing the length of the implementation and the speed of the engine, IBM is the fastest on the market. I have not yet found a calculation or planning approach that cannot be done with IBM PA. In one situation, an allocation that took 24+ hours in another tool was created in Planning Analytics and only took 45 minutes to run.

Key Insights

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

Support Rating

IBM provides a solid support base. This includes direct interaction with IBM personnel (via the IBM site), a shared knowledge base (sometimes found using Google), a large customer base (which includes many chat boards), and a large consulting base (which includes many blogs ... both technical and business oriented). Sometimes the support is slower than expected, but it's generally solid.

Usability

Planning Analytics is a powerful tool that is easy for end users. The engine is extremely fast and can be customized to perform any type of calculations: financial or metric, detailed or consolidated, live or on demand, etc. We have used the system for basic calculations such as revenue (units * price), moderate calculations such as compensation (spread a salary across months based on the number of working days in the month), and complex calculations such as allocations (spread the administrative costs to IT and then do a secondary spread of the IT costs based on the number of employees in each department). All of the interfaces are easy for the end users to navigate and use due to simple buttons, icons and right-click options.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited - if you are looking for a fast and solid engine, if you have complex requirements, if you don't want to change your business process to fit into a box, if you need a tool that can provide fast calculations and fast answers. Not well suited - if you are looking for a "quick-hit" tool or if you are looking for a cheap "fit into the box" approach.

Powerful fast engine that provides solid planning and reporting solutions

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson