Effective Way to Run Your Business with Excel on Steroids
December 30, 2021

Effective Way to Run Your Business with Excel on Steroids

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson

We’ve
seen many small to medium organizations still relying on spreadsheets and other
manual processes for their business planning needs. They must understand that
the businesses need to stay up to date on their planning and analysis strategies
to overcome market challenges. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is an all-inclusive,
integrated planning solution that allows users to go beyond the limits of
manual planning. With [the] IBM Planning toolkit, we can quickly do more accurate
planning and forecasting for different departments of the organization to accelerate
decision making and increase performances and stay up to speed with the modern
business culture.

Pros

  • [I appreciate the] ability to work with the same Excel functionality we’re familiar with while having the power of an enterprise planning solution.
  • We can change the number of users of the system or increase data volumes and planning models anytime without reducing the overall performance of the system.
  • We can test our assumptions and see the impact of our decisions by creating personal sandboxes before releasing them to the system.

Cons

  • [The] initial setup could be simplified and customer support could be improved.
  • [There is a] pretty wide learning curve for the newcomers and official documentation is hard to understand for them.
  • Programming knowledge is important to work with the system and the user community support is very limited.
  • [It provides the] ability to create multi-dimensional sales plans to help budgeting and forecasting.
  • [It provides] unlimited scenario modelling in your personal sandbox to determine the outcome.
  • [The] memory database function [can be used] to save your data and keep results up-to-date.
Scenario planning is very important to come up with proper business strategies. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson provides a personal sandbox for the user to try out their different what-if scenarios so that they can analyze and confirm the outcome, before implementing them in the real world. In this way, users can make sure that they implement the most feasible solution by using their superior modeling capabilities as well as solution flexibility.
I think flexibility is the most important feature in IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. Users can easily integrate it with an Excel package and work with the same Excel interface with formulas. Also, they don't need much data science knowledge to generate data reports and analyze them to deliver more accurate forecasting.

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

I would say IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is one of the best analytics tools available in the market right now. Initial setup is [a] bit [difficult], but users can use their Excel knowledge to use most of the features. Because of the limited resources and community support, people always look for IBM support, but, unfortunately, their response time is very slow.
Like I said before, they need to improve on their documentation and add more tutorials to help new users but other than that, I don't find any difficulties in terms of the usability of the overall system. I would say this is more ideal for individuals, small organizations, or subsection planning of large organizations.
Most importantly, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson helps
your business to grow in many ways. It increases the overall efficiency of the
departments and improves the decision-making process. Even if the user doesn’t come
from a BI background or doesn’t have data science skills, they still can make
use of the system to get [the] most accurate and consistent forecasts.

IBM Planning Analytics Feature Ratings

8.0
Long-term financial planning
8
Financial budgeting
8
Forecasting
8
Scenario modeling
8
Management reporting
8
8.0
Financial data consolidation
8
Journal entries and reports
8
Multi-currency management
8
Intercompany Eliminations
8
Minority Ownership
8
Local and consolidated reporting
8
Detailed Audit Trails
8
8.0
Financial Statement Reporting
8
Management Reporting
8
Excel-based Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
8
XBRL support for regulatory filing
8
8.0
Personalized dashboards
8
Color-coded scorecards
8
KPIs
8
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
8
Benchmarking with external data
8
6.7
Flat file integration
7
Excel data integration
8
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
5
7.3
Pixel Perfect reports
7
Customizable dashboards
7
Report Formatting Templates
8
7.3
Drill-down analysis
8
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
6
Report sharing and collaboration
8
7.8
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
7
Report Versioning
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
8
7.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
7
Predictive Analytics
8
7.8
Multi-User Support (named login)
8
Role-Based Security Model
8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
7
Single Sign-On (SSO)
8
8.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
8
Mobile Application
8
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
8

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