1. Home
  2. Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Software
  3. IBM Planning Analytics Reviews
  4. User Review of IBM Planning Analytics
Best in class analytics
November 29, 2022

Best in class analytics

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

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson

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
  • Improved data accessibility
  • Improved collaboration
  • Improved data integrity
Scenario planning is critical and one of the things that IBM PA does best. There is the option to leverage the IBM PA sandboxing functionality, which allows users to submit changes to the forecast, assess the impact, and then either chose to commit or remove these edits. This allows for quick what-if analysis. There is also the flexibility to have multiple live versions (budget, forecast, etc.) and to snapshot these live versions to track forecast accuracy over time.
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.

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

Whenever I have needed support from IBM, the response is prompt. They are knowledgeable in the product and able to quickly resolve the issue at hand.
It is very intuitive and well documented; there are many online resources available to help troubleshoot or to learn new ways to do things.
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.

IBM Planning Analytics Feature Ratings

9.8
Long-term financial planning
9
Financial budgeting
10
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
10
Management reporting
10
10.0
Financial data consolidation
10
Journal entries and reports
10
Multi-currency management
10
Intercompany Eliminations
10
Minority Ownership
10
Local and consolidated reporting
10
Detailed Audit Trails
10
10.0
Financial Statement Reporting
10
Management Reporting
10
Excel-based Reporting
10
Automated board and financial reporting
10
10.0
Personalized dashboards
10
Color-coded scorecards
10
KPIs
10
Cost and profitability analysis
10
Key Performance Indicator setting
10
10.0
Flat file integration
10
Excel data integration
10
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
10
10.0
Pixel Perfect reports
10
Customizable dashboards
10
Report Formatting Templates
10
10.0
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
10
10.0
Publish to Web
10
Report Versioning
10
8.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
10
Predictive Analytics
4
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
10
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
10
10.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
10