Item: IBM Planning Analytics
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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

Return on Investment

The forecasting feature is quite good, have been close to accurate on few difficult instances
Deals extremely well with Excel data
Can be a bit difficult to start with although once you are familiar, it provides lot of time-saving features

Scenario Planning and What-If Analysis

My project requires frequent forecasting and prediction results, for that reason it's better to have some software in hand which provides with capabilities to address as many ambiguities as possible. That's where IBM Planning Analytics helps us to a great extent, to provide with what-if analysis and scenario based outcomes to better understand and prepare for a change in incoming stream of data.

Alternatives Considered

SAP Analytics Cloud

I am personally trying to explore the features of SAP Analytics Cloud in order to find if it's possible to integrate other sources of data and api based integrations, but I'm still on it while using the IBM planning analytics for my project currently. But looking at the intial reviews, I find that IBM planning anaytics provides with better reporting experience than the competitors.

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of IBM Planning Analytics go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Planning Analytics again?

Yes

Support Rating

Although I find the IBM Planning analytics documentation quite time consuming, their support with email and call is something i can term as very considerate and patient, I have had few calls about the features and how i would want to implement them within my projects, and the teams have been super helpful to resolve my issues.

Usability

Some good things about the product are its forecasting and predictive capabilities with a good amount of data, although the documentation and complexity are concerning points for new users. So, all in all, if the teams can put in the required time to learn the features, this tools can be time-saver in the long run.

Other Software Used

SAP Analytics Cloud, Jira Software

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

IBM Planning Analytics- A time saver for Prediction and Planning

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson