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Financial Performance Management

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW – Navigation Approaches Using Action Buttons

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Have you ever been in a situation where you created a multi-tab IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) book that required a combination of inputs, TurboIntegrator (TI) processing, and the viewing of results?  If so, you may have created a two-part workbook that included an input sheet with an action button and a separate reporting sheet. While this approach does everything you need, it requires your users to perform two steps to see the full processing results: click the button to run the script and then manually navigate to the resulting report.

PAW version 101 added functionality that eliminates the need to manually perform the navigation. When configuring action button properties, users are now given the option to define when navigation occurs. Users can still navigate immediately upon clicking, but they can also have the navigation occur after a process is completed. 

In addition, users can differentiate the navigation approach for a successful process completion vs. a process that completed with an error.

These advanced settings allow you to simplify the user navigation while also offering IF-THEN functionality with a single action button click.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Settings – Dim Editor Index

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IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Settings: DIM Editor Page Size

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Have you ever edited a large dimension in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace and found that you are forced to repeatedly scroll through a list to see the full dimension? This may be because you are only looking at 200 elements at a time.

Did you know that you can control how many elements initially load when the dimension editor is opened and each time a new page is refreshed? There are two ways to do this.  One approach is to manually define the setting within the dimension editor. This is done by clicking on the settings icon and modifying the option for Page size.  

The second approach is to always have this value defined. Users with the Administrator, Modeler, or Analyst role can use the Settings editor to define global settings. To modify this setting, click on your username at the top right corner of Planning Analytics Workspace, select the option for Profile and Settings, and then select the option for Settings. The page size definition is found within the Dimension Editor section. After modifying this setting, the value will be set by default within the dimension editor screen. Users can still manually change the option, if preferred.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Settings – Dim Editor Index

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Application Websheet Folders

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rename Views in PAfE

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Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: The User Access Calculator

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Workday Adaptive Planning’s User Access Calculator is a powerful tool that allows administrators to manage and monitor user access within the platform efficiently. In this post, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of using the User Access Calculator to check someone’s access, ensuring that your organization’s financial planning environment remains secure and tailored to individual roles.

Step 1: Accessing the User Access Calculator

To begin, log in to your Workday Adaptive Planning account with administrator credentials. Once logged in, navigate to the administration in the global navigation menu, where you’ll find the User Access Calculator option. Click on it to open the tool.

Step 2: Selecting the User

Once inside the User Access Calculator, you’ll see a user-friendly interface with options to input user details. Start by selecting the specific user whose access you want to check. You can usually search for users by name or username to locate the individual in question.

Step 3: Reviewing Role-Based Access

Workday Adaptive Planning operates on a role-based access control system. The User Access Calculator provides a summary of the roles assigned to the selected user. Review the roles to understand the level of access the user has within the platform. Ensure that the roles align with the user’s responsibilities and the organization’s security policies.

Step 4: Exploring Module and Sheet Access

Beyond roles, the User Access Calculator allows you to delve deeper into module and sheet access for the selected user. You can select the level, account, version, and dimension values that you wish to check for access. By selecting the single coordinate option, the calculator calculates access across the specific intersections you have selected. 

Alternatively, you can calculate a user’s access across an entire dimension (level, account, version, etc.) by selecting the single dimension option and choosing an option from the dropdown. 

Navigate to the relevant sections to view a detailed breakdown of the modules and sheets accessible to the user. This step is crucial for fine-tuning access permissions based on specific business requirements.

Step 5: Analyzing Permissions

The User Access Calculator provides insights into individual permissions associated with modules and sheets. Analyze these permissions to ensure that the user has the necessary rights to perform their tasks. “Write” access refers to complete edit access while “Read” access refers to limited access. If adjustments are needed, administrators can use this information to modify permissions accordingly.

Effectively using the User Access Calculator in Workday Adaptive Planning involves a systematic approach to review and adjust user access. By following these step-by-step instructions, administrators can ensure that access aligns with organizational needs, roles, and responsibilities, ultimately creating a secure and streamlined financial planning environment for the entire team. Regular reviews and documentation will further enhance the overall management of user access within the platform.

Revelwood is an award-winning, Platinum Solution Provider for Workday Adaptive Planning. We build solutions for the Office of Finance that minimize your risk by seamlessly incorporating business analytics into your everyday thinking. By combining the software with our best practices and out-of-the-box applications, we help businesses achieve their full potential with Workday Adaptive Planning.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning User Interface Changes 2025 R1 

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Write-back for OfficeConnect

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: New Feature – Long-Running Processes in Workday’s 2024R2 Release

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How We Solve Problems: Improving the Performance of Workday Adaptive Planning

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This post continues our series on how we use Workday Adaptive Planning to solve problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: This company manufactures premium lighting and home accessories. It produces approximately 1,000 different designs that can be made in more than 25,000 ways as a standard product. 

Problem: Granular Details Impeded System Performance

Scenario: The company worked with an implementation partner to build a Workday Adaptive Planning solution for budgeting, forecasting and reporting. The implementation they built went to the nth degree of detail and granularity. That level of granularity resulted in the system performing poorly. It also required a high level of upkeep. 

How We Helped: The manufacturer engaged Revelwood for a health check, after which we revamped the company’s model. Revising the company’s model enabled ad-hoc analysis – a key aspect of forecasting that was impossible to do in the earlier instance. 

These changes had a big impact on the company’s next budgeting cycle. By revamping the company’s model, Revelwood enabled the manufacturer to do scenario planning – something they could not do in their earlier implementation of Workday Adaptive Planning.

Do you have a challenge you’d like to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning for? Reach out to us – we can help!

Read the posts in our series, How we Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

Using Workday Adaptive Planning for Headcount Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning for Incorporating Foreign Transactions

Using Workday Adaptive Planning to Model Revenue and Expenses

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How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

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This post is the first post in our new blog series on how we solve problems using Workday Adaptive Planning. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A medical technology company that works with clinicians in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada.

Problem: Personnel / headcount planning

Scenario: This company had unique requirements for the allocations and formulas in their personnel model. Personnel needed to be partially allocated based off of a monthly headcount by department, and then further allocated quarterly based on global assumptions.

How We Helped: Our team determined that this client needed to have a granular, clear view into how the company’s explosive growth was impacting its personnel needs. We built a personnel model to give the FP&A team – and senior management – the ability to track the timing of new hires and forecast the company’s personnel needs globally. This model – and Workday Adaptive Planning in general – is saving the company a significant amount of time.Do you have a challenge you’d like to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning for? Reach out to us – we can help!

Read the posts in our series, How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

Using Workday Adaptive Planning to Model Revenue and Expenses

Workday Adaptive Planning for Budgeting and Forecasting for a SaaS Business Model

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Using Workday Adaptive Planning to Model Revenue and Expenses

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This post continues our series on how we use Workday Adaptive Planning to solve problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A multi-site healthcare organization that provides human services programs at 174 sites provides individualized and compassionate services to people facing challenges with developmental disabilities, mental illness, substance abuse disorders and homelessness. The company has approximately 2,200 employees.

Problem: An Inability to Model Revenue and Expenses

Scenario: The healthcare organization had a manual, spreadsheet-based process for budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting. The process impeded long-term budgeting and made forecasting on a strategic level problematic. 

How We Helped: The organization wanted to several big improvements from its Workday Adaptive Planning environment. One key area of focus was a Revenue Expense model. Revelwood built a custom model that enables the organization to create variable models that reveal why certain things happen. They can conduct what-if scenarios such as reducing expenses by a desired margin to see how it would impact the organization’s revenue objectives. This enables them to understand how revenue and expense structures would be impacted by changes at its sites.

Do you have a challenge you’d like to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning for? Reach out to us – we can help!

Read the posts in our series, How We Solve Problems Using Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning for Budgeting and Forecasting for a SaaS Business Model.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Unpivot

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Did you know you can unpivot data in IBM Planning Analytics?

Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where you need to change the layout of data from a grid format to a vertical table format, this is called unpivoting the data.

I’ll show you how to do this via some new Excel formulas.

Consider this sample data set:

A screenshot of a spreadsheet Description automatically generated

The goal is to have a table with three columns: Invoice, Month, Data. Here’s how to do that step-by-step.

Step 1

Use the EXPAND formula to create an array of Invoices.  In this case, we are creating a 5 x 12 array (5 rows x 12 columns).

=EXPAND($A$2:$A$6,5,12)

This will generate this:

A white grid with black and green text Description automatically generated

Step 2

EXPAND doesn’t know what to do with the other columns, so we can use IFERROR to fill in the errors with a specified value. In this case, if there’s an error then we want to replace the error with the first column value.

=IFERROR(EXPAND($A$2:$A$6,5,12),$A$2:$A$6)

Now we have this:

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated

Step 3

Now we use the TOCOL function to make the grid of invoice numbers into a column

=TOCOL(IFERROR(EXPAND($A$2:$A$6,5,12),$A$2:$A$6))

That generates:

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Step 4

We repeat the previous steps for the months. We want an array of 12 x 5 for the months. The end formula is:

=TOCOL(IFERROR(EXPAND($B$1:$M$1,5),$B$1:$M$1))

Step 5

Use TOCOL on the data points to pivot them into a columnar format.

=TOCOL($B$2:$M$6)

Now we have a live, formula-based unpivot model that will refresh when the data is changed.

A screenshot of a spreadsheet Description automatically generated

Bonus Tip!

You can make the formulas more dynamic by using COUNTA instead of hard coding the number of rows/columns in the EXPAND function.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Export Data

A Resolution You Should Actually Keep: Upgrade Your IBM Planning Analytics Environment

Popular IBM Planning Analytics Videos of 2024

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The Hidden Value of Strategic Planning: Gaining Operational Efficiencies

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Effective financial planning and analysis (FP&A) is a cornerstone for any business looking to navigate uncertainties and capitalise on new opportunities. However, inefficiencies stemming from outdated processes and disconnected systems often prevent organisations from fully realising the potential of their planning efforts.

The Challenge of Operational Inefficiencies

Many organisations rely heavily on manual processes and outdated spreadsheet models, leading to several issues:

  • Time-Intensive Data Management: Manual effort to import and cleanse data from diverse source systems diverts focus from higher value activities and usually limits the timeliness and granularity of information available for planning.
  • Rigid and Error-Prone Models: Spreadsheet planning models require large amounts of ongoing manual updates with a high risk of broken links and formulas, hindering adaptability to business changes.
  • Collaboration Bottlenecks: Stakeholders from different parts of the organization struggle with aligning inputs and assumptions, causing delays and errors.
  • Ineffective Reporting: The burden on finance teams to generate and distribute reports on behalf of the wider business, limits the agility of performance analysis.

These inefficiencies not only drain resources but also reduce the strategic value of planning processes.

Embracing Modern Solutions

Cloud-based planning systems, like Workday Adaptive Planning, address these pain points by automating and streamlining processes. Here’s how:

  • Automated Data Integration: Integration tools pull data automatically from various systems, ensuring consistent and timely inputs without manual intervention. This improves data accuracy, granularity, and the ability to refresh models more frequently.
  • Flexible and Scalable Models: Modern systems allow automatic updates when new dimensions (e.g., new customers, new products, new business units) are added. This reduces the risk of errors and enables scenario planning in real-time.
  • Real-Time Collaboration: Stakeholders can work concurrently on shared models with controlled access, with key assumptions shared across the business. Automated workflows and audit trails simplify tracking and approval, fostering alignment across departments.
  • Dynamic Reporting and Analysis: Self-service tools empower users to create and explore reports without relying on finance teams. Features like drill-downs and dynamic dashboards enhance insight and transparency.

Benefits of Modernising FP&A

By addressing inefficiencies, businesses can unlock significant value:

  • Increased Planning Agility: More frequent and dynamic planning cycles enable better responses to market changes.
  • Improved Decision-Making: Enhanced collaboration and timely insights ensure decisions are based on the latest, most accurate data.
  • Greater Strategic Focus: Automating low-value tasks allows FP&A teams to focus on insights and driving actions.

A New Paradigm for Planning

As Dwight D. Eisenhower wisely said, “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Rather than simply generating a new budget or forecast, the planning process fosters collaboration, encourages forward-thinking, and aligns stakeholders with strategic goals. Modernising this process through advanced planning solutions empowers organisations to thrive in a fast-changing business environment.

Learn more about gaining operational efficiency by embracing strategic planning. Download the white paper, Removing Operational Inefficiencies to Unlock the Value of Planning.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Export Data

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While IBM Planning Analytics is an excellent database that allows you to easily slice and dice your data, there may be situations where you want to export data from the model.  Maybe you want to share information with someone who uses different software or maybe you want to use your data in another tool? PAW version 99 introduced the ability to export a data set from the PAW interface.

To export data, right-click on a cube within a modeling workbench, select the option to Import/Export and then select the option to Export Data.  

Once selected, you will be prompted to define the name of the .csv file that will be created.  You then can define the data to be exported by using an existing view and/or by defining the dimension details. For each dimension, you can define a hierarchy to use, a subset to use, or an element to use.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated

You also have the ability to define filters for your numeric and string data (example: only show values greater than or equal to 100) and the ability to skip consolidated values, rule calculated values, and zero/blank values.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

A Resolution You Should Actually Keep: Upgrade Your IBM Planning Analytics Environment

Popular IBM Planning Analytics Videos of 2024

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Export Dim Structure

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