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Financial Performance Management

Tips & Tricks for using IBM Planning Analytics – Creating TM1/Planning Analytics Picklist Cubes

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This is a guest blog post by Revelwood’s Shane Bethea.

Did you know Picklists can be used in TM1/Planning Analytics to allow your users to pick values from a predefined, non-changing list of values?  These can be setup as a static list of values, a subset of values from a specific dimension, or all elements within a specific dimension.

Picklists can be associated with a dimension in situations where the definition is always the same.  An example of this would be a Payroll model where you want users to assign each employee to a pre-defined list of job titles.

Picklists can also be created with more flexibility for situations where you want a fluctuating set of definitions.  For example, you may want to have a list of pay period start dates based on the pay method selected for that employee.  If the pay method is monthly then your list can include one set of dates whereas a bi-weekly pay method would entail a second set of dates.  This approach can be created with a Picklist cube.

To create a Picklist cube in TM1/Planning Analytics, simply right click on a cube where you want to have the Picklist and choose “Create Pick List Cube”.

The resulting Picklist cube is created with the name ‘}PickList_<CUBENAME>’.  The new cube will have the same dimensionality of the existing cube plus one extra dimension called }PickList.

Once created, rules can be written for the Picklist cube to determine what values are available in the list.  The example rule below will populate the Picklist value with one of three definitions based on the selected pay method.

Once the Picklist cube and rules have been set up in TM1/Planning Analytics, users will see a different set of dates for the Pay Period Start Date measure based on the method selected for each employee.  This is one example of creating a dynamic Picklist using Picklist cubes, but the possibilities are endless.

IBM Planning Analytics is full of new features and functionality. Not sure where to start?  Our team here at Revelwood can help.  Contact us for more information at info@revelwood.com.  And stay tuned for more Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks weekly in our Knowledge Center and in upcoming newsletters!

Interested in more tech tips for TM1 & IBM Planning Analytics? Check out these blog posts:

IBM Planning Analytics: Using the Full Power of MDX

Creating URLs for TM1 Websheets

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Technical Bulletin: End of Support Dates for IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.x

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IBM recently announced the official End of Support dates for two of the IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.x versions:

  • IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.0 will reach End of Support on 2018-09-30
  • IBM Cognos TM1 10.2.2 will reach End of Support on 2019-09-30

By now, most TM1 users are aware of IBM’s transition from IBM Cognos TM1 to IBM Planning Analytics. Planning Analytics contains the full functionality of TM1, including both Excel and Web interfaces, so the concept of migrating can be as simple as upgrading your TM1 version. Planning Analytics currently allows users to continue using both Perspectives and TM1 Web which gives you the opportunity to migrate in phases:

  • Existing Excel reports can use your current Perspectives approach and be migrated to PAx (Planning Analytics for Excel) at a later time
  • Existing Web reports can use your current TM1 Web approach and be migrated to PAw (Planning Analytics Workspace) at a later time

 Planning Analytics Migration Resources:

We’ve created multiple resources including on-demand webinars featuring product demonstrations and technical blog posts to help you understand the opportunity presented with this migration, plan your strategy and make the transition. Migrating from IBM Cognos TM1 to Planning Analytics is a much bigger opportunity than a standard upgrade or basic migration. While the underlying TM1 engine remains as powerful as ever, IBM has made significant changes to the product to improve the user and developer experience.

Do you have any questions about End of Support dates or migrating from TM1 to Planning Analytics? Contact John Pra Sisto at 201.984.3025 or jprasisto@revelwood.com for more information.

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Important Things to Consider when Changing your COA Structure

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Over the years, we have had many clients who have taken on the project of changing their chart of account (COA) structures. These projects can be resource and time consuming and they affect many business areas and processes beyond accounting and finance. We have found that when clients consider the downstream reporting systems (like IBM Cognos TM1) early in the chart of account change project, they avoid some critical pitfalls that can affect the success of these projects.

Why change your chart of account structure?

There can be several reasons for a business to change its chart of accounts. Businesses are constantly changing. As the business acquires other entities, launches new products or starts operations in new locations, the chart of accounts needs to be able to incorporate these changes flexibly and efficiently to support the reporting needs of their organization.

You may consider restructuring your chart of accounts if:

  • You can no longer generate financial and management reports directly from the COA efficiently.
  • You can no longer easily integrate organizational changes or natural accounts groupings into the COA to support external and internal reporting and compliance requirements.
  • You are moving to a new ERP/GL system and a new chart of account structure is needed to take advantage of full functionality of the new environment.

Beyond the GL

Many of our clients get so involved in the actual changing of the COA codes and mapping them in the GL system, they forget to consider other key areas impacted by this change.

If you have a reporting and budgeting/planning system like IBM Cognos TM1, you should consider the impact of a COA change on this system as early as possible. You will need to determine the impact of the COA change to the data load processes—dimension/hierarchy definitions, embedded logic (TM1 rules) etc. Depending on the extent of the changes to the COA structure, you may need to create new TM1 dimensions and cube models to support the new structure.

Re-mapping of historical data

Most clients consider the need to re-map historical data within the GL. You also need to determine what other reporting system data needs to be re-mapped to support all of your reporting needs on the new COA structure.

Many of our clients also use their TM1 systems to report and model data at a much more granular level than the GL balance level (employee/staff, revenue, vendor, etc.) If you do not map this data to the new COA structure, it will impede your ability to have historical trending reports of this data once you convert to the new COA structure.

To support this, we typically re-create the mapping tables used in the ERP system within TM1 and create processes that allow our clients to map all the historical data they need to support their reporting requirements.

Use your reporting system during the COA project

We also often use TM1 as early as possible in the COA project to download the data from the GL as soon as it is available mapped to the new COA. TM1 users can then see their data in the new COA structure in the reporting tool they are accustomed.

The benefits of this approach are:

  • Users can start reviewing the new COA early to familiarize themselves with the changes to the COA. This gives these users much more time to plan how to incorporate the new COA into the reporting that is required of them.
  • TM1 users can more easily participate in the reconciliation process to ensure the data moved from the old COA to the new COA is correct.

Use the new COA as an opportunity to review your reports

A key task to the COA project is the re-creation of many reports that are impacted by the COA change. This gives you the opportunity to review all the reports you currently produce and determine the reports that are truly required.

We have found the best approach is to organize your reports into:

  • Must have reports that need to be converted as part of the COA conversion. These are reports that are required to be available as soon as the new COA is active.
  • Nice to have reports that can be re-created over time but are not required for go live.
  • Reports that can be eliminated. Many clients find by reviewing all of the reports they have many reports that are produced that are redundant to other reports or have no significant reporting or analytical value.

Summary

By considering the impact of your COA structure changes on your FP&A system, you will have a much more successful project. If you are considering a change to your chart of account structure, let us know. We can share our best practices and client stories to make your transition as easy as possible.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 43

Complex Modeling in IBM Cognos TM1 at New York Blood Center

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If you are looking for a great example of complex modeling in IBM Cognos TM1, look no further than the case study on New York Blood Center. Imagine having untold numbers of separate models in disparate systems – such as Excel and Access – all built for a single purpose, but that did not talk to each other? How could you answer simple questions about the data, let alone complex questions?

That’s the situation that New York Blood Center (NYBC) faced. NYBC is one of the largest independent, community-based blood centers in the country. In 2012 NYBC brought in a new CFO, Beth Gibson, who, in turn, brought in a new director of financial transformation a year later. Diane Arritt, who took on the role of Director of Finance Transformation, was charged with taking the old, manual, largely spreadsheet-based financial infrastructure and move to a single, sophisticated system.

Today, NYBC has a core set of TM1 models to store GL, billing, payroll, AR and AP data. From there, each model was then built out to support NYBC’s reporting and planning needs. Then we created a series of allocation models to allow for the proper distribution of overhead costs across all of NYBC’s reporting lines of businesses. We also created allocation models to allow NYBC to report on costs per unit related to collecting and distributing the blood products.

The TM1 system enables the organization to plan, model, allocate, report and manage the revenue and expense data faster, in more detail and more accurately than ever before. The overall impact of the new financial system is much larger than just the time savings, which is significant. With TM1, changes that previously took more than a day can be done in just minutes.

“Previously, it would have taken us at least three months to map general ledger accounts and accounting units into our processes to do the appropriate reporting for an acquisition,” said Diane Arritt, Director of Finance Transformation. “Now our team was able to produce combined financial results for management the first month we acquired the Community Blood Center of Greater Kansas City. We simply could not have done that without the hierarchies and flexibility of TM1.”

Read the full case study on how New York Blood Center transformed its financial operations with IBM Cognos TM1 by downloading it here.

Read more Revelwood client success stories:

Rayonier Makes Better use of Resources with IBM Cognos TM1

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Creating a Technical Planning Model for IBM Cognos TM1

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A global publisher in the areas of scientific, technical, medical and scholarly research has turned to IBM Cognos TM1 for a top-down approach to a custom technical planning model. To some, that might seem an odd choice, since TM1 is typically used for bottom-up financial planning and reporting.

But the company already used TM1 as its global planning solution, and TM1 would be well-suited to handling the publisher’s complexity and volume of products for which it wanted to plan. The technical planning model would enable the publisher to plan down to a very granular level, such as individual subject categories and product types.

An additional challenge was that to correctly design the model, the team needed to take a step back, reevaluate what it needed to plan for, versus what it wanted to analyze. For example, before using the TM1 technical planning model, the company would plan to a level of detail that included whether the books sold were hard cover or paperback. In the end, it was determined that for planning, it was not necessary to factor in the type of material of each book sold. It was more important to plan by category and by product type.

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Survey Finds the Office of Finance to Double its Adoption of Analytics

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The IBM Center for Applied Insights surveyed 337 senior finance leaders on their adoption of analytics. It may not be surprising, but the survey found that organizations plan to double adoption of analytics in all areas of finance in the next two years. A report citing the study answers the why: “As one executive admitted, ‘Advanced analytics gives me answers to questions I didn’t even know I had.’”

Interestingly, 28 percent of the survey respondents were categorized as the “most effective” finance leaders. They were more effective than their peers across these ten finance-focused activities:

  1. Cash forecasting
  2. Expense management
  3. Finance process optimization
  4. Financial planning
  5. Management reporting
  6. Mergers and acquisitions
  7. Order-to-cash
  8. Procurement
  9. Profitability and margin analysis
  10. Revenue forecasting

The same survey found that 9 out of 10 finance organizations have implemented analytics solutions to support their financial processes in the last five years and even more are expecting to implement analytics in the next five years. One of the challenges, though, is that organizations are still primarily using analytics to look backward rather than to predict business outcomes. That ability to look forward is increasingly becoming a competitive differentiator for organizations in nearly all industries.

Even finance organizations that are deep into analytics are still finding new areas to exploit. For example, the survey found that the use of finance process optimization (for cost reduction, accuracy and speed) is expected to grow from 21 percent to 73 percent. Survey respondents expect to apply analytics to the following finance activities:

  • Optimizing planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes
  • Integrating macro-economic data, industry trends and competitor data
  • Revenue forecasting

Now is the time to think about how you are currently using analytics in finance, and where you want to take your team’s use of analytics. The question really isn’t how can you use analytics in finance, but more how can’t you use analytics?

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 43

Top 10 Steps for a Successful FPM Project

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We’ve created a list of the top 10 steps organizations should take for a successful financial performance management project. These steps were honed over more than two decades of experience designing and implementing financial performance management solutions based on IBM Analytics technologies. Essentially, these can also be considered best practices for financial performance management projects.

Before we go into the 10 steps, let’s take a look at today’s business environment. Years ago businesses, and senior management, were content to wait while technology project took months, or even years to be designed, implemented, rolled out, and eventually evaluated for success. That’s no longer an acceptable timeline. Sadly, some businesses will go out of business waiting years for an application that could make a meaningful difference for them. So it is now critical that many organizations think about speed to results and success at the beginning of a project. It’s with this mindset—and decades of experience, as well as focus on solving business problems, not just deploying cool technology for the sake of it—that we’ve developed this list.

  1. Get an executive sponsor
  2. Define the requirements
  3. Phase the project
  4. Take ownership
  5. Communicate throughout the project
  6. Involve IT
  7. Identify and train the various users
  8. Staff the implementation team with care
  9. Close the loop on the project
  10. Choose the right partner

We’ve expanded on these 10 steps in a whitepaper of the same title. If you’re interested in reading this whitepaper, feel free to download “Top 10 Steps for a Successful Financial Performance Management Implementation.”

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 43

IBM Planning Analytics: Using the full power of MDX

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Many of you know that MDX can be used in your current IBM Cognos TM1 environment to create dynamic subsets and row expansions, but did you know that MDX can also be used to create an entire view of data?

TM1’s initial use of MDX functionality was limited to manipulating one dimension at a time, but IBM Planning Analytics uses the full power of MDX via expressions called tuples and sets.  These expressions define intersections of data which result in a full data set view.

This functionality is built into PAx Explorations and eliminates the need for DBRW functions in your spreadsheet.  When you create a new exploration, Planning Analytics automatically creates an MDX expression that references the current data set.  You can see the expression by clicking on the MDX button within the Planning Analytics ribbon.

MDX in IBM Planning Analytics

After clicking on the button, the full MDX expression will appear.

Detailed MDX in IBM Planning Analytics

This expression can be modified to change the results that appear in the spreadsheet.  In the above example, the columns can be changed to show the subset called “2017Months” instead of using the current subset called “2016Months”.

IBM Planning Analytics gives you the full power of MDX expressions. Not sure where to start? There are plenty of resources online. Our team here at Revelwood can also train you on MDX. And stay tuned for more MDX tips and tricks on our blog and in upcoming newsletters!

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Revelwood Named Ingram Micro IBM Analytics Growth Partner of the Year

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Business travel can sometimes be more obligation than enjoyment. There’s always the chance of flight delays and other transportation snafus, long days, and often, the expectation of keeping up with your day job while being out of the office for work. But sometimes there’s that special business trip you look forward to!

That’s how we feel about the annual Ingram ICE event. “ICE” stands for Ingram Cognos Elite and it’s an exclusive program for IBM business partners who demonstrate expertise in selling IBM Cognos solutions. Every year, this event is held in a different location. This year, the ICE event took place in sunny Key Largo, Florida which is always a fun place to have a business trip. To make it even more exciting, this was the second year in a row that Revelwood was named the Ingram Micro IBM Analytics Growth Partner of the Year!

“Revelwood has done an incredible job growing their IBM analytics business through portfolio expansion and new client acquisition,” said David Hino, senior vendor business manager for IBM Software, Ingram Micro. “They are part of an elite group of Ingram Micro and IBM partners that many could learn from.”

Revelwood celebrates earning the Ingram Micro IBM Analytics Growth Partner of the Year award for 2016

From left to right: Vincent Zandvliet, global managing director for IBM/Ingram Partnership, IBM; Scott Zahl, vice president & general manager for Advanced Computing Division, Ingram Micro; Ken Wolf, CEO, Revelwood; Dave Hino, senior vendor business manager for IBM Software, Ingram Micro; Laurie Evans, worldwide channels leader for analytics, IBM.

Our CEO, Ken Wolf, was on-hand to accept the award, but it was earned by the entire Revelwood team. As Ken said in our press release, “Our team earned this award because we have continued to grow our established practice in financial and operational analytics, while also building a successful and award-winning practice in customer analytics and artificial intelligence.” As you can see from the photo, Ken had a great time at the event!

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