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Financial Performance Management

Creating IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content (Part 2)

August 1, 2016 by Don Cole Leave a Comment

Tips & Tricks

This blog is intended to continue and build upon the previous blog How to Create IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content. In this blog, I will provide an overview on building the remaining content (second and third row of visualizations) in the Dashboard below.


Dashboards


Create or Open a Book

  • Open up Planning Analytics Workspace, create a new Book or open up an existing book.


Steps to Create Units by Month

  • Drag and Drop a view from the Revenue Cube onto your canvas (we are using Revelwood’s Big Apple demo database for these examples).
  • Update the View so the Rows are the Products and the Columns are the Months that you want to report on.
  • Click on the amounts in your view, and select ‘Edit the Title’ from the blue Toolbar above your View and type in ‘Units by Month (000’s)’. The results will look like the following:


Steps to Create Units by Region

  • Click on the amounts in your view, and select ‘Duplicate’ from the Toolbar.
  • Drag and Drop that view to the right of the first view.
  • Swap the Product Dimension with the Region dimension, so the Regions are on the Columns.
  • Edit the Title to be ‘Units by Region (000’s)’. The results will look like the following:


Steps to Create Gross Margin by Period

  • Navigate to the Applications Folder of Revelwood’s Big Apple demo database.
  • Select the ‘Gross Margin by Period’ report.
  • Drag and Drop that report below the Units by Month (000’s) view.
  • Align and Size it as required.
  • The results will look like the following:
  • Click the amounts in your Units by Region view and select ‘Change Visualization’ from the blue toolbar above your View and select ‘Column’.


The result will be:


Summary

We’ve walked through the steps to create a simple Dashboard that includes Cube Views, Visualizations and Excel TM1 worksheets. Additional items that can be added to a Dashboard include; Media, Action Buttons, Web pages, Images and more. In short, IBM Planning Analytics Workspace is a powerful reporting tool providing you with new ways to analyze data, plan and access your content.

Want to learn more about IBM Planning Analytics? Email us and we’ll show you how powerful it can be for your company.

Read other Tech Tips blog posts:

Important Things to Consider When Changing your COA Structure

Securing Data from IBM Cognos TM1 On-Prem to IBM Planning Analytics

How to use IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

How to Create IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content (Part 1)

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Analytics, Budgeting, Financial Performance Management, IBM Planning Analytics, Planning & Reporting, TM1

IBM’s Cloud Strategy and How Revelwood Can Help

July 14, 2016 by Ken Wolf Leave a Comment

News & Events

IBM is investing heavily in its analytics solutions, which means lots of things are changing for the better. At Revelwood, we see it as our job to help our clients interpret these changes to better understand how they might affect your organization in a practical way.

One critical component of IBM’s strategy has been the move to cloud. Not only has IBM acquired cloud-based companies like Softlayer to address the world’s infrastructure and platform needs, but it is migrating virtually all of its software solutions to the cloud, as well. TM1 moved to the cloud back in early 2014. Late last year, TM1 Cloud was reincarnated as IBM Planning Analytics (IPA), which includes TM1 and much more.

Here is a quick summary of the key components that are part of IPA:

  • TM1 – Multidimensional database engine (same as on-prem)
  • TM1 Web – Web environment, including Websheets, cube browsing, etc. (same as on-prem)
  • CAFÉ for TM1 – Excel add-in for TM1, including new functionality not available in Perspectives (Perspectives is also supported in IPA, but only for administrators as a means to publish Websheets)
  • Planning Analytics Workspace – a visual, self-service dashboard and lightweight reporting and data capture tool to interact with TM1 data (New!)
  • Watson Analytics – self-service cognitive discovery and prediction (New!)
  • Cognos BI – business intelligence and robust reporting against the TM1 data source (New!)

Moving to IPA on the cloud has its advantages, as well as some considerations to be aware of. For example, not all existing functionality in on-premise TM1 is ready for the cloud just yet. We’ll be covering more on IPA in upcoming blogs, so be sure to check back here often.

What we at Revelwood find most compelling about IBM’s direction is the dual “on-premise or in-the-cloud” strategy. Your organization can choose the right solution at the right time. We can help you understand the differences, develop a roadmap for migration, structure your renewal contract to include the cloud option and, of course, work with you on the migration itself. Just let us know and we’ll get the conversation started.

Who at Revelwood should I call, you ask? Great question. If you haven’t met him already, you should meet John Pra Sisto. John joined Revelwood last year as our first ever Client Success Manager. Yes, his entire purpose at Revelwood is to ensure that our clients are happy and successful. If you don’t know who to turn to, contact John. He can be reached at 201.984.3025 or jprasisto@revelwood.com.

Thanks for listening…we look forward to hearing from you.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: Analytics, Cafe, Financial Performance Management, IBM Planning Analytics, Revelwood, TM1

QUBEdocs Streamlines TM1 Documentation

June 24, 2016 by John Pra Sisto Leave a Comment

Tips & Tricks

Understanding and documenting existing IBM® Cognos® TM1® models can be a time-consuming process. When making changes to complex models, it is challenging to fully understand the implications of these changes to ensure issues or inaccuracies won’t arise. Having made the changes, documentation must be also updated.

I recently sat down with our partner, Scott Felten, General Manager of QUBEdocs, to talk about the benefits of using QUBEdocs for TM1 documentation.

Q: What is QUBEdocs?
Scott: QUBEdocs is a proven solution for addressing the everyday challenges of TM1 analysts, developers and administrators. By delivering meaningful documentation of TM1 models, it virtually eliminates many of the time-consuming tasks associated with managing and making risk-free changes to TM1 models.

Q: How does it work?
Scott: QUBEdocs automates and centralizes the documentation of TM1 models, by allowing you to tag model constructs such as business rules, models, processes and applications. Integrating closely with TM1, it pulls information from vast numbers of underlying TM1 source files enabling you to organize your model and delivering an otherwise-unavailable consolidated view:

  • Depicting models visually
  • Delivering hard to find information to developers, administrators and end users in a meaningful way
  • Displaying comprehensive model dependencies
  • Enabling impact analysis of proposed changes
  • Highlighting errors through integrity checks
  • Tracking changes to meet corporate governance requirements
  • Capturing and reporting on changes over time or between environments
  • Maintaining documentation as changes are made

Q: What benefits can an organization expect from using QUBEdocs?
Scott: QUBEdocs significantly decreases the cost of managing your TM1 implementation, adding significant value to your business. QUBEdocs automatically generates documentation for TM1 models and uses a simple framework for translating the technical aspects in TM1 into your own business language ‘as you go’ resulting in time and resource savings. Presenting comprehensive TM1 model information in a meaningful way, QUBEdocs empowers users to logically and visually interrogate their model – making them less likely to make errors that result in support costs. Users and developers can clearly see dependencies within complex models, depict the models visually and search entire models. This allows them to effectively anticipate the impact of changes before making them.

Want to learn more about QUBEdocs? Contact John Pra Sisto.

Read other Tech Tips blog posts:

IBM Planning Analytics: Using the Full Power of MDX

Important Things to Consider When Changing your COA Structure

Securing Data from IBM Cognos TM1 On-Prem to IBM Planning Analytics

How to use IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Analytics, Budgeting, Financial Performance Management, QUBEdocs, TM1

Meet Alex Needham: Ridding the World of Inefficient Planning and Reporting

June 1, 2016 by Alex Needham Leave a Comment

News & Events

I started my career in the automotive industry. I started off as an intern and worked my way up to FP&A coordinator / assistant manager over five years. During this time, I realized how much time our Financial team wasted on horrifically inefficient planning and reporting processes. I knew there had to be a better reporting solution than nesting IF/VLOOKUP statements and a better planning solution than spending weeks rebuilding dozens of Excel workbooks every year.

Luckily, I was selected for a project management class. I knew that I wanted my project to be an efficiency project. After looking at several systematic solutions, I realized TM1 was the only product that showed the flexibility, speed of development, and intuitiveness that we needed. After some demonstrations and discussions with management, they accepted my recommendation and the project began. I quickly realized that developing our environment in TM1 was not just something I was good at, but was actually my passion.

After roughly a year and a half of developing in TM1, including a few weeks as a consultant at another one of our factories, I wanted to take the next step forward in learning the software. I looked at several consulting companies across the industry, but kept finding myself coming back to Revelwood. The longevity, the client list, and the reputation made Revelwood the place to be.

During my interviews, I got to speak with a Revelwood employee. He told me: “You know how you’re in the top 10% of your company? That’s everyone here.” That statement stuck with me and has proven to be true. There has not been a day yet where I haven’t learned something since I started with Revelwood, and I feel very proud to be a part of such a capable team.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: Analytics, Financial Performance Management, Revelwood

Cash Flow Modeling with IBM TM1

March 15, 2016 by Don Cole Leave a Comment

Tips & Tricks

As a senior consultant with Revelwood for nearly seven years, I’ve had the opportunity to design and develop a large number of TM1 models for various aspects of budgeting, planning and forecasting. Some client engagements are very straightforward – simply transition the business from spreadsheet-based budgeting to TM1. This gives them greater flexibility and visibility while significantly reducing the amount of time spent on the budgeting process. All good and necessary stuff to properly manage an organization’s finances in today’s fast-paced business environment.

But every now and then, I’ve also had the opportunity to design and develop a TM1 model that’s completely new – not just a “standard” financial accounting activity, or a modification required for a specific industry. And that’s when my job is really fun.

One recent client engagement is a perfect example of doing something new in TM1. We developed a cash flow model designed specifically to reflect the reality of the business situation along with addressing the complexity of a multi-billion dollar business. Often, finance executives and analysts look at a forecast and focus on net income, sales or profitability. But what’s equally important is the impact those variables will have on cash.

On one hand it’s pretty simple. The more net income you have, the more cash you are going to have. However, our client wanted to say, “Based on our forecast, if I keep $100 million in cash, how much will I need to borrow or repay on my debt?” To get to this, we needed the model to reflect the entire business, including the forecast net income, capital expenditures and shareholder dividends. It needed to include everything we know about all the transactions, and how they impact the end result.

This may sound very different from “traditional” forecasting, but in fact, it’s just taking it one step further. At its simplest, it’s about taking all the known information and modeling that information so that the client can look at it in a different way. And that, to me, means there is always something more we can do with TM1. It’s not limited to basic budgeting and forecasting. In fact, operationally, you can measure any metric or KPI and create dashboards for them. Projects like this one – ones that push TM1 past the basics – are fun and engaging to work on.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Analytics, Budgeting, Financial Performance Management, Planning & Reporting, TM1

Why Revelwood’s Professional Services Group is Different

February 11, 2016 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

News & Events

This is a guest blog post by Revelwood’s Lee Lazarow.

Designing and developing successful business analytics applications requires a unique blend of skills; a team must understand both the nuances of the technology and the idiosyncrasies of business. We’ve built – and are continuing to build – our PSG team with those needs in mind.

Each Revelwood PSG team member understands both the technology and the overall business goals. Some consultants are stronger on the technology while others excel at understanding the business issues, so we put together our client teams with the goal of balancing that knowledge. To paraphrase the Greek saying, I truly believe that the strength of the whole team is greater than the sum of the skills of each individual.

Revelwood consultants are a true team. One way we demonstrate this is via our daily “huddle.” Every morning our team has a 15 minute phone call to share who’s working on what, who may need help with something, and what’s going on. Like many services firms, we have team members who work remotely and we never want to get in the position that they feel they are “alone.” Our huddles benefit both our team members and our clients.

I have recently started playing chess and I believe that a TM1 project can be very similar to the game. One aspect of chess is deciding how to use all the individual pieces in conjunction to achieve a common goal … just like the concept of creating a project team. Another thing about playing chess is that strategy requires you to think a few steps ahead. We are able to do this in our projects because of our deep and lengthy experience with business analytics technologies. Revelwood has been around long before Cognos and IBM bought TM1 and there’s not much we haven’t seen. That experience, combined with our commitment to exceed our client expectations and focus on putting the business goals first, means we understand where things are going. Like chess, we can easily read the board, assess the situation, and come up with the right strategy to win the game.

“Winning the game” can mean different things to different people and organizations. Some may view it as closing as many sales as possible and churning through projects quickly. But for us, “winning the game” means we get our projects delivered on time and under budget, while having clients tell us “I trust you.” That’s when we know we’ve achieved our checkmate!

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: Analytics, Data Science, Financial Performance Management, Predictive Analytics, Revelwood

Working with TM1 in the Cloud

January 19, 2016 by Revelwood Leave a Comment

Tips & Tricks

This is a guest blog post by Revelwood’s Susan Musselman.

As a senior consultant with Revelwood, I’ve had the opportunity to work on many different implementations of IBM Cognos TM1. But last year I was able to tackle a very cool project – one of the first implementations of TM1 in the Cloud (now IBM Planning Analytics). This wasn’t just one of the first Revelwood implementations—it was one of IBM’s first implementations. It was all new territory.

Our client was a leading direct marketer of apparel and accessories. They were looking to have a budgeting and reporting application that would significantly reduce the amount of effort required by their spreadsheet-based planning process, and to have the ability to perform ad hoc analysis to satisfy immediate inquiries from senior management. They also wanted to be able to more easily create cash flow statements, monitor the budget submission status of budget contributors and give their end users the ability to perform their own ad hoc analysis.

These are pretty standard activities for TM1. So one might wonder why this company opted for TM1 in the Cloud. They felt their geographically diverse user base would best be served by a cloud implementation. In fact, their IT department had set a corporate strategy to move all its applications to the cloud. The company no longer wanted to invest in solutions that required data center space and extensive IT support.

Because it was a cloud implementation, we only had two methods of delivery—either TM1 Web or TM1 CAFÉ (Cognos Analysis for Microsoft Excel). We opted to use CAFÉ, which was brand-new at the time. Working with new technologies can be challenging, but as a result of our long-term relationships with IBM and participation and attendance at IBM Vision, we had developed relationships with the TM1 in the Cloud developers and the CAFÉ developers. These connections ended up being critical to the implementation’s success. We ended up in some very interactive meetings with the IBMers, which enabled both our client and our team to provide input on future product directions for CAFÉ.

Phase one was completed last year, and the client is very happy with their decision. Now we’re focused on building cash flow models and a budgeting application for their retail store sales. It felt really great for both the client and our Revelwood team to be early adopters for how TM1 will be used in the future.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Analytics, Budgeting, Financial Performance Management, Planning & Reporting, TM1

Roundtable Recap: The Most Important Things to Know Before, During and After a TM1 Implementation

July 10, 2015 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

News & Events

One of our clients, Orchard Brands, recently participated in an IBM virtual roundtable, and we thought it would be useful to share our recap of the major themes and notable points that each panelist had to offer. The panel included four different IBM clients – Orchard Brands, Logistics AG, Jabil, Inc. and Mueller, Inc. What made this roundtable particularly unique was that every client is currently in a different lifecycle stage with their TM1 product. Some are approaching just a year post-implementation, while others are going on 10-15 years. Here is a recap of the common questions and answers from the roundtable.

What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned after implementing TM1?
“The people,” culture, listening and preparedness are the most important components to having a successful implementation. Knowing from the beginning who is going to run the tool, who will maintain it and planning for change management are all aspects that need to be carefully and thoroughly reviewed. Also, the employee’s jobs that included consolidating spreadsheets become obsolete – how to transform these employees from data crunchers to business people is really important to a company’s culture. Another vital aspect of preparedness includes having the right documentation and reference materials in place. In the case of Orchard Brands, they were the first ever to implement TM1 on the cloud, so a lot of their documentation was being developed as they implemented, which made it a learning experience. Lastly, it’s important to listen to your employees and team members to understand what they’d like to get out of the tool and what is important to them in their day-to-day process. This understanding helps shape the most effective setup and configuration of TM1 from the beginning.

Which new capabilities do you have now, that you didn’t have five years ago?
Visualizing the data in a manner that allows for speed, scalability and volume all at once is key. This has allowed for more data to be thrown at the system and new ways to test TM1. As soon as someone makes a change in the system, it’s immediately visual in their BI system, which previously, had taken hours to update. TM1 has also opened doors, where never thought possible, to other areas of the business like supply chain management, long term planning, pricing, workflows, marketing and sourcing. Although TM1 is a finance-built tool, its interface easily allows for integration across multiple departments, creating a more diverse platform. The other areas of the business (where no ROI was anticipated) has actually been the biggest value.

What is the most important business value improvement you’ve seen from TM1, or anticipate seeing?
Time is of the essence and time is money. TM1 has sped up forecasting, analysis and reacting to sudden changes. This decrease of time spent crunching numbers and consolidating spreadsheets has widened the opportunity to develop new capabilities focused on revenue-generating analysis that help companies grow. Being able to make a decision quicker and with more confidence is a HUGE cost saver. The cost of making a decision a day earlier can save thousands of dollars. Those things add up. This freed up time has also opened doors for exploring how TM1 can impact other areas of the business. Also, TM1 can provide a “500 page level data” or a “20 page level data.” One element can provide for multiple constituencies by displaying the relevant analysis as high-level or as in-depth as you need. Figuring out how to consolidate these lengthy reports to deliver to senior management had previously been a huge time consumer.

What are your thoughts on TM1 Cloud and what steps are you taking in evaluating cloud options?
Orchard Brands is currently running TM1 on the cloud, while the other three clients are running TM1 on-premise. There are mixed reviews about cloud, but it all comes down to if it’s a right fit for your company or not. One huge benefit of cloud for Orchard Brands is that the system is completely contained in finance, with little to no involvement in IT. This separation allows for finance to wholly own and understand the system. Cloud is also a strategic move for most companies considering ease, security and flexibility. Some clients currently aren’t considering cloud because they have recently invested in infrastructure to get new servers, but may consider it on their next go-around. Another panelist viewed that cloud solutions are the future and they can’t wait for it. It’s talked about and considered on a daily basis. Cloud makes your IT department “lean” if you can eliminate infrastructure, maintenance upgrades and migrations. It all comes back to being fully educated about the pros and cons of cloud, and understanding how it would positively or negatively affect your business, and weighing those factors against each other.

What’s your best advice for selling the business case for TM1 to senior management?
It’s important to put your people and process above the technology. Prepare the business case for the positive impact of your people and process, and put that above simply your technology upgrades. Paint a picture of good, concrete examples of “where we are now, and where we can get to in the future.” Focus on the time you’re going to save with this new tool and how this corresponds to “X amount of dollars over the next X amount of months.” Use the concrete examples of new reports, capabilities and hours spent to show how specific applications of TM1 can provide tangible results going forward. Understand your company’s vision, mission and objectives and present your case in a business-focused manner, directly related back to the company’s long-term goals. With this approach, you can’t go wrong.

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Analytics, Budgeting, Financial Performance Management, Planning & Reporting, TM1

A Strange Journey from Hospitality to TM1 Consulting

May 6, 2015 by Nicole Frigo Leave a Comment

News & Events

Just about a year ago I joined Revelwood as an associate consultant working on client implementations using IBM Cognos TM1 and IBM Cognos ICM. It was a great move for so many reasons, but also a surprising one in the context of a career path.

Ten years ago I started my professional life as a reservations agent with Starwood Hotels & Resorts. In those intervening ten years, my jobs transitioned from guest relations roles to operations roles, where I analyzed sales revenue. Most recently, I was the manager of sales analysis for Starwood, working on the standardization and development of analytical tools for system reporting and sales trend analysis. During that time I worked on a web application and relational database for complex performance compensation plans and developed a property-level scorecard for key reporting metrics. Oh, and I was a TM1 administrator.

While I loved working in the hospitality industry, the opportunity with Revelwood meant I’d be able to expand my technology expertise and work in a number of different industries. To date I’ve worked on TM1 and Cognos ICM implementations for businesses in the media & entertainment and financial services industries.

One of the things I love about working with TM1 is that it’s both “like and unlike” working on one of my hobbies. During my free time, I love doing artistic things – creating art, painting, refurbishing furniture. It both fuels my creativity, but also forces me to focus on small details. And there’s nothing like the feeling of seeing the finished product – especially if the “before” required a lot of work to get to the “after.” It’s a huge payoff.

Some might argue that working with TM1 is not really a creative exercise. That might be true, but I do see a creative angle to it. TM1 offers so many ways to get something done, there’s room for creativity. And the software has so many pieces to it that working in it requires great attention to detail. I love that TM1 provides an almost limitless opportunity to learn and do different things. I get the opportunity to build a model or create a piece of code, go back and improve it, and then see the results.

Just as I enjoy the diversity of working with different businesses, I also like the opportunity to work on not just TM1, but also Cognos ICM. And those technologies are very different from TM1. The approach is quite different from that of TM1. There’s more building and putting together of “pieces” in Cognos ICM. Once you’ve built, say, a report, if there’s an error, you have to go back through those pieces to find where the break is.

Even though I never imagined my career would take me from a reservation agent at a hotel chain to working with the latest in analytics technologies, it’s been a great journey. And as I mark my first year at Revelwood, I’m looking forward to the new clients and new projects I get to jump in to in 2015!

Home » Financial Performance Management » Page 46

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: Analytics, Financial Performance Management, Revelwood, TM1

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