IBM Cognos TM1

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson Named Value Index Leader by Ventana Research

October 7, 2022 by Revelwood

Ventana Research has named IBM Planning Analytics with Watson a Value Index Leader in the firm’s Business Planning Value Index: 2022 Vendor and Product Assessment. The firm evaluated IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, along with planning products from Anaplan, Board International, Infor, insightsoftware, OneStream Software, Oracle, Planful (formerly Host Analytics), Prophix, SAP, Unit4, Vena Solutions, Wolters Kluwer and Workday.

IBM was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking first overall in the Value Index. Additional rankings by IBM Planning Analytics include:

Ranking second in Product Experience
Ranking Second in Customer Experience
Named as a Value Index Leader in TCO/ROI

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The purpose of the report is to “evaluate the maturity of software vendors and products and their value for enterprise use in business planning.” It is designed to provide a “balanced perspective of vendors and products that is rooted in an understanding of business drivers and needs.” Ventana uses research-based analytics and methodology to generate the Value Index ratings. The firm then “builds to a set of indicators it presents in both analytic and graphic form, each depicting the value of a specific vendor’s offering in terms of what it can deliver relevant to business planning needs.”

According to Ventana, “Technology is essential to making planning and budgeting more strategic, more strategic, more productive and more consequential to an organization’s success.”

Download your complimentary report!

Join The Best IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 Consulting Firm!

October 6, 2022 by Revelwood

Do you love working with IBM Planning Analytics / TM1? Do you thrive on solving complex business problems? Do you enjoy working with a top-notch team? Then you should apply to work at Revelwood!

Who We’re Looking For

Revelwood is hiring full-time consultants to join our IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 systems implementation team. We’re looking for team leaders who understand the financial planning and reporting process and demonstrate effective self-management. Previous experience with IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 is required.

Our IBM Planning Analytics Practice

We are fully committed to our IBM Planning Analytics practice and invest in our team members to be 100% certified on the technology. Our team members become experts in the latest versions of IBM Planning Analytics while also mastering all aspects of the TM1 legacy tool. We enable our team to develop a knowledge base of best practices and to work with a wide range of companies. You’ll learn how different companies approach budgeting, planning, reporting and analytics while developing friendly relationships with our clients.

What would you be doing at Revelwood? Some recent examples of the work our team has done includes:

Creating a complex allocation model for a healthcare / insurance organization
Helping a technology leader in the design and manufacturing of trucks update a system that enables them to analyze different engine types
Simplifying the overall planning and reporting process for a financial services firm
Redesigning a model to accommodate a new chart of accounts structure for a medical technology company

Finding the right career opportunity is not just about what you’ll be doing – it’s also about who you’ll be working with …

Why Revelwood

Revelwood is an award-winning, Gold Business Partner of IBM. We’ve worked with TM1 for nearly 30 years, building best practices across all industries. We speak business first, delivering best-in-class solutions for the Office of Finance. In addition to IBM, we partner with Workday Adaptive Planning, BlackLine and Fluence Technologies.

Revelwood is a team of passionate problem solvers and trusted partners. We embrace our core values:

Be passionate
It’s about the team
Do the right thing
Take pride in your work
Take initiative
We care

Most importantly, our team members enjoy working at Revelwood. Here’s what some of them have to say:

“Revelwood has the best culture of any company I’ve ever worked at. The degree of honesty, openness and genuine caring by management and colleagues is bar none.” – Ken DiSessa, account executive

“Every once in a while, you come across a company where teamwork comes totally naturally. No one has to work at it, there is just total confidence in the abilities of each team member, knowing that not one person is out for themselves and it’s all about the team.” – Chris Sherman, senior business development associate

Come join a team where we will celebrate your knowledge, celebrate your victories, and provide a fun but focused working environment.

Learn more and apply today!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Working with Two Time Zones in Google Calendar

October 4, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Do you regularly work with others that are in a different time zone? If so, how often have you heard your counterpart tell you to “just determine my time by adding X hours to yours.” And how often have you messed up that simple math by subtracting X or by adding Y?

If you use Google calendars, then you don’t have to do this math each time you attempt to schedule a meeting. Google’s calendar allows you to show two time zones in your sidebar.

To enable this setting, click on the settings icon and select the option for Time Zone. From there, enable the option to “Display secondary time zone” and then select the time zone.

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Once defined, you will see two time zones on the left side of your calendar.

And Google also allows you to expand this further. If you don’t remember what time zone correlates with each GMT setting, you can also customize each header label.

This approach will help you quickly define time zones for your coworkers while also avoiding their jokes about your basic math skills!

Revelwood has worked with IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 for more than 27 years. We’ve partnered with hundreds of companies on the design, development, maintenance and updates of IBM Planning Analytics applications, across every industry. Have a challenge with Planning Analytics / TM1? We can help you!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Filter Option in Set Editor

September 27, 2022 by Dillon Rossman

Did you know IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) update 76 introduced a new filter option in the set editor? Previously, you could create a filter or multiple filters and the set would show the members that meet the criteria for every filter. Now you can have the set show any member that matches any of the filters.

Within the set editor, when you click filter you will now see two options, “Match all of the following” and “Match any of the following”.

“Match all of the following” is the equivalent of what previously existed. “Match any of the following” is new functionality. For a simple example, I will try to filter this set to show months containing “Jan” or “Feb”.

Using the “Match all of the following” functionality this will return nothing because no month will contain “Jan” AND “Feb.

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However, if I use the new “Match any of the following” functionality to search for members that contain “Jan” OR “Feb” I will get the results I am looking for.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: 21/21/21

September 20, 2022 by Lee Lazarow

Some of you may remember an Excel feature that we wrote about a while back, which explained how the DATE function will convert invalid dates into real ones. For example, DATE(2020,7,35) will be converted to August 4, 2020, since there are not 35 days in July.

Here is where the fun begins!

This week includes the 21^st day of the month of September
September is the 9^th month of this year, which is also the 21^st month of last year
Last year was 2021

Put this all together and we have another special event happening this week …

On September 21, 2022,

the resulting date will be 21/21/21

And if we take it a step further …

At 9:21p and 21 seconds on 9/21/2022,

the resulting time will be 21:21:21 on 21/21/21

This is why we love Excel!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Beginning to Explore the Set Editor in Planning Analytics for Excel

September 13, 2022 by Marc Assenza

The IBM Planning Analytics Set Editor is the equivalent to the TM1 Subset Editor for Architect and Perspectives, but with expanded functionality. Getting started with the set editor is as simple as double clicking on a dimension within your exploration.

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In this example, I double clicked on the Company dimension. Right away you can see that it is organized via a left and right pane where the left side represents what is available within the dimension and the right side shows what is currently selected, or the current set.

The left side now contains two drop downs: one for hierarchies and one for members. The members selection allows you to choose a series of pre-built categories along with existing subsets.

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After selecting the members to be inserted into the current set, you can place them into the right side’s Current Set by simply clicking on the Insert button between the panes. Click the “Apply and close” button your newly selected member(s) will show within your exploration.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Garbage Memory

August 23, 2022 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

I recently had a customer ask me why Windows was showing a much larger memory footprint than what was expected (based on their cube sizes). After further analyzing their model, we saw a large amount of garbage memory … which led to the question “what is garbage memory?”

As you know, IBM Planning Analytics uses various approaches to minimize the amount of RAM needed for a model. PA (Planning Analytics) is very good about only taking what it needs to support views, calculations, and processing. However, I sometimes like to compare PA to a small child – it is very good at only taking what it needs, but it’s not so good at giving it back when it’s done. This is does this on purpose since results are stored for future reference, thereby providing faster results for your users. The excess memory that was being and is no longer needed is called garbage memory.

You can determine how much memory is being used by enabling performance monitoring and reviewing the }StatsForServer control cube.

So how do you release (or reset) the amount of memory used by PA? You can do this by simply recycling your PA server. Revelwood recommends recycling your service at least once per week. Not only will this reset the amount of memory used on the machine, but it will also help with other basic maintenance tasks such as ensuring your transaction log data is properly written to disk.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Background Colors for Data and Header Cells

August 9, 2022 by Dillon Rossman Leave a Comment

Did you know that update 76 of IBM Planning Analytics allows you to customize background colors for data and header cells within your Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) views?

To customize these colors, click on a view within a page in PAW and open the “Properties” menu.

Within the “Properties” menu expand “Text Properties”. Within this section you will notice three subsections: “Data Cell”, “Row Header”, and “Column Header”. Each of these sections includes a setting called “Fill Color”, which defines the background color.

In this example, I will update the data cell background color to a light blue.

The data cells are now a light blue.

The same can be accomplished for the row and column headers, giving complete control over the colors in your PAW view.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Adding and Editing Connection URLs in Planning Analytics for Excel

August 2, 2022 by Marc Assenza Leave a Comment

Do you know how to add a new Connection URL or Edit an existing Connection URL in Planning Analytics for Excel? Here are the steps to follow:

Adding a Connection URL

Once Planning Analytics for Excel has been launched, go into the IBM Planning Analytics ribbon click on the “Connect” button. Click the “New Connection” button within the drop down menu.

The following window will appear.

Datasource type – This is a dropdown containing two selections: IBM Planning Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics. For this example, we are connecting to IBM Planning Analytics.

Connection URL – The connection URL connects Planning Analytics for Excel to a Planning Analytics Workspace server. If you are connecting to a local installation of Planning Analytics Workspace, this will contain either the IP address of your Planning Analytics Workspace server or the machine name of your Planning Analytics Workspace server, examples could look as follows:

http://12.345.77.89
http://mypawserver.mycompany.com

If you are connecting to an IBM Cloud Planning Analytics Workspace Server, the connection URL would look something like this:

https://mycompanyname.planning-analytics.ibmcloud.com/

Friendly name – The friendly name is a user defined setting in the sense that you give it a name that people within the organization would recognize, and it would be something meaningful to them, an example could be:

mycompanyname DEV Server

Once the information is entered, press the Test Connection button to confirm your connection. A successful connection will result in the following message:

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Once completed, click the “Save” button.

Editing a Connection URL

Occasionally you may need to edit an existing connection URL. This may entail a change to your internal “Friendly name” or a change to the IP address of the server. Here are the steps to follow:

Once Planning Analytics for Excel has been launched, go into the IBM Planning Analytics ribbon click on the “Options” button.

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Click on the option for “IBM” on the left-hand side of the window.

You will see a list of all your existing connections. Select the connection you want to edit and click the “Edit” button at the bottom of the screen. You can then make the necessary adjustments and retest the connection.

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson Named Value Index Leader by Ventana Research

Join The Best IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 Consulting Firm!

Who We’re Looking For

Our IBM Planning Analytics Practice

Why Revelwood

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Working with Two Time Zones in Google Calendar

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Filter Option in Set Editor

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: 21/21/21

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Beginning to Explore the Set Editor in Planning Analytics for Excel

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Garbage Memory

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Customizing Background Colors for Data and Header Cells

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Adding and Editing Connection URLs in Planning Analytics for Excel

Adding a Connection URL

Editing a Connection URL

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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