Revelwood

Your SUPER-powered WP Engine Site

IBM Cognos TM1

What’s the Total Economic Impact of IBM Planning Analytics?

by Leave a Comment

When potential clients are evaluating IBM Planning Analytics as a budgeting, planning and reporting solution, they often ask us for its ROI. It’s not a simple question to answer. Every organization’s business situation, and needs are unique to them. The corresponding implementation is as well. As a result, there’s really no universal ROI for any given software solution.

A Forrester report helps provides some related information for businesses looking at Planning Analytics. IBM and Forrester recently came out with The Total Economic Impact™ of IBM Planning Analytics. The analyst firm used its Total Economic Impact (TEI) framework and methodology for the report, which serves “to provide a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions.” The findings are based on interviews with four customers with significant experience with IBM Planning Analytics, and with IBM executive and Forrester analysts.

The Total Economic Impact of IBM Planning Analytics

Based on the report, the total economic impact of Planning Analytics include:

  • 63% less time spent to complete the annual budgeting cycle
  • 80% faster processing planning data
  • 70% fewer labor hours required to complete forecasting cycles

Learn more about the key findings in the report and the benefits of Planning Analytics.

Read additional analyst reports that cover IBM Planning Analytics:

Revelwood Partners Adaptive Insights and IBM Earn High Ratings in BPM Partners’ BPM Pulse Survey

Excel Users Embrace IBM Planning Analytics

Independent Survey Ranks IBM Planning Analytics Against Competing Products

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: How to Reorder TM1 Cubes in Planning Analytics Workspace

by Leave a Comment

In today’s IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video, our PF&A Technology Director, Lee Lazarow, demonstrates a new feature in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) version 2.0.44, that enables you to reorder TM1 cubes. Your TM1 cubes were likely designed for a specific reason. Over the course of years, the data has been changed and added to. TM1 would let you optimize the system by reordering the dimensions and re-indexing the database.

Watch this Planning Analytics video to see how this new feature lets you optimize your cubes by reordering them. When you reorder your cubes, PAW gives you information about the optimization, including if there will be an increase or decrease in performance, and what the impact on RAM will be.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip! And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Planning Analytics videos.

Watch more Planning Analytics video tutorials:

Filtering in Planning Analytics

Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics

Planning Analytics Admin

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Video: Filtering in Planning Analytics

by Leave a Comment

In today’s IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video, our FP&A Technology Director, Lee Lazarow, demonstrates how to do filtering in Planning Analytics. Filtering in Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) will make it easy for your users to select the data they want to see, thereby giving them a good user experience.

The new PAW interface works much like Windows Server does – you can do various searches (wildcard searches, level searches, attribute searches) and thereby take a giant list of elements and filter it down to a smaller subset. The PAW interface even takes it a step further by enabling you to make your search criteria much more structured and user-friendly.

When you master the ability to do filtering in PAW, you’ll enable your users to easily select the data they need.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every week? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip! And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Planning Analytics videos.

Watch more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos:

Reviewing Chores in Planning Analytics

Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics

Planning Analytics Admin

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s CONCAT and TEXTJOIN Functions

by Leave a Comment

Microsoft Excel has recently introduced a new version of the CONCATENATE function called CONCAT. The purpose is similar in that the new function still combines text from multiple ranges and/or strings. CONCAT will eventually replace CONCATENATE, but Microsoft has not released plans to sunset the original function to ensure compatibility with older versions of Excel.

The CONCAT function expects at least one text parameter value, with a maximum of 253 arguments. For example:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: CONCAT and TEXTJOIN Functions
=CONCAT(A1,B1,C1,D1,A2,B2,C2,D2)

returns “Tobeornottobe.” The new function also allows you to combine text ranges. For example:

=CONCAT(A1:D2)

returns a string consisting of the values in cells A1, B1, C1, D1, A2, B2, C2, and D2. In this case, “Tobeornottobe” will once again be returned.

Similarly, the TEXTJOIN function joins text from multiple ranges and/or strings but includes two additional parameters. These parameters allow you to specify the delimiter and determine if empty cells are ignored. For example:

=TEXTJOIN(“ ”, TRUE, A1:D2)

returns “To be or not to be,” whereas

=TEXTJOIN(“ ”, FALSE, A1:D2)

returns “To   be or not  to be.” In the last example, the spaces have been doubled wherever there are empty cells because the second parameter has been set to FALSE.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Excel Feature – XLOOKUP

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn the Excel CELL Formula

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Recalculating Excel Worksheets

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Reviewing Chores

by Leave a Comment

In today’s IBM Planning Analytics video tutorial, our FP&A Technology Director, Lee Larazow, demonstrates PAW v 2.0.43’s new approach that allows you to easily review the chores that are associated with a specific process. Once you have mastered the techniques Lee explains in this video, you’ll have a key skill to making it much easier to maintain your Planning Analytics environment.

Watch this video and you’ll learn how to:

  • Go into a list of processes
  • View all the individual chores associated with a process
  • Define the processes within the chore
  • Completely remove a process from the chore

This new approach by PAW makes Planning Analytics maintenance much easier!

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip! And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Planning Analytics videos.

Watch more Planning Analytics video tutorials:

Creating Buttons in Planning Analytics

Planning Analytics Admin

Dimension Maintenance in IBM Planning Analytics

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s IFS Function

by Leave a Comment

While the IF function has been around for a while now, IFS is new to Excel. This function checks whether one or more conditions are met and then returns the value associated with the first TRUE condition. The main objective of IFS is to simplify an expression that would have previously required multiple nested IF functions.

The general format of the IFS function is

=IFS(Condition 1, Value if Condition 1 = TRUE, Condition 2, Value if Condition 2 = TRUE, Condition 3, Value if Condition 3 = TRUE)

The function can handle up to 127 different conditions, and only the first two parameters are required.

Here is an example using a sample Excel grid:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel's IFS function
=IFS(A1>250,A2,B1>250,B2,C1>250,C2,D1>250,D2)

will return “Green” (the value of cell C2).

In older versions of Excel, this would be written as

=IF(A1>250,A2,IF(B1>250,B2,IF(C1>250,C2,IF(D1>250,D2))))

Multiple nested IF functions would previously be used to accomplish the same result.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: New Excel Feature – XLOOKUP

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn the Excel CELL Formula

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Recalculating Excel Worksheets

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Creating Buttons for TurboIntegrator Scripts

by Leave a Comment

In today’s IBM Planning Analytics video tutorial, our FP&A Technical Director, Lee Lazarow, shows you how to easily create buttons for TurboIntegrator (TI) scripts. When you create buttons for your TI scripts, you simplify tasks for your end users and create a much better Planning Analytics experience for them.

In many situations you’ll have a TurboIntegrator script that you’ll want your end users to run. But you should have an easy way for them to run that script. The solution is to create a button in the Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) environment.

Watch our video Creating Buttons for TurboIntegrator Scripts in IBM Planning Analytics to learn the steps to create a button. These include:

  • Going into properties
  • Turning the properties for the button target into a process
  • Choosing if you want a prompt, and how you want that prompt to appear

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

Watch more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos:

Planning Analytics Administration

Dimension Maintenance in IBM Planning Analytics

Regions with Rules in IBM Planning Analytics

Subscribe to Revelwood’s YouTube channel to watch all of our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos.

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Regions within Regions

by Leave a Comment

A while back I wrote a blog post about using Regions within Planning Analytics rules. Regions allow you to make your rules easier to navigate and read when scrolling through many lines of code. But did you know that you can have regions within your regions?

Here is an example of a region, both opened and closed:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Regions within Regions
IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Regions within Regions

But what if you wanted to differentiate the components within the region?  You can use the exact same concept to create sub-regions:

IBM Planning Analytics Tricks: Regions within Regions
IBM Planning Analytics: Understanding Regions within Regions

Planning Analytics is smart enough to know how to group the start/end components of the region and allow the sub-regions to work within a larger region.  This approach allows us to create sub-groups to make your code even easier to navigate.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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! You can also sign up to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks sent directly to your inbox!

Learn more about Planning Analytics Rules and working with Regions:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Regions with Planning Analytics Rules

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Writing Rules

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Rule Concepts that are Often Forgotten

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The New Planning Analytics Admin Approach

by Leave a Comment

In our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video, Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s FP&A Technology Director, shows you a new, single location in Planning Analytics where you can perform all your administrative tasks. This saves Planning Analytics admins time and simplifies your maintenance activities by enabling you to do all the tasks you would normally do through Windows services.

With this new approach to administration, Planning Analytics now combines server maintenance, database configuration and user definitions all into a single dashboard.

Watch this video to learn how to:

  • Get the status of your servers
  • Look at log files
  • Examine processes
  • Look at and control individual threads
  • Manipulate configuration settings, including your MTQ – multi-threaded querying setting

Planning Analytics new approach to administration saves you time and simplifies maintenance. This video will show you how to take advantage of this new feature.

IBM Planning Analytics, which TM1 is the engine for, 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!

Want to get our Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks delivered to your inbox every Tuesday? Sign up to get our weekly email of just the week’s tip!

Check out our IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video series:

Dimension Maintenance in IBM Planning Analytics

Regions with Rules in IBM Planning Analytics

Bookmarking in IBM Planning Analytics

Snap Commands in IBM Planning Analytics

Pivoting & Selecting Shortcut in IBM Planning Analytics

Home » IBM Cognos TM1 » Page 22