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New Performance Tune-Up Service for TM1 & IBM Planning Analytics Users

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In response to customer requests, we’ve been expanding our Customer Care program. The newest option is a Performance Tune-Up. Proper maintenance of your TM1/Planning Analytics environment is the key to overall good health and performance. Think of our team as your “mechanics” for your solution. You take your car to the auto shop for regular tune-ups. Why not do the same for TM1/Planning Analytics?

We’ve designed this service to make sure your system is running at its best. It is a recurring, scheduled maintenance program consisting of annual tune-ups and quarterly tune-ups. We’ll conduct interviews with your users and detailed technical reviews of your cube models, reports, business processes and the overall environment.

The Performance Tune-Up accomplishes many things, including:

  • Verifying that your TM1/Planning Analytics solution is maintaining peak performance levels and meeting your business and technical requirements
  • Confirming you are up-to-date with the latest IBM technology and leveraging new features and capabilities
  • Ensuring a positive end-user experience

We also offer other services for customer care. These include a subscription-based dedicated TM1/Planning Analytics Help Desk and a System Administration as a Service (SAaaS) offering. Our dedicated TM1 Planning Analytics Help Desk helps you diagnose, troubleshoot and resolve bugs and other issues related to your entire TM1/Planning Analytics environment – including all of your customizations and configurations. Our SAaaS solution is designed to free up your team from the labors of TM1 administration and comes in two options: fully out-sourced coverage and backup/supplemental coverage.

Let our expert team at Revelwood free up your time by taking advantage of our Customer Care program today!

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TM1 Users Survey Reveals Plans for Migrating to IBM Planning Analytics

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Revelwood’s recent survey of TM1 users uncovered when and why many organizations are planning to migrate from IBM Cognos TM1 to IBM Planning Analytics. The survey, which was conducted in Q4 2017, found that more than one quarter of respondents who are migrating to IBM Planning Analytics are planning on doing so this quarter. Slightly less than 10% of respondents plan to migrate sometime between 3-9 months. Only 13% of all respondents are not migrating to Planning Analytics at all.

TM1 Users Survey Reveals Plans for Migrating to IBM Planning Analytics

Interestingly, despite the widespread attention on cloud-based solutions, 50% of respondents plan to migrate to IBM Planning Analytics Local. 18% are migrating to Planning Analytics on the cloud and more than one quarter are still undecided if they will opt for an on-premise strategy, a cloud-based version, or a hybrid approach.

TM1 User Survey on Migrating to IBM Planning Analytics

The survey also showed there is widespread excitement about several new aspects of Planning Analytics:

  • Nearly 85% are very excited or excited about Planning Analytics Workspace
  • 67% are very excited or excited about Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx)
  • 52% are very excited or excited about hierarchies

Many of the TM1 users are still eager for information and resources on IBM Planning Analytics and aspects of migrating to the new platform. When asked what they’d like to learn more about, some responses included:

  • How to create Planning Analytics for Excel (PAx) reports (62%)
  • How to create a Planning Analytics Workspace dashboard (83%)
  • Tips & Tricks for using Planning Analytics (87%)
  • Unique uses of Planning Analytics inside the office of Finance (79%)

Interested in learning more about migrating from TM1 to IBM Planning Analytics? Contact us if you need any help.

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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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