Revelwood

What Does Revelwood Do?

August 12, 2021 by Lisa Minneci Leave a Comment

When you think of consumer companies, you might only think of them in terms of their flagship product or service. Coca-Cola sells soft drinks. McDonald’s sells hamburgers. Uber provides ride shares for people. Those companies actually do more than just what they are known for: Coca-Cola also offers Dasani, VitaminWater, Honest Kids, Gold Peak iced tea and more. McDonald’s is also known for its Filet-O-Fish and has now entered the competitive fried chicken market. In addition to offering ride shares, Uber’s services include food and goods delivery.

Many Revelwood clients think of us as their partner of choice to design and implement Office of Finance solutions based on IBM Planning Analytics and Workday Adaptive Planning. Like those consumer brands I mentioned, we do much more than that. We’ve recently added BlackLine to our best-of-breed portfolio and are looking forward to adding more world-class solutions for the Office of Finance.

We also deliver Customer Care solutions for managing and maintaining your Office of Finance systems.

Hear what our CEO, Ken Wolf, has to say about what Revelwood does and how we are enabling organizations to disrupt their companies, industries and the world.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Introduction to Apps and Plans

March 16, 2021 by Thanh Chau Leave a Comment

As of version 58 of IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW), IBM introduced new features called Applications and Plans. These are meant to guide business processes by centralizing and organizing required tasks to make sure that all steps are completed in the correct sequence.

To access the area, click on the Applications and Plans pane on the homepage when you first log onto PAW.

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace: Introduction to Apps and Plans

On the next page, you can create a new application or plan by clicking on the “Create” drop down and selecting the appropriate option.

Before you can add to your application or plan, you must enter a name.

For applications, you can add “sections” to your process. Each section corresponds to a step in your business process. You can add assets such as PAW views, websheets, or books for users to access easily. You can also assign PAW groups to each step to show who is responsible for completing that task.

Plans are similar to applications, but they also provide the ability to set due dates and allow for submissions as a form of approval or completion notice.

So when would you use each type?

Applications are designed to be used as a guide for set business processes that do not depend on multiple groups. Examples include CAR requests, monthly forecasting steps, cost center requests, or variance reviews.
Plans are for collaboration in which the steps are dependent upon each other or other groups. This is typically the annual budget process and special projects such as mergers and acquisitions which require steps to be completed in a timely manner.

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!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Forecasting – Setting up the Forecast

March 9, 2021 by Nina Inverso Leave a Comment

This is part three in a three-part series on IBM Planning Analytics’ new feature, Forecasting.

In our previous blog about IBM Planning Analytics’ new Forecasting feature, we reviewed the steps required to preview your forecast. Once previewed, you can then run your Forecast.

Open a Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) book and add a new cube view.
Place the time dimension’s flat hierarchy alone on the columns. As of PAW version 2.0.60, you will no longer be required to display the entire hierarchy on the view. Instead, you will have the option to select the scope of the historical data used in the forecast.
Select the context and row elements to forecast. For example:
- Drag the account dimension on top of the source dimension to swap their positions.
- Click on the version dimension to select a different version of the data from the drop-down list.
- Double-click on the account dimension to select the row elements.

Your PAW cube view is now ready as a Planning Analytics Forecasting model.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Waterfall Chart

January 19, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) includes various visualizations that can be used to view your data. One of these visualizations entails a chart called a waterfall chart. This type of chart will help you show the components of a summarized number and is very helpful in determining which values are beneficial to the total and which values are detrimental.

The image below shows an exploration and its corresponding waterfall chart.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Waterfall Diagram

The chart shows information about each region while also defining each region as a positive (green) or negative (red) amount, which makes it easy to determine what is adding to the total and what is reducing the total.
The chart makes it easy to compare regions against each other, which allows you to quickly see that the Northeast gross profit is much larger than the West.
The chart allows users to look at the pieces as a rough percentage of the total, which lets you see that the Northeast accounts for more than half of the total.

PAW also allows you to customize various aspects of the chart, including colors for each bar.

Understanding the waterfall diagram in IBM Planning Analytics

The combination of an exploration and a waterfall chart can be used as the starting point for a user friendly dashboard in PAW.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel TYPE Function

January 12, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever referenced a list in Excel and needed to know whether each value was a number or a string? This may be required when another function depends on the type of value in each cell.

Excel has a function called TYPE that will give you this information. The function contains a single parameter, which is simply the cell you want to check. The formula will output a number that defines the type of value such as number, text, logical value or an error.

Here are results from four iterations of the TYPE formula:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Type

You can then use the type result within an IF statement to perform various functions.

The TYPE function will not determine whether a cell contains a formula. TYPE only determines the type of the resulting, or displayed, value. If value is a cell reference to a cell that contains a formula, TYPE returns the type of the formula’s resulting value.

This approach will help you when determining the use of IBM Planning Analytics formulas such as DBS vs. DBSS.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Keyboard Navigation

January 5, 2021 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Have you ever wanted to quickly go to the last used cell within a spreadsheet but did not know how? Have you ever wanted to determine where the next available row or column resides? Have you ever wondered why a spreadsheet with only a few cells of data may appear as a large file? All these answers can be provided with a single keystroke combination.

Pressing Ctrl and End at the same time will bring you to the last cell within a spreadsheet that Excel is referencing. The definition of “last” entails the rightmost column and the lowest used row on the worksheet. The last cell may not always contain data, but it will always be registered by Excel as something that is utilizing memory.

Here are some other keystroke combinations that will help you quickly navigate around your spreadsheet:

Ctrl and Home at the same time: this will bring you to the first cell (A1) in the worksheet.
End then an arrow key: this will bring you to the next empty value in any direction. For example, pressing End and then the down arrow will bring you to next empty cell in the column where your cursor currently resides.
Ctrl and PageUp : this will bring you to the previous sheet in the workbook.
Ctrl and PageDn: this will bring you to the next sheet in the workbook.

Keyboard shortcuts can easily help you navigate your Excel files and help you determine the “ending” cell within a spreadsheet. This will be useful in situations such as dynamic reports where rows and columns are automatically generated via automation.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Alternative Row Formats for Excel Reports

November 10, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

In the early days of computing, printers often used paper that had alternating white and green areas which allowed the reader to easily follow a line of text across the page. This was known as “green bar” paper. While we no longer use this type of paper, the concept is still applicable for situations where your output contains many columns that are hard to follow.

You can create this approach by using alternate row formats within your Excel reports. This is done by combining two Excel formulas:

The ROW formula returns the row number for a cell reference. For example, ROW(K5) returns the number 5 since the cell is in the 5^th row of the spreadsheet.
The MOD formula returns the remainder of two numbers after division. For example, MOD(9,2) returns the number 1.

When combined, the following formula will result in either a 1 or a 0:

=MOD(ROW(cell),2)

From there, you can use conditional formatting to define the fill colors. If you are doing this in standard Excel, then you can copy the formula throughout the applicable area. If you are doing this within a dynamic report, then you can use it within the formatting area.

This approach allows you to make your wide reports easier to read. This also means that you can recreate the green bar format while you pull out your dot matrix printer and watch classic movies such as Wargames!

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Minimizing the Subset Area

November 3, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Are your member names long and hard to see in the subset editor in IBM Planning Analytics? Does it get confusing to see both the available members and the current set at the same time? Both situations can be solved by hiding one side of the subset editor.

Here is an example of the subset editor which shows both the available members and the current set.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Minimizing the Subset Area

Each of the two sections has an option to minimize the area. This is done by clicking on the minus symbol at the top of the applicable section.

IBM Planning Analytics: Minimizing the Subset Area

Once clicked, the applicable area will compress and the other area will expand. Note that you can only minimize one side at a time. Below are examples of what each screen will look like when compressed.

Minimized Available Members:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips: Minimizing the Subsea Area

Minimized Current Set:

Minimizing the subset area in IBM Planning Analytics

This approach will allow you to further customize your subset editor screen to allow you to focus only on the area you want to see.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Maintaining Subset-Drive Consolidations

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Sort Elements within a Subset

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Subset Control Dimension

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Show Members

October 27, 2020 by Lee Lazarow Leave a Comment

Did you know that while you are doing dimension maintenance, you can quickly view an element’s parents or children in IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) via a single click? Here’s how you can do this:

Step 1: Select the dimension to be edited. This is done by either right clicking on a dimension and selecting the option to “Edit Dimension” or by dragging the dimension onto a sheet.

Step 2: Right click on an element and select the option to “Show Member.” You will then see two sub-options: one for Parents and one for Children.

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Show Members

If you select the option for Parents then you will see all of the parents associated with the selected element. In this example, there is only one parent within the dimension structure.

If you select the option for Children then you will see all of the children associated with the selected element. In this example, there are three elements in the consolidation.

How to show members in IBM Planning Analytics

Once defined, you can then perform dimension maintenance to each of the elements on your screen.

This approach allows you to easily traverse up or down your dimension while minimizing the amount of extra elements on the screen.

What Does Revelwood Do?

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Introduction to Apps and Plans

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Planning Analytics Forecasting – Setting up the Forecast

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Waterfall Chart

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel TYPE Function

Read more Excel tips & tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Keyboard Navigation

Read more Excel Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Alternative Row Formats for Excel Reports

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks posts:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Minimizing the Subset Area

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Show Members

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

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