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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Learn the Excel Focus Cell

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It’s easy to lose track of your active cell when working with large worksheets in Excel. Sure, you can always glance at the Name box in the upper-left corner to see the cell reference (for example, L19), but that’s not always convenient or clear when you’re presenting to others.

That’s where Focus Cell comes in. You can watch us demonstrate this in a recent IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video.

Make Your Presentations More Interactive

Excel’s Focus Cell feature highlights the active cell with a distinct border grid, making it crystal clear where you are on the sheet. This not only helps you navigate large reports faster but also makes your presentations easier for your audience to follow.

How to use Focus Cell

  1. 1. Go to the View tab in Excel.
  2. 2. Select Focus Cell.
  3. 3. Excel will now highlight your active cell with a grid around it.

Customize the Highlight Color

Don’t like the default highlight color? No problem. Simply use the Focus Cell Color drop-down to change it to something that fits your preferences — or even matches your corporate colors.

When showcasing Planning Analytics reports in Excel, clarity matters. Highlighting the active cell makes it easier for your viewers to see exactly what you’re working on — whether you’re drilling into actuals vs. plan, walking through a variance analysis or demonstrating forecasting models.

Try Focus Cell in your next Planning Analytics Excel presentation — it’s a simple way to keep your audience engaged and eliminate confusion.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with more than 30 years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. We focus on solutions for the Office of Finance and have partnered with clients of all sizes across all industries to optimize, enhance and expand their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of PA experts with decades of experience, and we have been recognized via awards including  IBM Champion status.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: MDX to Copy a View

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Focus Cell

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Default Settings

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Exploring Consecutive Squares in Today’s Date: 9-16-25

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Sheldon Cooper may like to have fun with flags, but I prefer a different approach: fun with dates!  In my periodic (and made-up) series, I previously wrote blogs about the use of Excel’s DATE function and about July 1.  

Today is September 16, 2025.  So what’s special about that?  

In numeric format, today is 9-16-25.  When initially looking at these numbers, we see that each of these numbers are square numbers:

9 = 3 x 3

16 = 4 x 4

25 = 5 x 5

And when analyzing these square roots further, we find that they are consecutive integers:

3, 4, 5

Put this together and we find that today is a once in a lifetime event (for those of us that did not pay attention on Jan 4, 2009 or Feb 9, 2016) since the next combination is not possible … unless we create a new 16th month called Lee-ember!

We all know that MATH IS AWESOME, but Math times Dates makes it EXPONENTIALLY AWESOME!

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Making Pivot Tables More Interactive

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Pivot tables are one of the most powerful tools in Excel when working with data in IBM Planning Analytics. They allow you to quickly summarize, slice and analyze large amounts of financial information. But sometimes, the default filters can feel a bit clunky — especially when working with time-based data. You can see how to do this in our latest IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks video.

That’s where timelines (time slicers) come in. They give your users a much friendlier and more visual way to select dates. Here’s how you can add one to your Planning Analytics pivot tables:

Step 1: Insert a timeline

Click anywhere inside your pivot table, then go to the PivotTable Analyze tab. In the Filter group, select Insert Timeline.

Step 2: Choose your date field

Excel will automatically look for a field formatted as a date (such as “Period”). Select that field and click OK. A timeline widget will appear on your sheet.

Step 3: Interact with your data

Users can now click on individual months, or drag across a range of dates. The pivot table will update instantly, making analysis quicker and more intuitive.

Step 4: Control multiple pivot tables

If you’re working with more than one pivot table, you don’t need multiple timelines. Instead, click on the widget, go to Report Connections, and connect the same timeline to multiple pivot tables. Now a single time slicer can drive consistent filtering across all of them.

Why this matters for Planning Analytics users

If you’re distributing Planning Analytics reports in Excel, adding a timeline makes your workbooks more interactive, user-friendly, and professional-looking. Your finance team (and executives) will appreciate the ease of selecting periods without digging through dropdown filters.

Next time you build a pivot table on Planning Analytics data, try adding a timeline. It’s a small change that can make a big impact in how people experience and use your reports.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with more than 30 years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. We focus on solutions for the Office of Finance and have partnered with clients of all sizes across all industries to optimize, enhance and expand their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of PA experts with decades of experience, and we have been recognized via awards including  IBM Champion status.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: MDX to Copy a View

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Focus Cell

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Default Settings

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: MDX to Copy a View

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As a model developer, it’s very important to have separate development and production environments that replicate each other as much as possible. This sometimes leads to a situation where you may need to create the same view in both environments. In situations where there are only a few dimensions within a cube, it’s very easy to manually create a view in each environment. But what about situations when your cube has a lot of complexity such as a large number of dimensions with many elements?

The easiest way to replicate a view is to reference the related MDX expression.  Revelwood has created many blog posts and webinars to learn MDX, but the easiest way to start learning – and to solve this issue – is to simply copy the expression. This is done by opening/creating a view and then clicking the MDX icon on your ribbon.

This can be done in both IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) and IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE):

PAWPAfE

Once clicked, an MDX editor will appear on your screen. The editor allows you to copy the expression and then paste it into another environment. As long as the dimensionality and elements are the same in each environment, the expression will work in both.

This approach will allow you to quickly replicate views between environments without having to perform any formal migration steps.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with more than 30 years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. We focus on solutions for the Office of Finance and have partnered with clients of all sizes across all industries to optimize, enhance and expand their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of PA experts with decades of experience, and we have been recognized via awards including  IBM Champion status.Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Default Settings

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Picklists

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Hidden Structure of 1/7: A Mathematical Perspective

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Focus Cell

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As you all know, Excel performs subtle formatting when you click on a cell to graphically show you both the row and column of your cell. For example, if I click on cell B3 then Excel will highlight the headers in column B and row 3 to look different from the others.

This approach is great when you want to quickly reference a specific cell.  But what about situations where you want to see other values in the same column or the same row?  This is easy to do when you are looking at a small 3×3 grid, but as your spreadsheet grows this may become more difficult.

To make it easier to quickly reference other related cells, Excel offers a formatting approach called Focus Cell.  This setting is found within the View ribbon.

When Focus Cell is enabled, the entire row and column are highlighted.  This formatting approach makes it easy to quickly look up-and-down or left-and-right throughout the entire spreadsheet.  Here is the same view of cell B3 when Focus Cell is enabled.

This feature will help you quickly navigate your large spreadsheets when performing steps such as reconciliation and formula comparisons.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Default Settings

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Picklists

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Hidden Structure of 1/7: A Mathematical Perspective

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What Happens When IBM Uses Its Own Tech to Transform Finance

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As a global technology and consulting powerhouse, IBM faced a familiar yet daunting challenge: it had more than 500 distinct financial systems, isolated data silos and inefficient manual workflows that hampered planning, forecasting, and decision-making. IBM recognized the need for a transformative solution and  developed its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platform — powered by Cognos Analytics and enhanced with IBM Planning Analytics — supercharged with AI capabilities. 

The AI-Powered Planning Platform

In 2019, IBM integrated Planning Analytics into EPM to streamline forecasting and enhance modeling workflows. It also embedded AI-driven forecasting to boost accuracy, automate repetitive tasks and consolidate over 500 tools into one interactive, self-service digital environment. 

By 2021, Planning Analytics had become the core engine of IBM’s “touchless” approach to forecasting — an AI-first methodology delivering real-time forecasts with minimal manual intervention. 

Impressive Results & Business Impact

IBM’s deployment achieved notable outcomes:

  • ~95% fewer FP&A tools since 2010, shrinking from 500+ to under 20
  • ~40% increase in FP&A productivity since 2020
  • Management of 140,000+ data points monthly for forecasting and planning
  • ~95% forecast accuracy, using watsonx.ai alongside Planning Analytics 
  • USD 200M+ in annual business value generated by AI-driven automation since 2023 
  • More than 30,000 employees are empowered via self-service, AI-fueled dashboards 

Beyond Finance: Workforce Planning

IBM Consulting took Planning Analytics even further in 2021 through its SCORE solution, which was deployed across 160,000+ consultants. SCORE integrated financial, strategic and workforce planning, enabling:

  • Strategic hiring, deployment modeling, and regional alignment
  • Higher contract gross profit (where just 0.1% CGP improvement adds USD 16M annually) 
  • Unified planning cycles, real-time scenario modeling and smarter sourcing reviews
  • Agile, insight-rich decision-making baked into workforce strategy ibm.com

Data-Driven, AI-First Enterprise Planning

IBM’s journey underscores several guiding principles:

  1. 1. Consolidation of fragmented systems into a unified EPM platform
  2. 2. Automation of forecasting through AI—eliminating hours of manual effort
  3. 3. Self-service access, enabling users at scale (30K+) to access real-time insights
  4. 4. Scalable impact across finance and workforce, delivering measurable ROI

The result? A “touchless” planning framework delivering real-time visibility, predictive accuracy and strategic agility. It transformed planning from a static process into a proactive, data-driven engine powering business decisions.

IBM’s internal use of Planning Analytics showcases how enterprises can leverage AI and unified platforms to:

  • Slash tool clutter and reduce manual effort
  • Achieve precision in forecasting
  • Empower thousands with real-time dashboards
  • Generate substantial financial gains
  • Scale across global functions — from financial planning to workforce strategy

It stands as a model blueprint for CIOs, CFOs and data leaders aiming to evolve traditional planning into intelligent, automated, and outcome-focused systems.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Picklists

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You may have read our previous blog posts about creating picklists in IBM Planning Analytics and using them in the Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) interface.

PAW version 101 introduced the ability to easily create picklists from a view. This is done by simply selecting one or more cells (note that the selected cells must be the same type – string or numeric), right-clicking, and selecting the option to Set picklist.

Once selected, a screen will appear that allows you to define the picklist type: static or hierarchy:

  • A static picklist is a hard-coded list of cells that you can define independent of the existing model. This is done by clicking on the option to Add Values to a list.
  • A hierarchy picklist allows you to reference an existing dimension to define the selections. The dimension can reference all elements in the dimension or an existing subset within the dimension.

Once defined, a picklist icon will appear within the defined cells so users can easily select their input values.

This approach provides an easy-to-use, wizard-based approach to creating picklists in your PAW environment.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with 25+ years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. Revelwood has helped clients in all sizes across all industries optimize and grow their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of experienced PA experts, including a multi-year IBM Champion.

Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Attributes Types

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Rule Auto Complete Display

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Settings – File Upload Action Button

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IBM Planning Analytics Recognized in 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Awards

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IBM Planning Analytics has been recognized by TrustRadius in its 2025 Top Rated Awards, earning distinctions in multiple categories including:

  • Workforce Analytics
  • Corporate Performance Management (CPM)
  • Budgeting & Forecasting
  • Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)

These awards reflect strong user feedback across a range of use cases and industry needs.

Why TrustRadius Matters

The TrustRadius Top Rated Awards are based entirely on user reviews. To qualify, products must meet three criteria:

  1. 1. Have at least 10 new verified reviews in the past year
  2. 2. Have a TrustRadius score of 7.5 or higher (out of 10)
  3. 3. Have a minimum level of category traffic on TrustRadius

This makes the recognition particularly meaningful for software buyers looking for real-world perspectives from fellow user

What Users Are Saying

Reviews on TrustRadius point to IBM Planning Analytics’ strengths in planning, reporting, and financial close processes. The platform earned high marks across several key areas:

  • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting: 9.0 rating
  • Analytics & Reporting: 9.1 rating

These ratings place Planning Analytics above the category average in each area.

Reviewers noted its flexibility, ability to handle large datasets, and strong integration with AI technologies like IBM Watson. 

How This Fits in the Market

Planning Analytics is often evaluated alongside tools in analyst reports from Gartner, Forrester, and others. The TrustRadius recognition provides an additional lens—one that highlights how the platform performs in day-to-day use by real finance teams.

IBM Planning Analytics has more than 250 verified reviews on TrustRadius and consistently earn ratings about 9.0 in key areas. It stands out as a strong choice for organizations seeking to modernize their planning and performance management capabilities.

A Data-Driven Distinction

The TrustRadius Top Rated Awards are based on transparent, criteria-driven methodology. The awards reflect consistent satisfaction from a diverse group of users across industries and company sizes.

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IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: The Hidden Structure of 1/7: A Mathematical Perspective

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Today is July 1.  It’s the first day of the second half of the year and it’s also international chicken wing day. But for the purposes of today’s blog, none of that matters. What matters is that the reciprocal of 7/1 is 1/7, which leads to some fun with numbers!

The result of 1 divided by 7 is .142857. If you multiply that result by the integers 1 through 6 then you get the same resulting digits in the same sequence but in a different order …

142857 x 1 = 142857 

142857 x 2 = 285714 

142857 x 3 = 428571 

142857 x 4 = 571428 

142857 x 5 = 714285 

142857 x 6 = 857142 

What makes this even more special is that 142857 is also a Kaprekar number. This means that if you square the number and then separate that into 2 new numbers, you can add the 2 new numbers to come back to the initial number …

142857 x 142857 = 20408122449

Then take 20408 + 122449 and you will get the result of 142857!

So what’s the purpose of today’s blog?  It’s simply a reminder that MATH IS AWESOME!

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