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TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Enter Members Feature

June 18, 2024 by Lee Lazarow

Have you ever created an IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) exploration and then wanted to look at data that was not in your original set? You can open the set editor and follow the applicable steps, or you can instead simply type the element you want to select.  The second option is done via the use of the “Enter Member” feature in PAW.

For example, if I had a view with a company dimension selector but only had the grand total element in my existing set then I would see the following clickable option:

However, if I know that my model contains a company element called 002 then I can input that directly by selecting “Enter member” within the context area:

You have the option to either enter a single element or a set:

  • When you enter a member using the input box, the current set is ignored, and you can directly use any member. The set then changes to a single member set.
  • If you are selecting a set using the input box, the named set you enter must exist. 

The system will utilize the alias that is currently defined in the existing set, even if you input the element differently. For example, if I input the element called 002 then the system will convert this to an alias called Oldies.

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becomes…

This approach will speed up your analyses by allowing you to skip the subset editor and directly accessing a new data point.

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!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Convert to Driver-Based Planning

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s WRAPCOLS Formula

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Fixing Repetitive Scripts

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Budgeting Planning & Forecasting, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

Meet Lee Lazarow, Revelwood’s IBM Champion

June 17, 2024 by Revelwood

If you are one of Revelwood’s clients using IBM Planning Analytics, you are likely familiar with Lee Lazarow, our IBM Planning Analytics Leader. You’ve probably read some of his blog posts, attended some of his webinars, and learned from his Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks videos. 

Here’s your chance to learn a little more about Lee. Here’s a recent interview between Lee and IBM.

How long have you been an IBM Champion?

Since 2022

What is your favorite IBM product and why?

I have been implementing Planning Analytics (and TM1) solutions since 2003 –and I cannot say enough great things about it! Every aspect of my career has entailed a combination of business and technology, and PA fits perfectly into that mix. In 20+ years, I have yet to find an FP&A challenge that can’t be solved with the tool.

What’s your favorite type of “advocacy” – blog? Community? Speaking? and What drives you to give back to the technology community and led to your becoming an IBM Champion?

I don’t have a single favorite type of advocacy. Those who know me know that I love to speak (maybe sometimes too much!) and I also love to write. I am truly a fan of Planning Analytics and will gladly talk about this to anyone who wants to listen and will gladly write about this for anyone who wants to read. This approach led me to begin posting weekly “Tips and Tricks” blogs which has expanded into a full Revelwood team effort. In the past 5 years alone, we have published over 200 blogs with topics including Planning Analytics tips, general Excel tips, and Financial Planning concepts.

What is one accomplishment you’re proud of or a story about your success that you’d like to share? 

We recently worked with a customer that expressed a simple concern of “our system is slow.” While many companies may look at this as a technical issue, we expanded our approach to also look into the customer’s business process. Once we learned what the customer was trying to analyze, we found that the customer was performing millions of unnecessary calculations.  After modifying the model to match their business goals, we were able to shrink their model by more than 99%!!!  The full case study can be found here.

If you didn’t work in technology what would your dream job be?

I would be a teacher.  I fully believe in the Whitney Houston lyrics of “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.”  This is why most of my non-work activities entail coaching or leading various activities for kids.

Share your viewpoints/ experience/ future plans about IBM’s AI capabilities and watsonx!

A few months ago, I led a webinar that talked about AI as one of the big trends impacting PA. The community had a lot of questions and we were able to share our thoughts about both the future of AI and PA’s use of AI. Some of the points that I covered included Gartner’s assessment that financial planning software (like Planning Analytics / TM1) is at the forefront of finance modernization efforts, how to write code with the help of AI tools, and how to use PA’s Forecasting feature that allows customers to use time series modeling to discover trends, seasonality, and time dependence in their data.

Any upcoming events/conference that you will be speaking at?

I recently hosted a webinar that discussed and analyzed the new IBM Planning Analytics Engine (also called v12).  The video replay can be found on our YouTube channel.

What would be your superpower and why?

Batman has shown me that anything can be done with planning and preparation, even without powers. With that said, it would be nice to have super speed so I can get my kids to their activities without getting stuck in traffic.

Lightning Round:

Ice cream or cake?  Cake with lots and lots of frosting!

Cats or dogs?  Dogs, of course. They are not afraid of a squirt gun.

Summer or winter?  Winter. The polar bear swim isn’t as challenging in the summer.

Morning or evening?  Morning. It’s nice to be ahead of the day before 8am.

eBook or paper book?  Paper so I can hear the sound of the pages turning.

TV shows or movies?  Movies. Once I start something it’s hard for me to not finish it, and a good TV series can go on for many seasons.

A night out or a night in?  A night in, although I might change my answer if I ended up getting the super speed!

Cannonball into the pool or dip a toe in first?  Cannonball.  Why delay?

Go-to karaoke song? I’m more of a shower singer, so only a few people have heard me sing.  However, I was in a 5th grade select chorus … but it’s been downhill since then.

Drive or fly?  Fly, even though my 6’1″ 225-pound frame doesn’t always fit so well.This post was originally published on the IBM TechXchange Community.

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Filed Under: Awards & Recognition Tagged With: IBM, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Convert to Driver-Based Planning

June 11, 2024 by Revelwood

This is the latest post in our blog series on how we solve problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A private university with campuses throughout New York and New Jersey.  

Planning Environment: IBM Planning Analytics

Problem: The university was planning revenue using an Excel-based spreadsheet. The spreadsheet contained many repetitive sheets, had very complex formulas and had some erroneous calculations built into the file.

How We Helped: Revelwood reviewed their existing model and helped convert it into a driver-based planning approach that used a combination of headcounts with various lookup tables. The model accommodated various review sources such as tuition and other fees, while also calculating contra accounts such as tuition and bad debt. Users planned by semester. We converted the results into calendar months, taking into consideration both calendar years and school years. This simplified approach allowed the client to easily load and update data into the model and then make modifications for what-if analyses.

Do you have a challenge with your Planning Analytics environment? Let us tackle the problem! Send us a quick email!

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Budgeting Planning & Forecasting, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel’s WRAPCOLS Formula

June 4, 2024 by Ivan Cepero

Tips & Tricks from Revelwood

Have you ever needed to modify a list in Excel without wanting to manually manipulate the data? Excel’s WRAPCOLS formula lets you reshape data without having to perform tedious copy and pasting.

The syntax of the WRAPCOLS formula is:

=WRAPCOLS(vector, wrap_count, pad_with)

  • Vector: the data to be modified
  • Wrap_count: the number of rows per group
  • Pad_width: the data to fill in for missing values

For example, suppose you have a list of 10 people that you want to split into three groups.

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The manual way of copy/pasting would work for a small list like this, but this approach would not be efficient for larger lists. 

To make a set of three groups, you can use this formula:

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Excel will then determine how to fill the groups specified. However, the remaining blank cells appear as #N/A which may cause some user confusion.  You can remove the #N/A data cells by using the pad width parameter. To display blanks instead of #N/A, the formula would change to:

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This approach will allow you to convert a long list into a more easily readable set of smaller list, thereby making it easier to analyze the information.

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!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Fixing Repetitive Scripts

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Border Lines

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: How We Solve Problems

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Fixing Repetitive Scripts

May 28, 2024 by Revelwood

This post is the latest post in our new blog series: How We Solve Problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A financial services company specializing in retirement and life insurance.

Planning Environment: IBM Planning Analytics

Problem: A review of their existing TurboIntegrator scripts found that many of their processes used pre-built source views. Each view differed only slightly. For example, one view would define subsets in approximately eight dimensions and focus on a single time period, while a second view would contain the same subsets and focus on a different time period. This approach led to more than 50 repetitive scripts that were run via chores.

How We Helped: We changed the approach to create a source view in the prolog. This allowed a single script to be run over and over via parameters that were defined during each iteration. This resulted in faster maintenance since changes only had to be coded once.  It also ensured that changes to public views and subsets would not impact these scripts.

Do you have a challenge with your Planning Analytics environment? Let us tackle the problem! Send us a quick email!

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Budgeting Planning & Forecasting, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Border Lines

May 21, 2024 by Lee Lazarow

The great thing about explorations is that data appears in a simple grid-like format. This allows you to easily look at your data in an easy-to-read format that is similar to an Excel spreadsheet.

In the example below, it’s easy for your eyes to move up and down to see the expenses and then move left and right to see the departments. And since each data point is within its own box, it’s easy for your eyes to know when to stop.

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However, the use of boxes for the data also puts boxes in the headers. For some people, the lack of symmetry does not matter. But for those who do not like this look, you can turn off all border lines via a single click within the “Custom” properties of an exploration:

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Disabling the border will convert the example above into a display with no lines in either the data or the headers.

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Once completed, you can also set the formatting to shade every other line using an approach called “Zebra Strips”.

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!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: How We Solve Problems

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Identifying a Specific Dimension

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Asymmetrical Expand in PAW

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, Planning & Forecasting, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: How We Solve Problems

May 14, 2024 by Revelwood

This post is the first post in our new blog series: How We Solve Problems. Each blog post focuses on a real-world client experience where Revelwood was presented with a unique or thorny problem.  We’ll explain our approach to how we solved it.

Revelwood Client: A publicly traded television broadcasting company that owns and operates more than 175 stations across the United States.

Planning Environment: IBM Planning Analytics

Problem: The company’s budgeting process was very granular and plans down to the individual employee. The calculations in the model include detailed benefits and taxes, combined with multiple bonus calculations that depend on results from the core financial model. Due to the size and complexity of the process, “top of the house” reports took more than 10 minutes to properly refresh.

How We Helped: Revelwood analyzed the existing calculations and the interaction of the various models to determine an efficient order of processing. Due to the need for an order of operations, many of the live rules were converted into on-demand TurboIntegrator scripts. This approach shrunk an individual company’s refresh time from one minute down to a few seconds while also bringing the “top of the house” analysis down to under 20 seconds.

Do you have a challenge with your Planning Analytics environment? Let us tackle the problem!

Send us a quick email!

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Budgeting Planning & Forecasting, Financial Performance Management, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Identifying a Specific Dimension

May 7, 2024 by Lee Lazarow

Tips & Tricks from Revelwood

Have you ever wanted to change (or delete) a dimension, but first wanted to know how this action will impact your model?  IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) allows you to quickly identify all the cubes in a database that include a specific dimension.

Since this is a development task, this approach is defined within a modeling workbench.  You can access this option by right-clicking anywhere you see a dimension name within the databases tree (cubes, dimensions, control cubes, and control dimensions) and selecting the option to “View related cubes.”  

The resulting list will define the full dimension name (e.g., not the caption) and show all the cubes that include the selected dimension.  

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If you want to better understand the data in the cube, you can then review any of them by clicking on the cube name and then selecting the option to Open the cubes. An exploration view for each cube will open on separate tabs in the modeling workbench.

This approach will give you a fast way to determine the overall impact of a dimension change.

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Asymmetrical Expand in PAW

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW Greenbar

IBM Planning Analytics Tips and Tricks: Excel’s ARRAYTOTEXT Function

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Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks, TM1

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Asymmetrical Expand in PAW

April 30, 2024 by Marc Assenza

Have you ever been in a situation where you have stacked dimensions in your view and only want to expand one section of it? In legacy Perspectives, an expansion of one area equates to an expansion of all areas. IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW), version 87, introduced functionality that allows you to expand just one piece at a time.

Here is an example of a simple view that shows Actual Finance expenses by Company.

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By default, an expansion of the Finance department would show an expansion for all three companies.

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A new icon has been added that will allow you to determine how you want to expand and collapse the elements within your view.  

When clicked, you will have two options: Symmetrical and Asymmetrical.  

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If we change the approach to Asymmetrical and then expand the departments within company 2, only a subset of the full view is expanded.

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This approach will allow you to tighten your analysis and let your users focus on a subsection of your view while still easily having the ability to see the big picture.

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!

Read more IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks:

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: PAW “Spacers”

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

IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: Excel Switch Function

Home » TM1 » Page 4

Filed Under: IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Budgeting Planning & Forecasting, IBM Cognos TM1, IBM Planning Analytics, TM1

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