IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, powered by IBM TM1, automates your planning, budgeting, forecasting and analysis processes. It offers the full functionality of spreadsheets while eliminating manual tasks to drive efficiency.
The solution accesses all your data, and it integrates financial results and analysis with operational plans for faster execution. With a dynamic planning and analytics workspace, you can model information and gain insights, communicate using compelling visualizations, make predictions and perform what-if analysis to test alternative assumptions. Ultimately, you can create timely, reliable plans to put insight into action.
Think of the dozens of spreadsheet files being emailed during your last planning cycle or the current cost allocation. With Planning Analytics this is history.
Planning Analytics, is IBM's solution to your planning needs. From straightforward input forms for a P/L or a rolling sales forecast to complex data driven cost allocations, from multi-site collaborative input workbooks to a sturdy calculation engine predicting revenue for 100000+ customers or currency conversion for a worldwide organization Planning Analytics covers it all with its in memory technology which makes that users do not have to wait for results but immediately see the effect of their actions or simulations.
Planning Analytics is well known for its superior modelling capabilities and its solution flexibility. And as such it covers all business areas supports financial planning and forecasting, as well as planning for sales, capital expenditure, operations, workforce, marketing and supply chain. The CFO office uses Planning Analytics for budgeting and forecasting to get to the bottom line or a multi-year strategic forecast. Operations uses it for cost allocations and even for automatic placing of replenishment orders, Human Resource tries to estimate the cost of a workforce over time including percentages for national health or pay increases. All of these might work in an integrated planning application of course.
Planning Analytics which we consider as TM1 2.0 comes with an improved Excel add-in that works faster over networks effectively making it a so called excel on steroids i.e. the flexibility of excel with combined with the effective storing of data in a multidimensional database. New functionality are the workbooks to guide different types of users through their specific analysis with the possibility to create a narrative and craft stories with the data. and easily create overview in a few metrics which could be interpreted as dashboard or info graphics. IBM Development cycles of 10 weeks deliver new functionality on a rolling basis and the links with Watson Analytics makes it a platform including predictive and big data volumes including nice reporting capabilities. Being able to connect directly to all kinds of data sources embeds the tool into your application landscape seamlessly. New graphic representations are added frequently which enable the creation of fancy reporting books and a forum exists for voting of new features.
With Planning Analytics you crystalize your objectives in an agile project management cycle to share and distribute information not just data. At element61 we have over 30 years of experience in house using, reusing and updating libraries so that we are up and running for our clients as from day one. On premise, in the IBM cloud or on azure, we are servicing clients in the three set ups.
Contact us to learn more about IBM Planning Analytics with Watson.