IBM Planning Analytics for IBM Cloud Pak for Data

What do you like best about the product?

The speed of the TM1 engine. When a planner can change a driver and see the impact across the model right away, they stop treating the budget as a once-a-year exercise and start using it to answer questions. Planning Analytics for Excel is the other big one. Finance teams don't have to give up Excel, and you still get one governed model underneath it.

What do you dislike about the product?

The learning curve on rules and TurboIntegrator is real. A well-built model is great for years, but a poorly built one is painful, so who builds it matters a lot. Planning Analytics Workspace has gotten much better, though some admin tasks still take more clicks than they should.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We implement it for clients who've outgrown spreadsheet-based budgeting and forecasting. The usual problem is version control: a dozen workbooks emailed around, nobody sure which numbers are current. Moving that into Planning Analytics gives them one source of truth and frees up the time they used to spend consolidating. We have multiple clients that use IBM Planning Analytics, but one that comes to mind is using it for budgeting and forecasting across 7 divisions. We working directly with the CFOs of each division and with their central financial technology team to ensure that each model is independent but still ties out to an overall, company-wide model. The ability of IBM PA to allow us to do this is one of its biggest benefits. It allows full customization and limitless scale.

What do you like best about the product?

The scenario side is what I end up reaching for most. It lets us model support volume and capacity across teams or regions and quickly see what happens when inquiries spike or staffing changes. The Excel add-in is useful when I want to dig into the numbers in the way I’m used to, and the dashboards make it easier to understand planned versus actual results without having to rebuild everything from scratch each time.

What do you dislike about the product?

It still feels heavier than it needs to be for straightforward operational planning. Adjusting or setting up models takes time and usually requires bringing in someone who knows the system better. Larger scenario runs can slow down somewhat, and new people on the team often need a while to get comfortable using it.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Capacity and workload planning used to live in spreadsheets that were hard to keep up to date and easy to get out of sync. Evaluating different scenarios meant a lot of copying, tweaking, and recalculating by hand. Planning Analytics has made it much faster to run realistic cases and keep our operational plan aligned, so we’re better prepared when support volume shifts and we spend less time dealing with file versions and manual updates.

What do you like best about the product?

Very powerful for very complicated planning calculations. Scalable to any extent. While it replaces excel it has the interface with excel which lets you work in very familiar environment. Integration with Cognos Analytics takes the distribution into a all together different level. The predictive analytics and sandboxing features are very good. While the tool appears expensive against its competitor, I have experienced that this toll gives a very good ROI and always wins against eh competitors in Total cost of ownership. IBM support has been very good for this tool.

What do you dislike about the product?

There are a few areas of improvement I can think of (But these are not something I dislike): Data Integration can be modernized. Turbo Integrator can be upgraded for a vey huge volume of data.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Very general use case is collaboration. I have worked with a team of 10+ analysts who were creating excels going beyond GBs size and then merging the data and keeping complex calculations has eventually created a mess. Doing the same via Planning analytics let them focus on business rules and see the results live and in parallel. What-if analysis helps the users to forecast and take better decisions.

What do you like best about the product?

It is multidimensional and make it similar to excel pivot table

What do you dislike about the product?

Less mathematical functions like in excel like LINEST, or Regression

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Solving banking data that stores millions of account in less than 1 hour

What do you like best about the product?

I especially value IBM Planning Analytics for its flexible budgeting and forecasting models, strong scenario analysis, and smooth integration with existing data sources. Being able to build multidimensional models and quickly adjust assumptions makes the financial planning process more efficient and easier to manage. Its Excel integration is particularly helpful for finance teams that want familiar reporting tools while still benefiting from centralized planning.

What do you dislike about the product?

The biggest challenge is the learning curve for new users. Setting up dimensions, hierarchies, cubes, and business rules often requires specialized knowledge, and some administration and configuration tasks can feel more complicated than with other cloud-based planning tools. More intuitive workflows, a simpler model-development experience, and additional out-of-the-box templates would help make adoption easier for business users.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

IBM Planning Analytics helps centralize budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning that might otherwise depend on spreadsheets and disconnected data sources. By bringing planning into one place, it improves visibility into financial performance, enables faster scenario analysis, and supports more consistent planning across teams. As a result, it reduces manual effort, strengthens collaboration between finance and business groups, and helps drive better-informed decisions.