Strategic Planning Made Effortless with IBM
What do you like best about the product?
I like how IBM Planning Analytics allows me to have financial and operational info in one place, making it easier to run scenarios and understand the impact of budgets under different circumstances. The tool helps in structuring, analyzing, and planning tasks related to supplier sourcing and contract negotiation. It's great for comparing different scenarios, costs, and potential supplier options, which is especially useful in our decision-making processes. I appreciate how it turns raw financial data into something understandable and actionable, aiding communication and decision-making for stakeholders and the financial team. The ability to explore faster 'what-if' situations is particularly beneficial, and it significantly prepares us better for negotiations by providing clear data when new suppliers come in. The report visualization for stakeholders is also a fantastic feature.
What do you dislike about the product?
I'm a newbie in this sector, and the learning curve is challenging. It's a very useful platform, but I need more time. It's flexible and can be navigated by users who aren't deeply technical, but they are a bit scared of the complexity sometimes.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Planning Analytics to structure, analyze, and plan supplier sourcing and contract negotiation. It consolidates financial and operational data, making scenario comparisons easy. This helps in decision-making and negotiating leverage by quickly updating forecasts with new supplier data, providing clarity and visual report insights.
Powerful Financial Planning with Some UI Challenges
What do you like best about the product?
I use IBM Planning Analytics for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting, which helps analyze business data and create accurate forecasts for better decision making. I like that it reduces manual spreadsheets and improves accuracy and collaboration. It allows quick analysis of large datasets and supports scenario planning. The Excel integration makes it easier for teams to work with familiar tools and work with data in a familiar environment while still using the power of the platform.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing that could be improved in IBM Planning Analytics is the user interface, which can feel a bit complex for new users. The interface can sometimes feel a bit cluttered, especially when navigating between different planning and reporting sections. The initial setup was manageable but required some technical knowledge and planning.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Planning Analytics for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting. It reduces manual spreadsheets, improves accuracy and collaboration, offers quick analysis of large datasets, and supports scenario planning with Excel integration.
Centralized Planning with Flexible Excel Integration
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate IBM Planning Analytics for its ability to centralize data, which eliminates the need for multiple spreadsheets and makes collaboration much easier for my team. The platform allows us to run scenario simulations quickly, which is beneficial for planning pricing strategies, especially when dealing with variables like holiday-induced price changes. I like its flexibility and excellent Excel integration, which help us update reports, explore data quickly, and adjust assumptions to see immediate impacts on forecasts or margins. The flexibility in particular stands out. Additionally, the learning curve was manageable for me, and the onboarding process was smooth, which made getting started relatively easy.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve for me was alright, but for others it seems to be a bit steep at first.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
IBM Planning Analytics helps us centralize data and collaborate better by avoiding separate spreadsheets. We can quickly run scenario simulations to track pricing strategies and see their impact on business performance. Flexibility and Excel integration make it easier to update reports and explore data efficiently.
Powerful Tool for Strategic Decision-Making
What do you like best about the product?
I really like the MS Excel integration in IBM Planning Analytics; it's great. The dashboards are extensive and well-designed. Even though I'm not a power user, it's impressive to see how power users can build brilliant forecasting models with it. It's also very valuable as our single source of truth for budgetary decisions focused on revenue. Additionally, it's a great tool for taking data-driven strategic decisions.
What do you dislike about the product?
I, as a business user, find it hard to build customized dashboards. There are very few self-service capabilities. Some views of reports can be simplified to remove unnecessary details for leadership. The initial implementation can be hard, especially for business users. Without an AI builder, it gets complicated.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
IBM Planning Analytics helps with day-to-day reporting, focuses heavily on revenue, facilitates what-if pricing discussions, and supports budgetary discussions and target setting. It's our single source of truth for budgetary decisions.
Data-driven planning has transformed financial decisions and now saves major reporting time
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Planning Analytics is for various activities such as analysis, analyzing data to make decisions, planning tasks, and collaborating with dependent teams. Before IBM Planning Analytics, we were using the Workday Adaptive Planning tool, but we always faced difficulties in setting it up and using it. It was particularly difficult to use, especially for the latest tech service. Later, we moved to IBM Planning Analytics, which we mainly used to handle the data analysis use case. My work involves creating dashboards from the existing business data and presenting them during our daily scrum meetings with various stakeholders, as well as making the right decisions based on data analysis and insights. With IBM Planning Analytics, dashboard creation and other exporting options come in handy.
In addition to my main use case, I also use IBM Planning Analytics for financial planning, forecasting, and reporting, and it has been very useful across different departments, especially when we need real-time insights. We also integrated time series forecasting with Watson Studio, which helps with better predictions.
What is most valuable?
IBM Planning Analytics helps with collaboration between teams by allowing us to gather data from various departments, analyze it, and collaborate on the data to make data-driven decisions between different departments easily. As I mentioned previously, I mainly use IBM Planning Analytics to visualize the existing data to generate meaningful report dashboards and use it during stakeholder meetings to arrive at the right decision.
The best features IBM Planning Analytics offers include budgeting, forecasting, and what-if scenario analysis. The scenario modeling feature in IBM Planning Analytics is probably the most robust planning and forecasting solution we use, especially for what-if scenarios, where we are able to forecast using Watson Studio, which helps in better prediction. I really appreciate the Excel integration in IBM Planning Analytics because it keeps things familiar and adds more power.
What needs improvement?
IBM Planning Analytics does not work offline, which makes it difficult for me and my team to work or gather required data when we do not have an internet connection.
The mobile version of IBM Planning Analytics has fewer features compared to the PC version, which is a problem when an executive has to analyze a complicated situation on the go or while working remotely.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Planning Analytics for the past seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Planning Analytics is very stable, and I have not noticed any downtime or lagging. The performance of IBM Planning Analytics has always been fast and reliable for my needs, even when dealing with huge volumes of data.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of IBM Planning Analytics is very high, and we are able to work with huge amounts of data with flexibility.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for IBM Planning Analytics is very responsive and supportive 24/7, and they provide feedback in less time.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Microsoft Access. The reason I switched from Microsoft Access to IBM Planning Analytics is because when dealing with large data and wanting speed and flexibility, IBM Planning Analytics offers that capability. Microsoft Access has limitations when dealing with huge volumes of data.
I also switched from Microsoft Access to IBM Planning Analytics because it has helped us reduce manual work and make better decisions quickly. IBM also listens to feedback and improves the products, which I appreciate.
How was the initial setup?
The learning curve for my team was smooth, and it took a few days to one week to learn every feature of IBM Planning Analytics. It was easy to learn.
What about the implementation team?
IBM Planning Analytics has been quick regarding technical implementation and onboarding with the cloud version. We experienced smooth onboarding for any tech service and have been able to save a lot of time, especially because it is very easy to use. We cut down on manual budgeting and forecasting work, which saved us between 50 to 70% of our time. Our decision-making improved significantly because the real-time data and automation saved a considerable amount of time. It only took us about three months to create custom models that really fit our needs, which represented quick implementation and quicker return on investments.
What was our ROI?
Over the past few years that I have been using IBM Planning Analytics, I have made big improvements in how I plan and analyze finances. Since using this tool, I can now make decisions faster, even when there is just a small change in the data. It helps a lot with creating reports straight from raw data, which saves me so much time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Planning Analytics is that the price is relatively competitive, and the setup was straightforward and easy.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Planning Analytics, I evaluated other options, such as AD Logic.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding the user interface of IBM Planning Analytics, it is very user-friendly, which makes the experience very smooth. The integration capabilities of IBM Planning Analytics with other business systems or data sources are strong, especially with Simulus.
We are able to integrate IBM Planning Analytics with Watson Studio, and it helps with better prediction and forecasting, allowing us to make data-driven decisions. We have also been able to integrate it with Excel, which keeps things familiar and adds more power.
I would describe the security features of IBM Planning Analytics as very robust, and they keep all our data secure.
My advice to others looking into using IBM Planning Analytics is that if you are dealing with large data and want speed and flexibility, then IBM Planning Analytics is for you, because it has helped us reduce manual work and make better decisions quickly. IBM also listens to feedback and improves the product, which I really appreciate. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Unified planning has improved forecasting accuracy and supports faster, data-driven decisions
What is our primary use case?
IBM Planning Analytics serves all aspects around planning, forecasting, and analysis. I use it to collect data from various sources, including input from the ERP system and manually captured data by users. The data gets harmonized and aggregated to be visualized in dashboards quickly, where it is easy to read and understand, enabling data-driven decisions.
A second application involves using IBM Planning Analytics to forecast future numbers and break this down into units.
In my day-to-day work, I use IBM Planning Analytics while planning future events. This allows my organization to have a great understanding of what is likely to occur.
When planning those future events, IBM Planning Analytics helps my team by creating different scenarios to compare outcomes. It also helps warn us about risks that could occur in the future, which enables us to avoid those risks and make future-driven decisions easily.
Additionally, my main use case encompasses consolidating and aggregating forecasts for future planning.
What is most valuable?
IBM Planning Analytics offers excellent features including data management, data governance, data security, and a great visual UI.
Out of data management, governance, security, and the visual UI, I find myself relying on the UI the most, as it makes my work easier. The interface is very intuitive and user-friendly, helping me navigate through the system with ease. Additionally, data security is very important in my organization, providing peace of mind through protecting our data. Data governance is also excellent, with data reporting and analysis that helps us make data-driven decisions.
I would add that meaningful dashboard creation from existing data is very useful, with AI integrated data analysis on existing business data providing great assistance in making data-driven decisions easily. Real-time scenario outcome visualization is also excellent.
IBM Planning Analytics has positively impacted my organization since we started using this tool. Before, I could spend a lot of time coming up with data analysis and then creating a dashboard involving multiple tools. However, since everything is done within the same tool, I am saving a huge amount of time. Since I am spending less time compared to before, I am able to make the right decisions for my organization and help them save costs in the right places. The accuracy is great now since everything has been automated, and human error has greatly reduced. I estimate that I save around fifty hours per month compared to before.
What needs improvement?
IBM Planning Analytics could be improved by avoiding frequent upgrades and planning a few limited upgrades throughout the year, so that bugs are not introduced and can be reduced. Additionally, the licensing cost could be reduced a little, and there should be more plans based on feature usage level, as some small organizations or small teams may not afford the current pricing.
Besides upgrade frequency and licensing cost, another improvement that IBM Planning Analytics needs is to enhance the inbuilt dashboard visualization tools, as they are not as impressive compared to other alternatives like Tableau.
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I believe the licensing cost could be reduced somewhat, and there should be more plans based on future usage level. In my case, I mainly use only the dashboard and sometimes visualization tools, but still end up paying a substantial amount. Therefore, the licensing cost could be reduced.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Planning Analytics for the past five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Planning Analytics is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Planning Analytics' scalability is impressive, as it is able to gather data from multiple sources and handle huge amounts of data without any lagging or downtime, making it very scalable and stable.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is really helpful, especially when we are going well.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Workday Adaptive Planning, which was really difficult to set up and use as a new user. We faced a lot of difficulties helping new team members to set up and use it. However, with IBM Planning Analytics, it is more straightforward and easier to use with a good and intuitive interface.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very easy, and I do not see any technical challenges. The technical team from IBM has been excellent, providing quick guidance where needed.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, as the accuracy has really improved in my organization since everything is automated. We have been able to save a lot of time and costs since automation works very effectively, and we have been able to make the right decisions through data analytics and planning.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Planning Analytics, I evaluated other options, including Tableau.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using IBM Planning Analytics is that it is a great budgeting and planning platform, very easy to use, straightforward, and offers unparalleled customer support. It is a game changer that everyone should look into and use, especially for future planning. IBM Planning Analytics makes forecasting easy and fast. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
AI-Driven Insights and Ultra-Fast TM1 Performance for Real-Time What-If Modeling
What do you like best about the product?
IBM’s BI stacks blends AI-driven insights with powerful performance, combining Granite- powered analytics and natural-language planning with the ultra-fast, in-memory TM1 engine for real-time analysis and what-if modeling.
What do you dislike about the product?
Its flexibility comes with complexity, often requiring technical exchange expertise or consultants and while Excel is strong the web interfaces can still feel technical despite recent modernisation efforts.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
IBM Planning Analytics delivers powerful planning through seamless Excel integration, combining ease of use with secure centralized data to enable faster and more informed decision-making.
High-Accuracy AI Forecasting with Zero-Latency Performance
What do you like best about the product?
IBM Planning Analytics predictive AI forecasts high accuracy data with ease and it can handle massive, multi-dimensional datasets with zero latency which is outstanding.
What do you dislike about the product?
Web reporting and dashboard is less flexible compared to its competitors.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Excel integration is lightening fast and it is indeed the best Excel add-on.
Versatile Yet Complex for Finance Consolidation
What do you like best about the product?
I use IBM Planning Analytics for budgeting, forecasting, and finance consolidation. It really helps me consolidate figures and manage data and security. I love that it enables multiple users to work at the same time. There are endless possibilities with it, and I haven't faced a problem yet that we can't solve. I value the ability to make applications that work for both advanced users and day-to-day tasks. It replaced multiple worksheets and automated a lot of previous manual work. The initial setup was easy.
What do you dislike about the product?
Depending on the who implements this for you the learning curve can be challaging for some users
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use IBM Planning Analytics to consolidate figures, manage data and security, and enable multiple users. It replaced multiple worksheets and automated a lot of our manual processes.
Planning has become faster and financial teams collaborate seamlessly on annual budgets
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for IBM Planning Analytics is as an IT software engineer, and I typically use it day-to-day for planning analytics over the past two years. It is probably the most robust planning and forecasting solution in the market. IBM Planning Analytics is essential for creating a clear budget for our organization so that we can reach our future goals without significant loss. In financial forecasting for our business, it also gives us a platform to collaborate with different departments by taking their inputs in our upcoming projects.
A specific example of how I have used IBM Planning Analytics for financial forecasting or collaboration between departments is that we use TM1 for resources allocation planning and asset management to align with our IT spending and future forecast. IBM Planning Analytics helps us to collaborate across departments where we can collect their feedback and make data-driven decisions easily. We use IBM Planning Analytics for our budget planning, budget forecasting, real-time analysis, and reporting of data across the organization. We are able to make data-driven decisions.
What is most valuable?
The planning efficiency with IBM Planning Analytics is very quick, and data processing can be done efficiently. I also appreciate that it is an AI-based tool for our business, which software mainly focuses on business planning and future forecasting.
The best features of IBM Planning Analytics include that the software helps us in doing budget planning.
Some of the valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics are its intuitive and user-friendly interface, reporting output and scheduling, access control and security, and mobile capabilities.
IBM Planning Analytics has positively impacted my organization as we have noticed specific improvements since we started using it. We are able to forecast the budget for the entire year with significant time savings. All the complex data is easily processed, and with Excel add functionality, it is easier to have all the data in one place, which can be read by pivot or data visualization. The data protection protocols are well set up. Planning efficiency is very good as we can seamlessly plan and work on all budgets on time.
By using IBM Planning Analytics, we have been able to automate manual processes, where we have saved time, especially through automating dashboards. It has also increased the activity of the planning team and provided us with ad hoc reporting capabilities.
What needs improvement?
IBM Planning Analytics could be improved by simplifying the learning curve, as it requires a lot of time to learn and master it. The advanced features are somewhat complex to understand, and if the data set is very large, it takes a lot of time to process, which causes performance to become slower. The initial upfront cost, including the license cost, is somewhat high.
IBM Planning Analytics lags behind a little in performance compared to our BI tools.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM Planning Analytics for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
IBM Planning Analytics is stable because the reason we switched from IBM Cognos is that IBM Planning Analytics capability allows us to connect to multiple tools, which we could not do before.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM Planning Analytics has handled my organization's growth appropriately in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for IBM Planning Analytics is very responsive. The few times that I have reached them, they have been very dedicated and provided top-notch solutions.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before, we were using IBM Cognos Analytics.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Planning Analytics is that the pricing and licensing cost can be somewhat on the higher side, especially for small organizations. However, the setup was straightforward and easy with no significant difficulties.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM Planning Analytics, I evaluated Anaplan as another option.
What other advice do I have?
When I mention significant time saving with IBM Planning Analytics, we have been able to save approximately 50 to 60 percent of our time compared to the previous tool that we were using to forecast and analyze our budgets in my organization.
My advice to others looking into using IBM Planning Analytics is that I highly recommend it because I think it is well-suited for fast financial modeling of offline processes, though it may not be great for huge data volumes.
IBM Planning Analytics is a powerful tool because it has real-time calculations and can aggregate data to the top of the house. I give this product a rating of 8 out of 10.
