IBM Planning Analytics as a Service

My main use case for IBM Planning Analytics is for our quarterly financial forecast.

Our fiscal year runs in tandem with the annual year, starting in January and running through to December. Before every quarter, we already have the annual plan, annual financial plan, and annual budget. At the start of every quarter, we make a granular plan for how expenditures will go for the quarter, keeping in mind our annual budget and annual plan. This is how we use IBM Planning Analytics in my organization.

IBM Planning Analytics helps us simulate a lot, such as our financial plans, allowing us to run various what-if scenarios while planning for staffing, HR, IT costs, subscriptions, cleaning supplies, logistics, transportation, and more. We often ask questions such as, 'What if we hire this person this month? Do we cross our quarterly budget?' or 'What if we get these supplies in bulk instead of retail?' This approach helps us create a robust plan that is inclusive of all teams and units within the organization, enabling us to move seamlessly for the quarter regarding finance, approvals, procurement, and other operational aspects.

The best features that IBM Planning Analytics offers are the ability to connect; previously, before we rolled it out, our team used numerous Excel files with many errors. IBM Planning Analytics functions as a central unit where we can consolidate all those files we have been using for years. It allows us to see our previous expenditures, spot seasonality in our data, and use that as a basis for forecasting for the quarter, all while building on the annual budget. It effectively houses all data into a single model, providing real-time insights into cost implications for any scenario we consider.

Having all that data in one model significantly changes the way my team works and makes decisions. When planning, we, a team of four, sit together after individually requesting forecasts from different units within the organization. We plug in all that information into IBM Planning Analytics, using the annual budget as our benchmark. This collaborative effort lets us explore various scenarios, allowing us to determine the best sequence of events and spending to remain within our quarterly cap.

IBM Planning Analytics has positively impacted our organization by making forecasts easier and more accurate. Errors have reduced drastically; for the multiple times we have used it, we have not experienced issues related to wrong files or submissions. We can sit together as a team, model various scenarios, and create a solid spending plan for the quarter.

I can report a ninety-five percent error reduction since starting to use IBM Planning Analytics. Additionally, we initially considered bringing in more staff for the financial analytics team, but due to the effectiveness of IBM Planning Analytics, we did not find that necessary. Consequently, staffing costs have been converted into subscription costs.

Improving IBM Planning Analytics could start with addressing the pricing, as it currently sits high. The essential plan is eight hundred twenty-five dollars per month for five users, which is quite pricey compared to competing software. The next level doubles the price for ten users, making it really costly. If IBM Planning Analytics could work on pricing and possibly enable AI features for on-premises rollouts, that would be beneficial.

The visualizations in IBM Planning Analytics are poor, not as robust or scalable as those in standard BI software such as Power BI or Tableau. The calculation rigor is good, but the visualization aspect needs improvement.

I have been working in my current field for three or more years.

IBM Planning Analytics is very stable.

IBM Planning Analytics exhibits very good scalability, efficiently handling whatever data we input without lag during computation, although generating reports can take longer at times.

The customer support is efficient.

In our organization, we did not previously use a different solution, but I know a friend who works with Workday Adaptive Planning and finds its interface and flexibility impressive, as well as competitively priced. However, my organization values the security and trusted governance of IBM Planning Analytics, which influenced our decision to choose it.

Pricing was high, and the setup cost required upgrading our computer system to accommodate the software's larger space requirements, especially for memory.

I evaluated options such as Workday Adaptive Planning and Board, but due to our emphasis on security, we opted for IBM Planning Analytics.

There was a notable return on investment, evident in fewer employees needed and significant error reduction, with a ninety-five percent decrease in errors since rolling out IBM Planning Analytics. Time-saving has also been acknowledged, but error reduction remains the spotlight metric.

My advice for those looking into using IBM Planning Analytics is to ensure they have a very good local machine to accommodate the software.

IBM should improve the user interface and experience of IBM Planning Analytics to match the more welcoming and updated designs of its competitors. I would rate IBM Planning Analytics an eight out of ten.

We rely on IBM Planning Analytics for our monthly forecast because it is modular, making it essential for tracking and managing our monthly, quarterly, and yearly forecasts. We use it mostly for forecast, not for actual records. For the actual records, we use other software. Whenever we want to do our forecast for the month, for the quarter, for the year, we use IBM Planning Analytics. Every team, or what I prefer to call units within the organization, submits their budget and forecast for the month. We put it all together, run it through IBM Planning Analytics, and from there we can tell what will be achieved, what will not be achieved, and what we can push over to the next month, because we already have our budget for the year. IBM Planning Analytics helps us to do that plan very seamlessly. Within a maximum of two hours, we are done, and then we reach back to teams and say, 'Hey, find a way to move this. This was not approved.' It makes the whole planning for us for the month easier.

The beginning of the year budgeting is the best use case we have for IBM Planning Analytics. It makes it so easy for us because we are coordinating about sometimes twenty to thirty Excel sheets. We plug everything in and using the what-if scenarios and the different capabilities of the platform, we are able to draw out our financial plan for the year.

The most spectacular example of how IBM Planning Analytics made a difference during a forecasting cycle was our planning in January, where we had to do our budget for the year. Due to how we closed last year, we closed in a rush. We were not able to complete things, so we could not do our forecast for the year in December. We had to do that in January. We thought it was going to take a whole lot of time, but IBM Planning Analytics made it so easy for us. Within three days, we were done with the whole plans for the month, both as regards payroll, as regards office supplies, as regards our subscriptions, as regards IT needs, as regards internet, and everything. We were able to plug in everything and create the whole plan for the year while even giving room for inflation. That was the most spectacular thing for me about IBM Planning Analytics.

The best features that IBM Planning Analytics offers for my team are its ability to save most of the data in memory, which allows for quick access and processing. Everything is largely saved in memory. I need a lot of RAM, random access memory for your computer device. Because everything is largely saved in memory, IBM Planning Analytics can run complex calculations quite fast. No matter what or how many metrics you change in your what-if scenarios, it reworks the whole model entirely, and you are seeing the raw figures immediately.

The Excel add-in makes you as a user feel that you are in a familiar environment and you do not have to abandon spreadsheets entirely. The Excel integration in IBM Planning Analytics helps my workflow significantly because spreadsheets are something most financial analysts and data analysts find themselves accustomed to. Given the fact that the Excel interface is there on IBM Planning Analytics, it makes you feel comfortable and it makes you more efficient in the sense that this is something you already know. You just go about your business as if you are in the normal Microsoft Excel environment. You just do your thing and get the numbers in. It is just a familiar environment and because of that, it makes you more comfortable and, most importantly, more efficient.

What I appreciate most about IBM Planning Analytics is that we no longer make mistakes when we do our forecast and planning. Previously, it used to be the case of sharing files with multiple versions of files and multiple files around. You keep having people saving information as 'This one update,' 'that one update.' In the end, you see the case that maybe somebody comes back from leave and because they did not have a good hold of the email thread, they begin to work on a stale or a previous version of the document. But with IBM Planning Analytics, everything gets plugged in live, and there is nothing concerning old version or new version. Everything is there live. You make a new scenario live, you make changes to your model, and it is live there, updated there. So it has greatly reduced our errors to almost zero, and I can say there is about a thirty percent increase in efficiency.

I measured that thirty percent efficiency improvement based on time saved and fewer errors.

I have found that IBM Planning Analytics is flexible in the sense that you can customize the platform, customize calculations, and customize your models. However, your ability to do that when you want to do more complex models and more complex things, you have to upgrade your subscription. You just have to buy a higher level of license.

There is a downside to IBM Planning Analytics. Sometimes it requires a good amount of time before you get used to the platform. The entire platform itself and setup can sometimes be complex. You just have to be patient in order to learn the platform and understand it. But once you get the hang of it, it is good to go, and you will enjoy it.

I find the setup can be complex with IBM Planning Analytics. Sometimes some plugins could feel a bit outdated. Both the UI/UX part of it and the actual usage could feel antiquated. There are certain aspects of their software that they should take a look at, especially the plugins, and improve on them.

IBM Planning Analytics is very stable in my experience.

The scalability of IBM Planning Analytics is very impressive. It handles literally every single data we give to it without lagging or crashing, so it is very scalable.

We have not had any need for customer support for any issues. As I said, it is very stable and scalable. We only needed the assistance of customer support when we purchased the license initially, and I can rate that customer support we had then a ten out of ten.

My organization already uses IBM, so we did not switch from any other solution. We just did a comparative analysis with Workday Adaptive Planning. IBM Planning Analytics was favored because we already use IBM, not because it was the most cost-effective. Had we been considering cost alone, we would have gone for Workday Adaptive Planning.

Given the fact that IBM Planning Analytics is quite pricey in terms of the cost for the subscription and the monthly subscription, we just did the first-tier plan where we are only allowed to have five users at a time. Those in the directorate already have three logins. We are left with two logins, we who are the analysts, the financial analyst and the data analyst. We do not work in silos. Whenever we have a planning session or a forecasting session to do, we sit together, we have our big screen, and then from there we do our models. We do our what-ifs, we do our plannings. We essentially create different scenarios, which we save as different files. Then, those on the directorate, the director and the deputy director, can then have a look at it and say, 'Okay, I think we will go with this plan, or we will go with this other plan.' With that, they can then push their preferred plan upwards to those at the very top for endorsement. Once it is endorsed, then the finance and accounts unit can go ahead with disbursing funds. Procurement can go ahead with making their procurements. That is just the way we use it.

I have seen a return on investment such as a thirty percent increase in efficiency, which I have mentioned before. That measurement is based on time saved and error reduction.

Regarding pricing, the cost is high compared to the competitors of IBM Planning Analytics, but given that we as an organization already use IBM, we decided to go for IBM Planning Analytics. We did not incur additional setup costs because our machines were largely endowed with RAM and ROM, so we could run it efficiently. Licensing was not an issue we faced because we already had a dedicated team for finance, accounting, and data analytics. All we just had to do was register the five people for the license, and that was it.

I evaluated Workday Adaptive Planning before deciding on IBM Planning Analytics. It is quite good and flexible as well, and I must mention it was more cost-efficient. However, we chose IBM because we trust IBM as a company and we are already using IBM services.

My advice for others looking into using IBM Planning Analytics is first of all, you need a very powerful machine, a very good computer with a good processor, a very good amount of RAM, and a very good amount of ROM as well. Second, you can go for the essential tier of the subscription, which allows just five users. Whenever your team has to plan, you can just come together, use one login, and plan together over a large screen. Third, take your time to learn your way around the platform.

Regarding the accuracy and reliability of output, I find that the newer AI and agent capabilities of IBM Planning Analytics are good. However, IBM is currently nudging people towards cloud migration. Their AI and agent capabilities have been delivered as a software-as-a-service only, not available on older on-premises versions, but if your setup is cloud-based, then you have the AI and agent capabilities, which to a fair extent is accurate.

I would rate this review eight out of ten overall.