IBM Planning Analytics with Watson (or TM1 as many of us still know it) continues to command a significant market share of EPM platforms deployed across the globe. In the past couple of years, there have not been any “in-person” events such as Cognos Forum, IBM World of Watson, or IBM Think; therefore, one can lose sight of the fact that IBM is still pushing lots of new features and functionality to the product, including exciting tracking and automation capabilities.
Whether your product is an on-premise install or on the IBM Cloud, you can benefit from the platform’s numerous excellent new features we share below. Further, we dish out some exciting capabilities our eCapital team imagined, developed, and implemented alongside some of our best clients.
Five Tips to Enhance Your PA Application
1. User Login Tracking
Our clients have begged for a better view of user engagement for years. They want to see which users logged into the system lately or, arguably more critically, which users have NOT recently logged in.
Companies need visibility into how their IBM licenses are used to report and ensure compliance with said licenses. Some of this information is stored in files behind the scenes, which makes analysis cumbersome. With just a little work, we can set up your system so that you have immediate access to reports to display the number of logins per user and by day/week/month.
2. Report Usage Tracking
Clients often want to know which reports are used the most and which remain unused. Some long-time IBM Planning Analytics companies may have hundreds of reports, yet no visibility into which are essential and frequently accessed. We can create a simple record, updated in real-time, that shows the number of times any report is opened per user by day.
3. Automation – Reporting Bursting
One of the most popular enhancements over the past couple of years has been the ability to burst reports to specific users or a set of SharePoint folders. You can purchase another third-party tool to do this. However, depending on the scale at which you want to deploy this functionality, we may be able to do it with the licenses you already own.
What we love about Reporting Bursting is that you can start small, with maybe just one report delivered to a handful of users. Then you can schedule that same report to run every day. As a result, you remove the redundant activity of saving reports and emailing them from your TM1 Admin or Users. Automation alone is a high priority for all our clients, and we would love to chat with you about automating within your PA environment or even at a much larger scale.
4. Automation – Notifications
Most of our IBM Planning Analytics clients don’t have an Admin fully dedicated to running their PA environment. Most of the Admins wear many hats within the organization. Fortunately, Planning Analytics now offers a variety of built-in notifications that inform you if something is wrong in the system or if the system is using too much memory. With a little effort, you can receive more precise notifications. For example, suppose a critical process generates an error. In that case, we can set it up to integrate with your email or your Microsoft Teams environment to notify you that something requires your attention.
5. Find More Bang for your Buck!
We love TM1, and so do our clients. Whether you are using TM1 for your monthly financial reports, annual budgeting process, or even a monthly forecast, there is always more that you can do with TM1. Our best tip is, if you already own the license, why not take advantage of it?
Some additional examples of implementations for our clients:
- Operational Planning
- Balance Sheet or Cash Flow Forecasts
- Demand Forecasting (S&OP)
- Profitability
- Pricing Analytics
- Long Range (Strategic) Planning
Does one of the initiatives above interest you? If so, our team can quickly review your needs and estimate what it might take to implement the solution.
Does more than one of the enhancements above interest you and your company? In that case, we recommend a Planning Analytics Health Check and Roadmap project. That’s where one of our Planning Analytics experts reviews your current environment with you. That way, they can identify your specific enhancements or fixes and recommend additional initiatives you can implement.
With tracking, automation, and more in IBM Planning Analytics, clients can find or keep a competitive edge. Contact eCapital to ensure your company takes full advantage of a “Best in Class” Planning Analytics environment.
