IBM Planning Analytics vs. Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management

For a CFO or a COO to do budgeting and planning, IBM Planning Analytics would be essential. It is a tool that can take in multiple data sources and showcase them in a multidimensional way. If you are looking just for a BI or reporting tool, Planning Analytics would be considered "overkill".

It is well suited in a geographically distributed environment where you have various key participants in multiple time zones providing input and necessary explanations on performance and measured success It is less appropriate where you have a single office environment with a single finance department working together. It is also less suited when the GL is NOT an Oracle product and the interface between the GL and the reporting software needs to be implemented with utmost care and handling.

Incentivized

• Handle very large data volumes.
• Scale to a large number of users.
• Not having to compromise on business complexity.
• It can be run by business users.
• Availability of highly qualified consultants to support businesses.
• REST API allows for an open eco system and a variety of solutions to extend the product.
• Vast integration possibilities.
• AI-infused engine with IBM Watson.

Incentivized

• Account Reconciliation CLoud Services provides tight integration with Oracle R12 and 11i . Provides drillback capability. It is flexible and provides rich functionality to users.
• We have implemented ARCS on cloud and migrated planning and budgeting from On premise to PBCS and EPBCS. Functionality is onpar with onpremise. Provides regular updates monthly
• We don't need to upgrades every year and saved a lot on Hardware.

Incentivized

• sometimes it is hard to produce pixel perfect reports from the Web UI. I know it is not made for this, but still, it'll be great
• getting in e.g. an Excel file just by drag and drop, and the AI should "understand" what the data is all around

Incentivized

• Our implementation consultant set up all the business rules for calculations to get us live, and we may have difficulty setting up new ones going forward. We feel like that we now need to hire someone who has the technical knowledge to help us to manage the system going forward.

Incentivized

Since IBM Cognos Express is suitable only for medium data warehouse environment, we are not sure if this tool solves the long term need as the business keeps growing rapidly. So its a 50/50 ratio to renew Express license. But having said that, the components of IBM Cognos Express are also available in other Cognos BI suites like Cognos 10.x version. So we will probably upgrade our environment to IBM Cognos 10.x which comes with more new features.

We have a pretty good userbase who are at the high level who gained value from this tool. Discontinuing this tool is prone to impact their day to day operations. Also the data in this tool cannot alter the source, which maintains the integrity of this tool. Smartview is a cool addition that gained lot of traction as well.

Incentivized

IBM Planning Analytics is generally good in terms of functionalities. It can be used reduce time for budget planning, resource planning, demand forecasting, etc. The performance of IBM Planning Analytics is acceptable, but user interface can be improved. It would be good to see new features that allow users to customise the dashboard.

Incentivized

It produces consolidated multi currency reports faster and more accurately whilst adding additional pivotal functionality. The Smartview reporting is a key for us and a flagstone of the application

Incentivized

EPM has been so far available all the time

Incentivized

The product performance is so far very good

Incentivized

Although I find the IBM Planning analytics documentation quite time consuming, their support with email and call is something i can term as very considerate and patient, I have had few calls about the features and how i would want to implement them within my projects, and the teams have been super helpful to resolve my issues

Incentivized

Support from our implementation partner is a 10/10, but support from Oracle is awful. Case in point: recently over a 2-day period, there were a series of intermittent outages. Oracle actually asked US for the outage time-stamps. I would have thought that, since we were paying them, they should probably be able to tell us!

Incentivized

The biggest key is data validation time. If you are implementing a new chart of accounts along with Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud, you need to multiply the time you think you can perform data validation by 2. The key to managing your project timeline is managing your expectations around data validation as well. For instance, it is recommended you convert 1-3 years vs. 5 years.

Incentivized

For strong technical teams and flexibility IBM Planning Analytics is the way to go. For quicker adoption and less technical teams Anaplan is the best option. If consolidation, financials, and moving from legacy tools are main focus than OneStream will be a really good choice. If deeply invested into SAP already than the SAP BPC will be the best fit to maintain the investment.

Incentivized

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud is one of the more robust and well-rounded EPMs on the market. It comes with robust out-of-the-box functionality which is a great benefit in comparison to its peers. The Excel integration is also top notch which Financial Analysts really appreciate. Cost is a little high and maintenance is a bit heaver than other tools so that is something to consider. The product keeps improving!

Incentivized

The product is scalable

Incentivized

• Much higher degree of accuracy in forecasting with the use of predictive analysis from historical data
• Dozens of man hours saved in routine processes that are now handled with minimal human interaction
• One system that holds the "source of truth," consolidating multiple systems together that were only accessible individually before

Incentivized

• Significantly reduced the amount of money we spent for the maintenance of in-house hardware.
• We now need less employees to manage the configurations of Oracle EPM Cloud.
• There have been many time savings as a whole to apply to more productive causes.

Incentivized