TrustRadius Insights for IBM Planning Analytics are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Flexibility and Customization: Users have appreciated the product's flexibility, noting that it can easily be customized to suit various business needs. They find this adaptability beneficial for tailoring the software to specific requirements and processes within their organizations.
Integration with Excel: Many reviewers have highlighted the integration with Excel as a key feature, especially for Finance organizations. This seamless connection is seen as vital as it serves as a foundation for numerous financial operations and data management tasks.
Efficient Automation: The automation of manual planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes has been praised by users for saving time and increasing efficiency. By automating these tasks, businesses can streamline their workflows and allocate resources more effectively.
The interface is good, it speeds my work. I also like the supply-chain integration. We are using for several project tracking. My company is migrating many tools, software and the budget resource, time invested, tools and support cost, training, etc all is tracked and planned through this. It provide higher management clear view of the progress made in turned of achievement v/s money invested so far.
Pros
Demand forecasting and pricing optimization
Multi dimensional data
Give better picture
Cons
Step learning curve
Complex initial setup
Time consuming maintenance
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Planning Analytics is a real-time, accurate financial and operational analysis, scalability to handle large datasets and enterprise-wide growth, flexibility and ease of use through familiar interfaces like Excel and a web-based workspace which is makes life easy for project manager and VPs. It make decision making simpler. It also offers comprehensive data integration from various sources.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (Telecommunications company, 5001-10,000 employees)
I use IBM Planning Analytics to implement complex solutions for other companies. It is a very useful and dynamic solution that allows for flexibility within the model. Many companies with large amounts of data have a problem within their business analyzing data. IBM Planning Analytics helps to see the data in a format that is easy to comprehend and understand.
Pros
Data Analysis
Financial Reporting
Data Management
Cons
Training
Easy of use for non technical users
Dashboarding
Likelihood to Recommend
The best scenario for IBM Planning Analytics is loading data into the application and analyzing and reporting on the data at a high level. TM1 allows for a variety of ways for users to see and understand their data which is extremely helpful. I think that for smaller scale models or simplistic scenarios it is not as appropriate or useful.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting (Computer Software company, 51-200 employees)
I use the Planning Analytics with Watson platform to consolidate contributions from the various areas of client companies, accelerating the process of collecting and processing the information necessary for each budget cycle. With the application of the Planning Analytics with Watson platform, I can gather all the business rules necessary for the preparation of financial statements in a single repository.
Pros
Elaboration of several scenarios and the option to adopt them when validated.
High-speed data processing.
Flexibility to apply business rules.
Cons
Information search engine for cube data.
Mechanism for promoting artifacts from non-productive environments to the productive environment.
Documentation generator.
Likelihood to Recommend
The Planning Analytics with Watson platform is recommended for companies that need to collect information from several areas and/or need to process complex consolidations in large volumes of data. It is a platform that manages to store all business rules in a single repository, in addition to eliminating technology infrastructure costs.
This solution saves our time and money by eliminating the need of planning business manually. Truly speaking that business planning should be fast, straightforward, and continuous, and in order to meet these expectations, this solution comes in handy.
Its AI-based features overcome the limits of manual planning. Basically, we have a lot of business data in our ecosystem and we divide our business plan into categories to generate more accurate results.
So with IBM Planning Analytics solution allows us to do so on one single platform where we can manage things with accuracy, and without delay. Also, we can forecast the data to accelerate decision-making in the future.
Pros
This solution allows to break down the business ideas so we can create more accurate plans for FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis), sales, and supply chain
Data Forecasting improves the decision-making for future.
Seamlessly deployable on premises.
Cons
It could be improved more by adding additional AI features.
Likelihood to Recommend
This solution is well suited for large businesses where trillions of data are generated every day. It solves the problem of organizing the heavy data in a structured manner so that it becomes easy to understand and manage things in less time.
IBM Planning Analytics with Watson can handle large model of dataset and provide strong data analysis capabilities, it also helps us to create perfect report with lots of data visualization elements that makes impactful reports. In a simple words it's a robust software that gives us the power of forecasting.
Pros
Budgeting and forecasting
Data Visualization
Cons
Require in-depth documentation and support
Likelihood to Recommend
We are using IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to gets more relevant and strong insight of data to make better understand and clear decision. It provides us enhanced excel functions to to get better insight.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Marketing (Writing & Editing company, 1-10 employees)
Mostly for financial planning use cases in controlling departments. However IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is quite flexible for planning in other domains such as Sales, Cost planning and allocation or emission planning and optimization.
Pros
Flexibility
Visualisation
Business Rules
Cons
Versioning
Weak built-in workflow
Notifications
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for various use cases where company wants to customize model/process/workflow to its needs. Other products usually won't provide such room for modification of out-of-the-box features. You can experience difficulties if your planning use case requires to plan on item level (employees, investments).
We were looking for a tool to make sales forecasts and a centralized solution to collect consultant time sheets to forecast and monitor billable resources. The solution must be able to manage multi hierarchies architecture and real-time simulation
Pros
Data collection and Excel interface
Real time simulation and forecasting
large data volume of data calculation
Cons
Reporting capabilities
Report Bursting
Likelihood to Recommend
Planning Analytics is the perfect solution for financial and operational reporting, forecasting, and planning needs. With its engine, we have been able to design the business rules that we needed and were able to make them evolve to keep them up to date.
I use IBM Planning Analytics with Watson in two different organizations to analyze accounts and manage finances with predictive and analytic intelligence capabilities. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson helped me successfully integrate financial and operational plans across our firm.
Pros
IBM Planning Analytics with Watson eradicated error-prone spreadsheets and manual procedures when undertaking corporate planning processes.
With IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, it is effective to make on-the-moment determinations, pivot in real-time, and improve performance with AI-Infused capabilities.
IBM Planning Analytics with Watson has accelerated the planning, forecasting, and budgeting processes hence always getting a clear view of our financial standing in real-time.
Cons
For IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to offer robust BI tools that can suit all the needs for all types [of] organizations, it requires to be integrated with external business intelligence tools such as Microsoft BI.
Likelihood to Recommend
As Senior Account Executive, I have gained a lot with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson when carrying out financial analysis. It has infused predictive insights, AI, and advanced analytics which allows me to present dynamic and accurate budgets, forecasts, and plans rapidly to [the] Chief Account Officer.
We used IBM PAW for the planning and analysis of Sales ROI, Financial Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting. It helped us to make better business decisions regarding our current and future investments. We also used PAW for inventory planning and forecasting, which helped us to reduce a lot of inventory costs and improve our ROI.
Pros
Natural language processing.
Predictive analytics.
Financial planning.
Cons
Documentation and tutorials.
Pricing.
Speed of implementation.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for budgeting and forecasting process because of strong predictive and analytical capabilities. It also integrates well with other tools and hence provide great flexibility. You should definitely consider IBM PAW if you want to make data-driven decisions in your organization. It is less suited for SMEs and startups because of higher pricing.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology (Computer Networking company, 1001-5000 employees)