TM1 upgrade to Planning Analytics, and Planning Analytics Workspace

IBM is truly living up to its principles of a focus on customer outcomes, restless reinvention, and diverse empowered teams. I believe there is no better reflection of this that IBM’s latest release of Planning analytics (powered by TM1)

No one anticipated that the next iteration would be a such a quantum leap forward. Both in terms of intuitive use, and cutting edge looks; it is refreshing to see IBM invest in this software to bring it ahead of the competition. That’s right I said ahead. To start, with certain installations you will be able to integrate with Watson, that’s right Watson! IBM’s natural language AI, the same AI that helps Doctors in treating cancer patients.

In this blog series I hope to take you on the journey from considering whether you should take the next step, right through to integration with Watson.

Let us explore what I mean by next steps with set up and th

e visualisations

The new GUI is really a cut above the rest. It seems familiar having played around with the early trials of Watson

To upgrade your installation from any version less than and including 10.2.2, to Planning Analytics is really quite simple

Enabling the visualisations however will require some minor underlying changes to your models, and you will find that what differentiates Planning Analytics, and in particular Workspace is the amazing drag and drop functionality, as well as the variety of visualisations you get out of the box

The visualisations rival other vendors, Workspace is rich in functionality and mobile ready. In recent history, customers leveraged other software tools to try and visualise the data in TM1, a heavy investment in both time and capital. Those that waited for the potential of Planning Analytics + Workspace will be rewarded for doing so. The others of you that have invested the time and capital to have some great visualisations; your investments in TM1 web sheets and active forms are not lost as they will integrate with Workspace, and those who use 3^rd party software can now start to think about rationalising the software required to generate your visualisations. No one has lost out, we all win thanks to IBM’s release of Workspace.

The easy implementation and visualisations alone are reason enough, however the price point will also no doubt be of interest. One would assume that with such an offering of improved functionality, reporting capabilities, great visualisations, collaboration and ease of set up you would be paying a lot of money but this may not necessarily be the case. If you are interested in talking to someone about your current costs and upgrading why not email or call us to review this with you.

In summary, should you upgrade? Yes. Without a doubt, and if you are keen to see a demo of how IBM’s latest release can change your business we are more than happy to help. We know IBM’s latest offering of both Planning Analytics and Workspace will indisputably wanting to see more and the ease of set up and visualisations are just the beginning. In the next part of our blog series we will work through the improved collaboration, and how this will impact your organisations ways of working.

Written by:

Martin Liwosz [Senior TM1 Consultant]