IBM Cognos TM1

Budgeting, forecasting and analytics for financial performance management

High-performance enterprise planning software for budgeting, forecasting and analysis

IBM Cognos® TM1 is enterprise planning software that provides a complete, dynamic environment for developing timely, reliable and personalised forecasts and budgets.

Rapidly analyse data and model business requirements for your entire organisation and use the results to budget and forecast with confidence for better business outcomes. More than budgeting and forecasting software, Cognos TM1 is a complete enterprise planning solution.

A multidimensional, 64-bit, in-memory OLAP engine provides exceptionally fast performance for analysing complex and sophisticated models, large data sets and even streamed data.
A full range of enterprise planning software requirements is supported—from high-performance, on-demand profitability analysis, financial analytics and flexible modeling to enterprise-wide contribution from all business units.
Personal scenarios created with advanced personalisation enable an unlimited number of ad-hoc alternatives so individuals, teams, divisions and whole companies can respond faster to changing conditions.
Best practices such as driver-based planning and rolling forecasting can become part of your enterprise planning process.
Model design and data access adapt to your business process and present business information in familiar formats.
Managed contribution makes it possible to assemble and deploy planning solutions for your enterprise and collect input from systems and staff from all divisions and locations, quickly consistently and automatically.
Integrated scorecarding and reporting— the complete picture from goal setting and planning, to measuring progress and reporting—is possible with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.
Total control over planning, budgeting and forecasting processes is provided to Finance and lines of business.
A choice of interfaces—Microsoft® Excel®, Cognos TM1 Web and the Cognos TM1 Contributor client—allows you to work with your preferred look and feel.

Download the new TM1 10 Fact Sheet HERE

TM1 Features

For the best business outcomes, your company needs to plan, forecast and budget effectively.

You must also get the right information to the right people in the form they need it—and be able to make changes quickly.

IBM Cognos® TM1 provides a complete planning, budgeting and forecasting environment that supports the full range of business requirements.

With high-performance, on-demand financial analytics, flexible modeling and enterprise contribution for a broad range of users, Cognos TM1 helps you develop timely, reliable forecasts, budgets and plans, reducing planning cycles by as much as 75%.

Cognos TM1 can ramp up your planning, budgeting and analysis with:

exceptionally fast performance for large, sophisticated models and large data sets
a flexible modeling environment that requires no programming or traditional IT skills
the scalability and flexibility to start with a single planning application and then expand it for use in your entire enterprise
a choice of interfaces: Microsoft® Excel®, TM1 Web and a built-in client for managed participation
role-based security that supports multiple users and ensures that users see only those portions of the plan that they need to

In addition, Cognos TM1 blends the workflow activities of planning with advanced personalized analysis, adapted to each contributor’s particular plans. While you’re planning, you’re not just viewing plans, but you’re dynamically building your own alternatives, sharing them with your team and using the best scenarios to make informed decisions. And, because Cognos TM1 is Cognos 10 Ready, you can link your plans and forecasts with reporting and scorecarding for a complete picture from goal setting to measuring progress.

08/02/2012

IBM Releases Cognos TM1 v 10 Today ... Five Ways IBM Cognos TM1 v10 Changes Everything

IBM has just released the latest version of IBM's Business Analytics enterprise planning, forecasting and analytics solution that:

Enables reliable, on-demand analysis, plans, forecasts and reports, and provides a holistic view of performance, including profitability.
Offers a choice of interfaces, including Microsoft Excel, to encourage high participation, and accommodate a broad range of work styles, business-specific personal analysis and options for collaboration.
Provides a managed, governed planning, analysis, and reporting process that spans personal, work group and enterprise requirements and is owned by Finance and line-of- business users.
Provides a personal analytics desktop that combines analysis, planning, reporting and personal dashboarding in a single interface
Features an innovative, guided modeling environment that eases development and deployment of planning, analysis and forecasting solutions
Integrates with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, to establish a single performance management platform that consolidates data from multiple sources and applications,and provides dynamic planning, analysis and performance reporting

With this version of IBM Cognos TM1, you can:

Treat contributors as Golden --> through a revolutionary user experience for planning and analysis.
Speed ideas into action--> with new Modeling & Solution Design
Deliver scalable high performing systems --> with improved deployment and server performance
Work together better and faster--> with additions to Collaboration and Workflow
Support user-driven design and innovation --> which means greater Analytic Agility applied to planning, reporting, forecasting.

So What are the 5 Ways ...

1. Cognos Insight --The contributor’s experience in planning/analysis/forecasting is paramount. DOWNLOAD FREE TRIAL HERE

Cognos Insight is a personal analytic desktop (rich client) that combines analysis, planning, reporting and personal dashboarding in a single interface. For data, if provides drag-and-drop import, creation of data from scratch, and data enrichment without complex scripting. For analysis, users can create custom “applications,” dashboards and “what-if” scenarios to optimize outcomes For the interface, users have complete control over the look and feel of their “canvas.” For teaming, users can easily publish their findings in various ways.

Cogons Insight blends analysis and planning on the user’s desktop. Enables and engenders greater discovery, trending, -- and investment in your enterprise’s or division’s performance. With it, plan contributors can work in the centralized (connected) mode or in the distributed mode. Supports planning as a distributed process for HIGH participation -- through Cognos Insight. Also supports option for centralized planning where Cognos Insight is in a connected mode to the server.

Specifically, it encourages greater planning participation with these features.

For Analysis:

Prototype situations, plans
Work with existing or pull in new data
Perform what-if scenarios, associative analysis, write-back
Customise Views and Explore Points
Add Tabs within the canvas – for a report, a slice of data illustrating a new situation

Build Plans (applications, in essence):

Create a new version – or even “mini” plan/new approach to an existing plan
Use Shortcuts, Multiple Views, charts to help illustrate the analysis
Create or add to dashboards
Add Instructions – directions for other planners about examining/using the plan or finding

Sharing discoveries, plans:

Promote findings in a tailored dashboard
Easily publish discoveries, reports to TM1 and Cognos BI
Share new planning “mini” application on Web for teams to take action

Expand the plan:

Move plan to Performance Modeler for enhancement, contribution (by the user or by another business analyst)

-- No dead-end street for individual analysis and plans.

With TM1 10.1, users can now work in interfaces best suited to the business and their experience:

the Excel-based TM1 thin client -- create Excel-based Websheets which are slices of spreadsheets made available to others through TM1 Web; take advantage of Excel functionality. (NOTE: TM1 customers can still use Architect in conjunction with Performance Modeler – don’t have to switch all at once.)
the new Cognos Insight desktop, which provides individual, personalized analytics, plan creation, and reporting which can also be used as a client to Managed Contribution (to a plan developed and deployed through workflow)
Managed Contribution – this is the Contributor client, a thin client, which is used to provide input to plans in a governed process.

NOTE: Websheets are now supported with workflow -- can be embedded in a contributor application (however, not Cognos Insight) These allow application builders to build views that perform better particularly for reviewers – in the responsibility and approval applications (see section “Work Together Better and Faster”)

2. Faster, easier modeling

Customers will appreciate the ease of modeling which translates to more business analysts with the ability to model. For example, the guided processes include import, design and deploy. It’s now easier to design a cube, for example you can view it being built.

Here’s what one of the Beta customers said about the performance modeler capability in TM1 10.1…

Cognos Insight:

“Provides an excellent prototyping tool for our Business Analysts for analyzing and modeling against our Teradata warehouse that can be promoted to our enterprise Planning Systems”
“Will be a HUGE help as a contribution client for sales forecasting in reducing our reliance on excel for offline/disconnected analysis and will allow us to increase the frequency of our outlook updates
“Will allow us to move more modeling out to the business users (as we had done in the past with Cognos Planning Analyst)”

Performance Modeler:

“Will level set our development practices, allowing our less senior TM1 developers to ramp up quickly and allow our Senior TM1 developers to focus on the most complex development”.
“Will allow more people to develop TM1 solutions as well as speed up the development process”

Impact on our overall Planning & Analysis Strategy:

“We see TM1 as our System of record globally for Planning”
“The release of TM1 10.1 will increase and ease our transition from Cognos Planning to TM1 in an organized and systematic way”.

There are multiple enhancements to the Modeling process – that includes a new interface with guided modeling steps:

Define Dimensions
- Aid Format precedence and Calculation precedence
- Dimension Calculations with simple syntax
- Calc expression editor with syntax checking Rules and Feeders created automatically
Build Cubes
- Graphical gestures
- Initial dimension order determined from Dimension Types
- Drag/drop gestures to re-structure cubes
- To speed prototyping when customer requirements are not firm
Define Rules
- Rules & feeders are generated automatically for dimension calculations and links
Link Data
- Easy way to specify data references and movements
- Link validation to support novice users
- Link is manifested as cube rules in the target cube and feeders in the source cube
- Supports lookup and accumulation on picklist items
- Links can be converted to on-demand processes for manual or scheduled execution (versus a dynamic execution of a rule)

Much smarter for the application transfer process:

Ease the transfer of applications across environments – Dev > Test > Prod
Externalise application and model object definitions for transfer across air-gapped environments
Changes can be transferred to the target environment without bringing the server down
Production data is retained Transfer in from BV Auto-documentation

The 3-pane application provides:

Content pane
Working area
Properties pane
Dockable editors
Drag and Drop is widespread
Improved Editors for TI and Rules

An application can be defined as centralized (with contributors working from the server) or distributed.

The guided steps for application design are:

Solution Navigation
Create Views
Define Approval Hierarchy
Define Client and Mode
Define User rights
Deploy Application

3. Collaboration and Workflow "Work Together Better and Faster"

Managed Planning Processes and Workflow across all “clients”
Application Types (e.g. Continuous, Hierarchical)

Within Performance Modeler, plans can be established as different application types, depending upon several factors. When building your planning application to roll it out to teams, you control the mode which provides most effective, efficient planning.

Application Types:

Central -- used for top-down plans, drivers from the corporate level such as administrators or highly-involved analysts, such as a merit increase metric, pricing, cost assumptions. When you open the application, you see a collection of cubeviews which you may optionally take ownership if you need exclusive write access to data. (In this application type, Cognos Insight is set to centralized mode, not distributed.)
Approval – Classic “planning” workflow; with an approval hierarchy and submit and reject activity built in; developed for input from many planners: for activities such as salary plans and annual plans.
Responsibility planning – best suited when a plan is always in use, such as a rolling forecasting plan with frequent changes; suitable for high number of users. There is no formal workflow with submit/reject attached to the plan. Users check the nodes/cubes to determine if dated, in reserve, etc.

In addition to adding notes/comments at the cell level in plans, users can also attach commentary to their workflow submissions.

4. Analytics Server - Deliver Scalable, High Performing Systems

Today’s TM1 10.1 Server is highly adapted for quality, scale, and enterprise performance:

Built on the high-performance stable 9.5.2 Server Engine
High performance for complex analysis – with complex models, complex data sets
Improved performance for remote users.

TM1 Engine details behind these server improvements:

Non-blocking dynamic subsets (do not impede scaling)
Automated cube dependency creation
Individual TI Commits in Chores
Smarter Contributor Ownership processing
On Startup TI triggers.

Parallel Interaction:

A new TM1 object-locking approach that increases user throughput by lessening situations that result in write transactions that are “blocked” by concurrent read and write transactions.

A true web application that allows customers to monitor multiple TM1 Servers from one location. It offers:

Health check icons to provide high level status updates of Tm1 server.
- Ability to sort & filter thread activity for faster analysis of TM1 server operations.
- Ability to schedule thread activity logging for enterprise diagnostic needs.
- New log format – allows for faster analysis & diagnosis of thread activity (especially when used in conjunction with Cognos Insight)

5. Support User-Driven Design and Innovation

“Cognos Insight provides an excellent prototyping tool for our business analysts. It will allow us to move more modeling out to the business users.” -- Jack Purvis, Senior Manager, BI/PM, DIRECTV. DOWNLOAD FREE TRIAL HERE

The combination of new TM1 capabilities plus Cognos Insight, the desktop workspace speeds up user innovation and design ... contributors are golden.

With Cognos Insight, users are empowered to freely explore new plan models.
They can pull the data of their choice onto their desktop
- from managed or personal sources without the assistance of IT
- and build plan prototypes with personalized dimensions and hierarchies, and run what-if scenarios on the plan data.
They can dive deep into data to examine the profitability of their business, analyze hierarchies such as product families down to the SKU level or customer family sets, and view on-demand the effect of a costing change. The quick, easy development and experimentation with the plans is aided by intuitive gestures for exploration, instant re-calculations, and rich visualization.
To share planning ideas, users can collaborate with their own work group or multiple groups across the enterprise by
- Promoting their findings in a tailored dashboard in Cognos Business Insight for broad distribution
- Publishing the material to be read as a report in Cognos Business Intelligence
- Moving the plan as an application to the Web for either limited or widely distributed access
- Contributors can blend in deeper analysis such as predictive or profitability and share those expanded insights.
Analysts can further develop the plan, link it to the larger enterprise plan and deploy it for contribution in a governed process.

DOWNLOAD FREE COGNOS INSIGHT TRIAL HERE

So where do you start?

The Cortell team will work with you to identify your organisation’s biggest and highest priority challenges to kick off the initiative ... where advanced Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting will have the greatest impact.

We look at your biggest problems, such as the daily battle with the data required to support your specific business function and corporate decision making processes. Problems like the collation, calculation, analysis and management of data.

The current state is usually a labour intensive process that is:

prone to errors
an operational risk due to single man dependencies
costly due to over complicated excel spreadsheet reliance
isolated from other core business processes.

This is a great place to start so typically we commence an initiative by conducting a Proof of Concept with your business stakeholders to showcase how me can remove these issues.

As your TM1 investment continues to grow within your organisation, the Cortell team can then help you build a centralised Financial Performance Management unit (Centre of Excellence), making it possible to share resources efficiently and effectively.

Why start with Cortell?

Cortell Australia is a certified and award winning IBM Cognos TM1 Partner and Reseller.

Our consultants have delivered in excess of 850 different TM1 business models to over 500+ customers.

Cortell have extensive budget, forecast and planning, cost management and activity based costing skills that have been applied to all industry sectors.

TM1 White Papers

Embracing Error: the first step to quality forecasting

An overwhelming majority of businesses fail to measure forecast error at all and so are driving blind, using forecasts that may be no better than guesswork. And even those that do attempt to measure error fail to do so properly; their view through the windshield is blurred and distorted.

In this white paper we argue that managers need to recognise not only that the world is unpredictable but that those companies that are able to adapt to the unfolding reality are the organisations that will win out.

Extending Planning & Forecasting with Analytics White Paper

Steve Player, of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, explains how finance teams can use advanced planning and forecasting to deliver the insights that drive better decision making.

Bridging Operational & Financial Forecasting

Learn how Finance leaders and their line-of-business counterparts can synchronize financial and operational planning to optimize performance.

Business Forecasting: Six Design Principles for Healthier Forecasts

Learn how a healthier forecasting process leads to healthier business performance.

Planning and Forecasting: Use Continuous Planning and Rolling Forecasts to Support Adaptive Management

Jeremy Hope, Research Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, explains how to replace rigid annual budgets with continuous planning and rolling forecasts.

Cortell TM1 Case Studies

Suncorp banks on Cortell and leads the pack with next generation business reporting ... SBR XBRL 2.1

Kincrome Australia discovers the right tool...

IBM Cognos Express TM1 provides immediate business insight for improved decision making

Network Ten creates Prime-Time with Cognos Express TM1 ... providing more with less!

Bond University makes smart decisions with Cognos Express & TM1

Cruising ahead with TM1...

Carnival can now work out total cruise costs and individual elements in less than one hour

Cortell implements advanced student load forecasting & cost management at Griffith University

Cortell Australia and Cognos TM1 give freedom to Steinhoff's Finance Team

Zurich Australia gains deeper and more accurate insights into Business Performance

CiSRA improves resource planning accuracy with help from Cortell Australia

WorkPac solves financial reporting challenges with IBM Cognos TM1 and Cortell Australia

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IBM Cognos TM1 Training Courses

Cortell Australia have designed and offer the following IBM Cognos TM1 training courses:

IBM Cognos TM1 Introduction and Navigating & Analysing Data
IBM Cognos TM1 designing and Developing Applications
IBM Cognos TM1 Server Administration
Integration of IBM Cognos 10 Business Intelligence with TM1
IBM Cognos 10 Report Studio with TM1 Cube
IBM Cognos 10 Business Insight Advanced with TM1 Cube

For details on each of these courses please click HERE.

TM1 Discussion/Quote/Demo Request

IBM Cognos Business Analytics software helps your organisation better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes. You can achieve breakthrough results and outperform your competition.

Cortell Australia will engage your team with senior business consultants who will help you assess which capabilities within IBM Cognos' Business Analytics derive the most business value.

We offer an initial high level assessment followed by a customised demo and quotation. We can also help you build your internal business case.

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