IBM Planning Analytics with Watson
Here in this blog, we will learn about IBM planning analytics with Watson.
We’ve lived with volatility, uncertainty, and risk for a long time, and they won’t go away anytime soon. However, the majority of planning teams—in Finance, Operations, HR, Sales, or any other department within the company—still devote an excessive amount of time to labor-intensive, spreadsheet-based manual processes, gathering, combining, and verifying data before they can even start to analyze it.
As a result, top companies are looking for quicker and more adaptable ways to provide deeper insights into their operational and financial performance. All too frequently, though, they feel forced to decide between the robust analytics features that are customarily exclusive to on-premises solutions and the simplicity of use and quick deployment of a cloud solution. They are, however, free to choose now. Thanks to IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, they can now have it all. Multiple deployment options – one solution.
One Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A) solution that offers agile planning, cross-organizational collaboration, and accelerated planning and forecasting cycles
An AI-powered extended planning and analysis (xP&A) solution that is quick, adaptable, and powerful is IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. Its deployment options include on-premises, on-cloud, hybrid, and IBM Cloud Pak for Data. It assists both small and large organizations in optimizing their processes and providing the necessary insight to effectively manage business performance. Both customers and analysts have commended it for being incredibly user-friendly. This solution goes above and beyond automation to assist you in deriving fresh insights straight from your data, in addition to automating manual tasks to speed up planning and forecasting cycles.
Planning silos between business units are broken down by IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. All users can access a single, governed database that serves as the only source of truth by unifying data into a central repository and integrating data from various data sources like ERPs, CRMs, and HRMs. It makes possible a cross-departmental framework that facilitates planning and fosters cooperation, transparency, and alignment throughout the entire company (high participation planning). Additionally, it performs tasks beyond simple planning, such as data analysis, trend identification, and real-time iteration for ongoing planning. All of your forecasts, budgets, and plans are generated and kept in IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, so all users are working with the same data. If necessary, centralized business rules can be applied to all plans, and modifications made to one will automatically update and flow to other plans.
With the help of AI, users can perform in-depth what-if scenario analysis to test alternative hypotheses and forecast outcomes based on changing trends or predictive insights with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. It enables users to draft more punctual, dependable, and flexible plans that can adjust instantly to meet shifting consumer demands. Decision quality and speed are enhanced by IBM Planning Analytics with Watson.
IBM Planning Analytics with Watson assists you in analyzing data and identifying trends through a workspace that is customizable for planning and analytics. It makes it easier to implement best practices like rolling forecasts and driver-based planning and releases individuals, teams, and business executives from the limitations of earlier planning tool generations.
Planning and analytics workspace that is interactive
An adaptable user interface is a feature of IBM Planning Analytics with Watson that can be made available to departmental, operational, and finance users throughout the company. It gives users a unified, consistent view of KPIs and makes it possible to assess plans, spot performance gaps, and determine the underlying causes of issues. Users can test scenarios and business assumptions, and then quickly see how different actions affect various business drivers.
Quick analysis and report generation based on standard business terms are made possible by intelligent queries. Robust queries based on multidimensional expressions (MDX) facilitate the analysis of data for any combination of dimensions and hierarchies. Sophisticated queries, like those involving asymmetrical nested reports, can be created by power users. However, users can quickly provide multidimensional analyses and reports to anyone who needs them; they don’t even need to be experts.
Directed planning
Managed and governed workflows are provided by IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to guarantee a seamless and efficient planning process. Planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes can be managed, facilitated, and increased participation through the creation of customized applications by users. Planning and budget managers are able to develop plans with several steps and stages, as well as multiple steps within each stage. After they are established, they can be used to monitor the status of planned activities, invite participants, specify submission requirements, and set deadlines. A transparent, simple-to-use, and comprehensive guided planning experience is produced by IBM Planning Analytics with Watson.
Multifaceted examination
Large, historical, and future-focused data sets can be multidimensionally analyzed thanks to IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, which is based on the potent in-memory IBM TM1 calculation engine. It combines various data sources and makes information from all pertinent systems comparably analyzeable. Complex dimensional calculations and analysis can be carried out by users on a variety of topics, including supply chain options, sales mix, price/volume variance, and profitability of products and customers.
It is simple to manage complex hierarchies and dimensions in order to uncover new perspectives on business performance or issues. Because the solution can handle data sparsity in multidimensional planning cubes, it can handle enterprise-scale data volumes, which eliminates the need to move or duplicate data and enables analysts to provide management with a “single version of the truth.”
Both business users and technical experts can benefit from IBM Planning Analytics with Watson’s “hierarchies” feature. You are not restricted to the conventional definition of cubes when using hierarchies. “Attributes” allow you to perform detailed, granular analysis to characterize the features of customers, regions, products, and more. By using data that was available when the cube was designed or added later, attribute data can be used to create “virtual dimensions.”
With distributed administration, everyone can take part in a well-run, cooperative process, regardless of location or department. A more trustworthy, future-focused understanding of company structures like product families and sales territories is the end result. It also aids in setting goals for initiatives aimed at growth and profit as well as for planning and forecasting.
Dashboards, scorecards, and visualizations
With its highly visual, freeform design, the IBM Planning Analytics Workspace offers a wide range of graphics, including text, video, images, charts, and maps. With the aid of these automated visualizations, you can produce engaging reports that convey insights to decision-makers. The interface has an organic language feel to it thanks to Snap Commands and quick searching.
Plans and budgets can be connected to the creation of dashboards and scorecards, which can then be distributed throughout the organization. Business users can measure and track performance in relation to their particular roles and responsibilities with the use of scorecards and dashboards. This facilitates strategy management and execution by assisting in the alignment of initiatives, resources, and actions with organizational goals.
sophisticated modeling for self-service
With IBM Planning Analytics with Watson’s sophisticated sandboxing and modeling features, regular finance and business analysts can build and manage intricate plans and forecasts with little to no IT assistance. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, which is based on the sophisticated, multifaceted technology of IBM TM1, allows analysis and computations for the most complex profitability and scenario models.
Models that incorporate almost any business driver into plans, budgets, and forecasts can be created by analysts. The business structures, rules, and relationships of the companies can be reflected in the models, which can then be updated when necessary. Throughout the planning process, users can identify operational drivers and connect them to financial and operational outcomes to observe how changes in one variable affect other areas of the organization. This increases the lead time available to evaluate alternatives by enhancing visibility into leading performance indicators and demonstrating the likely impact of various operational drivers on plans and forecasts.
Additionally, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson helps to reduce errors common to manual, spreadsheet-based processes and shorten planning cycles. As a result, analysts can devote more time to value-added analysis and less time to spreadsheet maintenance and data verification.
Excel Planning Analytics from IBM
One of the most widely used software tools ever created is the spreadsheet. However, they are not without limitations. For this reason, rather than replacing spreadsheets, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson allows users to carry on working in the Microsoft Excel interface when necessary.
The entire range of Excel formatting and functionality, including features like graphing and built-in functions, is retained in the IBM Planning Analytics for Excel interface. Professionals in finance and business can utilize all the features of a contemporary planning and analytics solution while working in the comfortable Excel interface.
Forecasting with Predictiveness
Everyday users, even those without expertise in data science, can now leverage the power of algorithmic forecasting with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson to produce more precise, reliable, and timely forecasts.
By applying statistical and predictive analytics to recognize and evaluate trends and seasonality patterns in historical values, predictive forecasting enhances human intelligence while significantly increasing forecast accuracy. Additionally, it shortens the time needed to generate an accurate forecast, freeing users up to concentrate on process improvement, exception handling, and modification. Instead of requiring users to export data to an external solution, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson incorporates statistical algorithms right into the solution. In order to predict a future value, the algorithms evaluate the historical values and apply the algorithm that produces the best accuracy and fewest errors. Following the generation of a prediction, the statistical details page presents clear and concise information regarding the process, giving users more specific details and enhancing the explainability and accountability of their forecasts.
Benefits of IBM Planning Analytics with Watson
- Gives departmental, operational, and financial business users the ability to develop plans, budgets, and forecasts in a customizable analytics workspace that is prompt, dependable, and flexible.
- Automated workflow for improved planning participation and process visibility
- Enables data analysis from multi-dimensional planning models using the recognizable Microsoft Excel interface for users.
- Facilitates quick, adaptable what-if scenario modeling.
- Manages multidimensional cubes with enterprise-scale data volumes.
- Uses information from both internal and external sources, such as CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
- Allows users to delve down for a detailed view of profitability by carrying out intricate cost allocations and profitability analysis by sales channel, client, product, area, and more.
- Makes it easier to implement best practices like rolling forecasts and driver-based planning.
- Automatically produces powerful visualizations with a large selection of text, video, images, maps, charts, tables, and shapes.
- Contains dashboards and scorecards for tracking key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Incorporates embedded predictive forecasting capabilities to increase forecast accuracy
- Gives all user roles a consistent Web, Excel, and mobile experience.
- Supports multidimensional expressions-based (MDX) queries for quick, effective analysis as well as natural language searching.
- Ensures that users see only the information they require by offering role-based security to accommodate various user types and numbers of users.
- Simplifies deployment for hybrid, on-premises, cloud, and IBM Cloud Pak for Data options.
