IBM Cognos TM1 Enterprise Planning, Analytics and Reporting for Today s Unpredictable Times

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1 Data Sheet IBM Cognos TM1 Enterprise Planning, Analytics and Reporting for Today s Unpredictable Times Overview In today s challenging economy, companies are increasingly focused on three rudimentary performance questions: How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do to address performance gaps quickly? This corporate soul searching leads companies to look at ways to reduce expenses, improve profitability, drive cash flow and manage risk. To answer these performance questions and develop the best course of action for better business outcomes, a company needs to plan, forecast and report effectively. Companies must also get the right information to the right people in the form they need it and enable them to make changes quickly. This team approach requires highly flexible planning, analysis and reporting that align financial and operational targets in one connected, dynamic solution across the enterprise. IBM Cognos TM1 links financial and operational planning and performance management processes together in one connected, dynamic nervous system. IBM Cognos TM1, a component of the IBM Cognos 8 platform, provides a complete planning, analytics and reporting environment, along with a unified array of Performance Blueprints, for this critical company-wide performance management activity. TM1 supports the full range of business requirements: from high-performance customer and profitability analysis and flexible modeling to enterprise collaboration for a broad range of user experiences from manufacturing, sales and service to finance, human resources and marketing. TM1 addresses all of these interrelated needs with highperformance, scalability, data integrity, a multi-dimensional database and data tools, and Microsoft Excel and Web interfaces. Technical Specifications Financial and business teams in your organization can use IBM Cognos TM1 for planning, analytics and reporting solutions and then rapidly extend these capabilities to business functions in a matter of weeks or even days.

2 IBM Cognos TM1. Enterprise Planning, Analytics and Reporting for Today s Unpredictable Times With TM1, your financial executives, planners, controllers and other business managers can change input values even business models and recalculate them on-the-fly. So your organization can reset plans to attack business problems immediately, rather than wait hours to make changes. IBM Cognos TM1, a key component of the IBM Cognos BI platform, includes a full array of planning capabilities for Finance and Operations, fused with analytics, enterprise-level reporting and Performance Blueprints to enhance adoption. Features and Benefits of IBM Cognos TM1 Analyze With the TM1 solution s deep analysis capabilities, you can validate your planning assumptions and meet the dynamic needs of your organization with a fact-based approach to the planning process. The highperformance engine at the core of TM1 empowers users to perform analysis on frequently changing data across millions of items, such as SKUs or transactions. You can review sales daily, or even hourly, by store, brand or representative or analyze day-byday profitability across thousands or millions of customer accounts. With the power of OLAP 64-bit technology to meet even the most complex, multi-dimensional analytics needs of large-scale operations, you can query data whenever you need to no matter how vast the data set may be. Model TM1 adapts to your planning and forecasting processes and rapidly incorporates best practices such as driver-based planning and rolling forecasts. Because TM1 provides a single high-performance environment, every component is integrated. All business rules, data and metadata are shared across the applications so your teams work with only one set of rules and data for linked models. IBM Cognos TM1 provides self-sufficiency for users along with solid security to ensure data accuracy and integrity. To rapidly access valuable information locked away in back-office applications, IBM Cognos TM1 also provides data orchestration with pre-built tools such as an SAP Connector and the IBM Cognos TM1 Turbo Integrator. These data integration tools streamline the loading of disparate data. Users can also create their own processes to automate data importation, metadata management and other tasks. Collaborate Because market agility requires an expandable performance management solution, IBM Cognos TM1 is readily adaptable for high levels of participation, enabling you to develop timeframe appropriate plans and to work with high data volumes. You can engage hundreds of operational managers not just those from Finance in a collaborative process using guided applications and rich workflows. With a choice of Excel and Web for both business users and power users, you can take advantage of all users existing skills, which means minimal training and minimal IT assistance. 2

3 IBM Cognos TM1. Enterprise Planning, Analytics and Reporting for Today s Unpredictable Times With components such as Excel Performance Blueprints for TM1 implementation time, TM1 Blueprints add-ins (IBM Cognos TM1 IBM Cognos TM1 customers also enable companies to jump-start Perspectives) and the ability to receive free Performance Blueprints deployments in key areas such as: publish spreadsheets to the Web via pre-defined data, process and TM1 Web, users can configure their policy models based on proven best own applications, maintain data and practices in enterprise planning, generate reports quickly and easily. financial management and control. Expense planning and control By structuring and automating Capital planning the planning and forecasting Workforce planning Integrated financial planning and forecasting processes and thus reducing project With IBM Cognos TM1, users working in Microsoft Excel can create interactive reports with features such as Excel-based formatting and formula-driven row definition and then distribute their reports through Excel or publish them to the Web through TM1 Web. This influence map, created in Microsoft Excel and distributed to the Web via TM1 Web, illustrates the variances of key metrics, providing an at-a-glance view of the enterprise s economy. The TM1 solution s integration with IBM Cognos 8 dashboard offerings helps enterprises keep the pulse on their performance against target and thus drive greater responsiveness and accountability. In this interactive profit and loss spreadsheet on the Web, users drill down into detailed expense information with a single click. 3

4 IBM Cognos TM1. Enterprise Planning, Analytics and Reporting for Today s Unpredictable Times IBM Cognos TM1 Features Enhance your Planning and Analytics performance management processes with: Performance 64-bit, patented, in-memory OLAP for enterprise scalability and real-time scenario modeling to facilitate enterprise-wide planning and analysis. Full Scorecard and Report Integration Because TM1 is a component of the IBM Cognos 8 platform, an array of other solutions can be added for more complete, enterprise performance management: management and financial reporting, consolidations, analysis, scorecards and dashboards, event detection and notification. Security Role-based security to support multiple users and user types. TM1 s Active Forms Rich navigation for building analysis and planning templates in Excel or on the Web. A range of capabilities for power users and end-users includes drill up and down, Action Buttons for navigation and process integration. Excel Formatting on the Web All planners and stakeholders can read, write, perform what-if analysis and report with Excel sheets right on the Web with all of Excel s familiar formatting and graphing capabilities. Administrative Tools Easy administration with utilities for managing server performance and role-based access. Global Support Full Unicode support means IBM Cognos TM1 version 9.4 accommodates expanded string lengths beyond 255 characters. Includes language support for Japanese and simplified Chinese. Personalized home pages, workflow and context-driven reports. Integration with preferred desktop applications. 4

5 About IBM Cognos BI and Performance Management: IBM Cognos business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Cognos solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Cognos solutions. For further information or to reach a representative: Request a call To request a call or to ask a question, go to An IBM Cognos representative will respond to your enquiry within two business days. Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM Canada 3755 Riverside Drive Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 4K9 Produced in Canada May 2009 All Rights Reserved. IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. For a complete list of IBM trademarks, see Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference in this information to non-ibm Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part of the materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk. MCI Consultants (Pty) Ltd 2nd Floor Block C Pellmeadow Office Park 60 Civin Drive Bedfordview 2026 Tel: +27 (0) Fax: +27 (0) IMD14205CAEN