TM1 or BPC or PM10

[dhekta]

We are a mid size organisation with about 500 employees in total and 20 of these in Finance. Our Finance dept is using 2 SQL based financial systems.We are currently looking for a solution to consolidate the GLs sitting in these 2 databases and be able to generate individual/consolidated financial reports.

The further part of the problem is - we want to use this system to record forecasts, plan budgets and generate client/project profitability reports. Also we would like to integrate our HR, CRM, TimeSheet systems with this system at a later date.

We have been looking for TM1 and BPC as 2 potential options. TM1 looks quite promising in terms of the funcationality but is pitched as an enterprise installation by IBM and so priced really high.On the other hand, BPC has a mid-market licensing offer (pack of 10 users) which fits well with our budget.

- Our concern with BPC is whether it will allow us to do everything what we are planning to do where as we feel TM1 will. As part of project consultancy scoping itself, we have started hearing constraints posed by BPC.
- I havent found enough content on forums around BPC where as eveyone seems to be backing TM1. Can anyone who has an exprience implementing BPC on a real time project please comment?
- I found that IBM has a mid market offer for its TM1 product, Cognos Express. Can anyone tell that Cognos Express provides all features as that of TM1 and is only a different licensing model?
- One of the financial systems I mentioned above currently uses Cognos Transformer and PowerPlay for reporting. Does anyone know if we could use these tools or an upgraded version to acheive what we are trying to using TM1 or BPC? If not everything, what is the minimum we could do using these products?
- Would anyone recomment Infor PM10 over TM1 or BPC?

Only one week before the decision has to be made!!

[tomok]

Before I say anything, let me first state that I am not employed by either IBM or SAP so I have no vested financial interest in either one. TM1 and BPC are both good products. I have done both planning and forecasting and reporting projects in both. About 90% of my experience, however, is with TM1 so you may need to consider that when reading these comments.

As far as licensing costs are concerned I think the Cognos Express and BPC mid-market options are probably comparable and yes, CX has a fully functioning TM1 in it. Keep in mind BPC requires a SQL server with Analysis Services so you need to factor that in while TM1 is all encompassing.

Both TM1 and BPC have a good Excel add-in for accessing the data. BPC is a little more fully functional than TM1, although TM1 has closed the gap with Active Forms, The drawback to BPC is that it has too many built-in Excel formulas and they can be very confusing to use. TM1 is cleaner and easier to understand.

TM1 is easier to implement than BPC, mainly because BPC doesn't have as much flexibility as TM1. A lot of the things we take for granted in TM1, like dynamic rule calculations, just aren't there in BPC. Yes, BPC does have the capability for some dynamic calculations but you do so at your own peril. They will absolutely kill your peformance so you end up having to write an SSIS package to precalc the numbers and then load those pre-calced balances into the models. That stuff takes a lot of time. I know I am generalizing here but I would say the average BPC implementation, for the same functionality you can do with TM1, is going to take twice as long, if not longer.

TM1 is a memory-based OLAP while BPC is a ROLAP. TM1 is truly dynamic and really shines in write-back systems, like planning and budgeting implementation. BPC tricks you into allowing write-back by having a real-time table combined with the main table. Whenever you ask for data from BPC it does a join of the main fact table with the write-back table and then returns the results to you as "dynamic". The problem there is performance. The bigger the write-back table, the slower the response so you have to have a job that runs every night to post the write-back table to the main table and then purge. TM1 does a better job here, hands down.

The bottom line is if you are doing a truly "reporting only" system then BPC is probably better. However it's going to cost substantially more from a total cost of ownership. If you are doing planning and budgeting or even a combination of reporting and planning then TM1 is better.

Hope this helps. If you would like to talk further about this send me a PM.

[stephen waters]

We are a mid size organisation with about 500 employees in total and 20 of these in Finance. ...

We are a a long time TM1 partner (Applix\Cognos\IBM!) with experience implementing many types of TM1 application. We also have experience of implementing BPC (formerly Outlooksoft) and I will try and give a balanced viewpoint.

- Our concern with BPC is whether it will allow us to do everything what we are planning to do where as we feel TM1 will. As part of project consultancy scoping itself, we have started hearing constraints posed by BPC.

Both will have some constraints. I am assuming you are looking at BPC on the Microsoft Platform using SQL, MSAS and Reporting Services and not Netweaver. Both technology interfaces will have tight integration with Excel. BPC may have more excel functions whereas TM1 may require additional VBA where complex reports are required, though see my comments about Cognos Express.
BPC is more an application which you then tailor to meet your needs whereas TM1 will allow you the flexibility to develop an application that both suits your current business requirements and can very easily be extended and enhanced to reflect future changes.

The further part of the problem is - we want to use this system to record forecasts, plan budgets and generate client/project profitability reports. Also we would like to integrate our HR, CRM, TimeSheet systems with this system at a later date.

TM1 has the flexibility to include many different types of data and applications, particualarly those with structured, numeric information. It can handle text based information reasonably well. It can, to a certain extent, also transactional information though it is not necessalrily the best tool for that particular job.

For the applications you describe it is used extensively , as well as things like timesheets and HR with which you wish to integrate.

For Interfacing with external systems TM1 has a very powerful ETL tool called Turbo integrator (TI) used for data loading, manipulation and batch processing. It is very fast, works with multiple data sources and can export and import data. TI is far superior to the BPC equivalent and can interface with any source system much more easily than BPC.

- I havent found enough content on forums around BPC where as eveyone seems to be backing TM1. Can anyone who has an exprience implementing BPC on a real time project please comment?

If vanilla BPC fits your requirements then, all other things being equal, it would work well as the preferred option. However, in any other situation, for modelling, flexibility, ease and speed of development and maintenance, TM1 will be much better

TM1 looks quite promising in terms of the funcationality but is pitched as an enterprise installation by IBM and so priced really high.On the other hand, BPC has a mid-market licensing offer (pack of 10 users) which fits well with our budget. .....

I found that IBM has a mid market offer for its TM1 product, Cognos Express. Can anyone tell that Cognos Express provides all features as that of TM1 and is only a different licensing model?

Cognos Express (CX) is a package comprising TM1 (CX Xcelerator), a cut-down Cognos BI(CX Reporter) and Executive Viewer (CX Advisor)plus an admin console, aimed at SME companies. Technically, the Xcelerator module provides full functionality of TM1 apart from a resriction to do with server naming. in the case of TM1\Xclerator the only significant restrictions relate are commercial ones relating to number of users.

- One of the financial systems I mentioned above currently uses Cognos Transformer and PowerPlay for reporting. Does anyone know if we could use these tools or an upgraded version to achieve what we are trying to using TM1 or BPC? If not everything, what is the minimum we could do using these products?

Cognos PowerPlay is used for reporting and is effectively now replaced by Cognos BI. I think transformer is the ETL tool used with some Cognos product but it is NOT a consolidation, budgeting or modelling tool. We have come across a client who was sold this sort of configuration as a budgeting tool, after lots of expenses it did not work and they replaced it with TM1.
For the reporting aspect,you could supplement the Excel and web reporting of TM1 with Cognos Express reporter.

- Would anyone recomment Infor PM10 over TM1 or BPC?

I think Infor PM10 is a rebranding of various legacy products sucah as Alea, OnVision, Comshare MPC etc so it is difficult to know what we are comparing against. Have they told you the technology underlying their proposed solution? If it is based on relational technology ( ie the former MPC), it will be a nightmare in terms of performance and implementation cost. If it is OLAP it ia based on Alea, a TM1 clone which is inferior to TM1 in several areas.

BPC will be more costly in terms of implementation (development time) and it sounds like there will be a lot of bespoke coding which could make future upgrades an issue.

Only one week before the decision has to be made!!

Have you had a proper proof of concept and demonnstration of whether and how the different products will meet your needs? if not it is well worth doing before you make your decision. With TM1\Cognos Express we can normally do this with a few days notice.

From what you have described TM1 will very well meet your technical needs and, in its guise as Cognos Express Xclerator, will meet your commercial needs. Where are you based? If possible I suggest you contact a knowlegable local TM1 partner (ie a fomer Applix partner with in-depth TM1 implementation experience and good client base), who can give you more information.

[stephen waters]

dhekta

I have also sent you a separate message re Infor

[lotsaram]

We are a mid size organisation with about 500 employees in total and 20 of these in Finance. Our Finance dept is using 2 SQL based financial systems.We are currently looking for a solution to consolidate the GLs sitting in these 2 databases and be able to generate individual/consolidated financial reports.

The further part of the problem is - we want to use this system to record forecasts, plan budgets and generate client/project profitability reports. Also we would like to integrate our HR, CRM, TimeSheet systems with this system at a later date.

We have been looking for TM1 and BPC as 2 potential options. TM1 looks quite promising in terms of the funcationality but is pitched as an enterprise installation by IBM and so priced really high.On the other hand, BPC has a mid-market licensing offer (pack of 10 users) which fits well with our budget.

Have you reviewed other posts reviewing TM1 vs. Outlooksoft/BPC?
http://forums.olapforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1059
http://forums.olapforums.com/viewtopic. ... 476#p16450
http://forums.olapforums.com/viewtopic. ... 8722#p8663
I would say hands down that TM1 (... or Cognos Express Xcelerator) is faster to implement, more flexible and higher performance than SAP BPC. I can't see that BPC would be a serious option for any company that wasn't already a wall to wall SAP enterprise customer. Clearly though my opinion is not without bias.

Your organisation seems to be of the size the Cognos Express offering was created for (which is fully functional TM1 with the sole limitation of single TM1 database server and a maximum of 100 users per server connector.) Other than the obvious one wonders why your IBM rep is steering you towards enterprise TM1. Not sure where you are located but you can PM me if you need additional info.

[afshin]

hi dekhta,

apart from the above excellent posts above

if SAP is your ERP then this could be single criteria in choosing between TM1 or BPC. If your company is a true "SAP Shop" I think BPC is just a more natural fit although TM1 can integrate with SAP very well. Having successfully implemented both across ANZ approx 90 user base I must admit TM1 outshines BPC in performance and the relative ease at which you can "customise" it.

Again lack of consultants that can deliver a good quality BPC solution is another important consideration around this.

It would be interesting to see what the final outcome is.

Cheers

[Solanna]

Dhekta,

As a Subject Matter Expert in both products having been a TM1 consultant for the past 17 years and an OutlookSoft/SAP consultant/employee for 4 years inbetween I figured I might as well jump into the mix here...

Certainly many of the comments that have been made to your post are valid but they haven't necessarily gone into the depth that you may require

First of all it is a rare situation when a customer will purchase BPC just for reporting capabilities
The primary reason for the purchase is for Planning and definitely for Financial Consolidations and now that it is an SAP product most SAP shops will go in this direction given the product now sits on Netweaver as well as SQL... prior to the Netweaver version most companies that were Microsoft shops would choose OutlookSoft simply for this reason as well

Prior to TM1 being acquired by Cognos and then IBM one of the toughest selling points has been that TM1 is a proprietary database which gave a negative impression to IT departments
Fortunately this is probably one of the only positive things that has come out of the acquisition is that IT departments are accepting this fact now that IBM has something to say about it

Functionally, on the surface both products do have some similarities in that they are both OLAP products... TM1 however is MOLAP and as stated previously BPC is ROLAP
In the backend TM1 and BPC store data completely differently which in my opinion definitely makes a difference
When sending data to TM1 the data will simply overwrite what is previously stored in the cube at the same intersection
In BPC the data is stored in relational SQL tables... there ar 3 tables for every application (Cube) in BPC
Depending on how you are sending the data will depend on where the data ends up
Also, the data does not overwrite at the same intersection but appends the record
For example, if you wanted to zero out a record, BPC will simply add a new record with a negative amount
As you can imagine your SQL tables can get quite large and you have to also optimize all of these tables on a regular basis in order to push the data to the primary FACtable for your application
There is no need for opitimization in TM1 and you will find your data storage to be quite small compared to the data storage hungry BPC
I can continue to discuss this point but I think you get the message

Here are some facts about BPC that were not previously noted given the admitted lack of experience with the product...

BPC out of the box comes preinstalled with an application set called ApShell
ApShell is basically a set of applications (Cubes) in order to get you started
You have no choice but to start with a predefined application set... in most cases it will be ApShell however I reengineered ApShell a couple of years ago while working as an SME for an SAP partner
Our company used this version for implementations instead since the vanilla ApShell definitely had some limitations from a development perspective

Anyhow, with ApShell you do get a couple of nice features... Currency translation is out of the box as well as Intercompany Eliminations
In TM1, you will need to build this functionality... granted, building FX translation is not too complicated
However, in regards to Financial Consolidations, this is not really a sweet spot for TM1 primarily due to the fact that TM1 has no understanding of time where BPC does
This is probably one of the biggest advantages to BPC over TM1 in regards to how it manages time (Day, Month, Year, etc.)
Another nice feature within BPC out of the box is how it handles Balance Sheet vs Income Statement as well as YTD vs Periodic data
Again, all of this will need to be built within TM1

From a front end perspective within BPC you really only have Excel (as well as Word and PowerPoint if you choose to use them which is rare but available out of the box)
One nice selling point is that ApShell comes with several Excel "wizard" Reports and Input Schedules that can easily be modified by the end user
I personally am not a fan and I reengineered all of them with my own ApShell version
However, many customers do use them

On a negative point, BPC does not have the same analytical capabilities of TM1
With TM1 you have the Cube Viewer which seems to be highly underrated even though I think its one of the things that separates TM1 from other products
The cube viewer gives you the capabilities of truly drilling into your data at a very fast pace especially when given adhoc requests from management, etc.
The same request in BPC would take much longer since you would have to either build a report in Excel or use one of the predefined wizards to get your answer
While at OutlookSoft and then SAP, I contacted Product Development in both cases to discuss adding this functionality to the product
I was completely blown off in both cases... it's amazing the lack of insight that was shown here but hey, it's their loss and TM1's gain

Also, BPC only really has spreadsheet viewing capabilities... there is no real web interface
TM1 has multiple interfaces in order to see the same data... the spreadsheet, the websheet, Cube views in Excel, TM1 Web, and even TM1 Contributor
This provides so much more flexibility to your user community

As for ETL capabilities I will have to disagree with Stephen on this point
Turbo Integrator which is the ETL tool in TM1 is definitely a nice product but I wouldn't say it was necessarily better than SSIS which is the backend of BPC's Data Manager suite when sitting on SQL
in BPC's ApShell there are also out of the box Data Manager packages that will import, copy, move, and zero out data, as well as manage FX translation, etc.
In TM1 you will need to build these Turbo Integrator processes
Certainly these Data Manager packages are basic but with SSIS in the backend you can really do just about anything in BPC that would be required from an ETL perspective

In regards to pricing... it's definitely a shame that in both cases once the software giants acquired these products that they raised the prices to the point where midsize companies are pushed out of the market... certainly there is Cognos Express and the mid-sized BPC product but these are really after thoughts since the software companies only care about license revenue and truly could care less about the end customer... Cognos Express is certainly the best option for you given your company size but there are some restrictions as noted previously in regards to number of users but most importantly the lack of flexibility in regards to server naming and being forced into the Cognos security model vs the pure TM1 security model
As an FYI, ten years ago a customer could purchase a stand alone copy of TM1 perspectives for $995

And finally in regards to implementations... I have done many, many implementations with both products so I believe my opinion on this subject is very valid
BPC without a doubt will cost you more and take longer to implement... it's just a fact
As an OutlookSoft/BPC consultant I found it extremely painful to implement
I literally quit my job in May 2009 due to the fact I was hating my life and was miserable every day working with BPC
Since then, I've been back working with TM1 and I couldn't be happier... life is great and TM1 in my opinion is the best write back OLAP product on the market that can handle pretty much anything it is given...

However, please realize that you will need QUALIFIED people implementing it
A really good TM1 consultant is not that easy to find... we are a rare breed that has typically been working with the product for many years and knows all the tricks that have been passed down over the years
Many of the Cognos Partners that are out there which are not the previous Sinper/Applix partners still do not have the inhouse talent... buyer beware!
Believe it or not, here in the U.S. there are probably more qualified BPC consultants out there than TM1 consultants so consider this when making your decision since bad implementations are rarely the products fault...

And one last point, the TM1 community is very passionate to the point of being evangelical... we all love this product!
I have never met anyone who did not like working with this product, and many users will literally take it with them to their new organization
On the other hand, I have never met anyone who raves about BPC... certainly there is good money to be made implementing it but it will never have the same interest from a user community perspective

Hopefully some of this information will help you in your decision... hopefully you will go down the TM1 route

Also, if you need any addtional information, advisory services, application achitecture, etc. for either product, please reach out...

Good luck!

Solanna

[tomok]

Good analysis. Just a few additional thoughts:

Anyhow, with ApShell you do get a couple of nice features... Currency translation is out of the box as well as Intercompany Eliminations
In TM1, you will need to build this functionality... granted, building FX translation is not too complicated

There are plenty of examples of FX translation for TM1 out there so that really doesn't have to be built, just copied. I have been using the same one for years so that part of my projects are really already done before I start anything.

However, in regards to Financial Consolidations, this is not really a sweet spot for TM1 primarily due to the fact that TM1 has no understanding of time where BPC does
This is probably one of the biggest advantages to BPC over TM1 in regards to how it manages time (Day, Month, Year, etc.)
Another nice feature within BPC out of the box is how it handles Balance Sheet vs Income Statement as well as YTD vs Periodic data
Again, all of this will need to be built within TM1

Just like with FX, if your implementation partner has been doing consolidations in TM1 then you won't have to build anything, you can just copy it into your models. FWIW, I found the consolidations part of BPC very cumbersome and locked you into doing it EXACTLY as specified by the tool. The consolidation routines I use in TM1 are frankly superior and I can easily modify them when certain portions are not needed.

The bottom line is that ANYTHING that comes out of the box in AppShell has already been done by most experienced TM1 partners, or is in one of the IBM blueprints, so you really don't have to build it. Granted, it doesn't come as part of the install but most of the time it just involves copying from another implementation. They key phrase here is "Experienced Partner". You really need to hire an implementation partner that's been around the block a few times. It's not an easy tool to learn and using the wrong partner can cause you all kinds of grief.

[dhekta]

Great feedback everyone. Couldnt have asked for more. And thanks for simplifying the TM1 vs BPC dilemma.

Now you might start ignoring posting to this discussion as I am goign to bring PM10 in debate

We had a demo from a very 'Experienced Partner' (TOMOK's nomenclature) from Infor. The tool does seem to do mostly everything what TM1 does and as obvious, we were told of (only) the positives PM10 has over TM1 (I am just trying to think what were those!!).

I could see one major difference that it requires an OLAP server which TM1 doesnt. Also it doesnt seem to have the UNDO feature which is with the latest version of TM1. Not sure about the Sandbox feature again which is in new TM1.

Their licensing model seems to be quite felxible though. It is per power user and you can add as many users as you want.

Do we have any Infor guys who can shed some light in comparison to TM1. Or any TM1 professionals who have any experience of PM10.

[Michel Zijlema]

Infor PM10 is an evolution of MIS Alea (which became an Infor product through a series of acquisitions), which in fact is an allegedly 'reverse engineered' TM1 (version 6 - Applix and MIS met in court on this).
From this perspective it is not strange that TM1 and Infor PM are quite similar products (replace feeders with accellerators and you're almost there). Part of the MIS Alea development team is now developing Jedox Palo (replace accellerators with markers...).
I don't have much experience with Infor PM10, but AFAIK it is not (at all) as scalable as TM1, but probably will cost (significantly) less. I suspect TM1 has much richer set of functionality, but I don't have an exact comparison.

Michel