Contributor Planning to TM1, need insights

[BWill]

Hi:

I’m hoping to get some insight from people who have used Contributor Planning and BI in the past, and have (or are going to) begun transitioning to the latest version of TM1 which includes the Planning interface. Just trying to get some thoughts around the differences between the two apps in terms of usability, stability, and maintenance requirements. I’m within a large organization with a fairly sizeable finance user base, and have found Contributor to be somewhat unstable, experiencing relatively frequent macro failures, and the appearance of random bugs which interfere with our processes. I’ve also found contributor to be somewhat maintenance intensive within an organization our size (for example, not being able to automate something as simple as opening and locking access tables).

I’m aware of the fact that the new version of TM1 just came out, so anticipate that many have not been able to use/test it unless they were a part of the BETA. Just trying to get some insights.

Thanks

[stephen waters]

I come from a TM1 background and am not a Cognos Planning (CP) expert but, in the absence of comments from people who have used CP you may find these comments useful.

Before (and for some time after) the Cognos takeover of Applix we used to come across CP as a competitor and also being used at our prospects. Since the takeover I have many seen demos, roadshows etc. From these, our view is that CP had a great looking budgeting front-end was good at distributed data capture, work flow and coping with high numbers of simultaneous users. However, it struggled to cope with high data volumes, consolidation of data was time consuming and procedural, maintenance was difficult, particularly as user numbers and data volumes increased and reporting was very limited unless you used Cognos BI or a third party tool adding an extra level of complexity and cost.

TM1 had a great real-time calculation engine, could hold large quantities of data, was very user friendly ( particularlay for finance depts.) with fast, easy and flexible reporting\input interfaces. However, there were issues with large numbers of simultaneous inputters ( particularly pre Ver 9.1), some (particulalry IT) perceived the Excel\Web interface as limited and developing robust front-end input templates could require lots of VBA skills.

With TM1 9.5, IBM have addressed the down-sides of TM1 and added a TM1 Contributor front-end that has many of the benefits of the CP contributor front-end. In my view this is an excellent direction and congratulations to IBM for adopting a sensible approach and releasing it relatively quickly.

Turning to your specific queries re usability, stability, and maintenance. I cannnot advise on your CP bugs, but all software has issues and often these arise from the way the software is implemented or the environment in which it is being used. Your comments about CP being maintenance heavy, particulalry for medium-large systems, tie in with what I have seen and heard.

How does TM1 compare?
Usability, TM1 was originally designed for end users and generally scores very highly. Designed properly it is intuitive flexible, easy to access data and set up reports for majority of user types. If you wish for Enteprise wide, ultra high quality reporting ( "pixel perfect" ) then combining TM1 with Cognos BI works well.

Stability. A well designed TM1 system is very stable and can run for months without problems. However there are points to watch out for. TM1 is RAM resident and if you have a large system you must ensure there is enough physical memory on the server and it keeps within the Windows operating system limits on the server (default 2 Gb for 32 bit Windows). Nowadays most servers run 64 bit Windows with no practical limit on the memory. You must also ensure the calculations are set up correctly to ensure optimum performance. The ease of use of TM1 can lure inexperienced users into developing complex applications which can be very inefficient. If you have anything but a small, simple application make sure you use developers with long practical experience of implementing TM1 systems for the design and initial development ( though this applies to pretty much any software ).

Maintenance. TM1 maintenance requirements are generally minimal with no optimisation or datatabase tuning needed for well designed systems. After the initial development and knowledge transfer our clients generally take full ownership of the system both for routine admin and for onging development to reflect new\changed requirments. We occassionally get called in to help with significant changes but often this is just giving design advice.

You say you are "transitioning"from CP to TM1 9.5? I am not quite sure what you mean by this but be aware that TM1 9.5 is NOT CP with a TM1 back end; it is TM1 with a TM1 web based front-end containing features of CP contributor. It is a very different architecture and feature set to CP and, to get its benefits, you must design from scratch, if you just move your existing CP app to TM1 you are likely to get an inefficient and expensive system.

Who are you using to help with the "transition"? They should be able to give you advice as to how TM1 will work. But make sure your advisors (whether a consultancy or IBM) have the right experience of TM1. Cognos consultancies with a CP background, and many IBM staff, are unlikey to know how to implement TM1 well since it is a very different approach. Check they a good track record implementing similar sized TM1 systems and talk to their previous clients. I do not know where you are located but local IBM partners who used to be Applix partners are most likely to have this expertise.

Hope this helps.

[BWill]

This is very helpful. Thanks! I’m aware that TM1 is not just another version of CP, but an entirely different product. I probably should have clarified that point a bit better. When I said transitioning from CP to TM1, I mean essentially stopping use of Contributor Planning and BI and moving to TM1. The concern with TM1 is more rooted in the newness of the Planning interface which is a part of 9.5, and (having done administration with CP) whether it’s as maintenance heavy. I’m sort of a finance/tech hybrid (though more on the finance side), but would anticipate less on the maintenance front with TM1 simply as a result of the inherent architectural differences between the two apps. We’re still investigating our options, so time will tell.

[stephen waters]

Glad to help. You have quite rightly identified that, among other things, the architctural differences between the product and the TM1 centralised server approach generally leads to much less maintenance. I do not think the 9.5 contributor interface changes this, being very server centric, including the sand-boxing. However, if you are considering implementing 9.5 in the next month or 2 I would be cautious when testing the new features, I believe there are some very significant changes in these improvements and they may take a little while to settle down.

Given your combined finance\IT background (sounds similar to mine) I think you will get on really well with TM1, particularly in the powerful analysis, manipulation and reporting that can be easily carried out from the TM1 server. Best of luck and don't hesitate to post more questions

[milind_chavan]

Hi ,

Almost everything is talked about TM1 here. Hence I would just like to add on a small issue with TM1.

If you are planning to automate tasks in TM1 (Adding dimension elements, creating groups etc) thats pretty much possible. However if you juat have Java resources, (similar to my case) then you may consider using Java API for integration. This API has very limited documentation.

Another issue.
The Java API or VB API or any other API does not automate the workflow part of TM1 9.5.

Regards
Milind

[hbell]

We've used both products - though we are currently on a slighly older release of TM1 (9.1.3) so I have not seen the new "Contributor" front end. We found ePlanning a good deal less stable than TM1 and considerably more difficult to get data in and out of quickly. This, for us, is one of TM1's great benefits - there are so many ways of moving the data around and they are so easy ... no GTPs etc etc. Maintenance is much easier - many fewer objects. We found the data size restrictions in ePlanning quite irksome (the penalty you pay for "distributability"). TM1 can handle colossal amounts of information. In ePlanning, the calcs are "uni-dimensional" - in TM1 they are multi-dimensional (much more flexibility). TM1's integration with Excel (as long as you are not using Web) is second to none and much stronger than ePlanning. On the negative side, the TM1 "Planning Manager" interface is no real substitute for ePlanning's process control - but to be honest that was never a particularly important feature for us and the new Contributor module may well have cured that. TM1Web is still a rather flakey front-end (in our version at least).

It's a complicated topic and I haven't time to write an exhaustive account, but happy to talk if you want to discuss further (+44 1273 213184).

hugh