Help!!!!

[Whorty1970]

Hi All,

could do with some advice please

Finance in my company need a planning tool and CX seems a good fit. IT however already use Qlikview for some of their reporting so are tryingto insist that we use it rather than CX. Problem is, IT see 'Cognos' as only BI but obviously CX has the TM1 planning element.

Anyway, I need to demo a simple planning model for IT to show them what Finance need and try to explain why Qlikview can't do the same. Any ideas? I've downloaded the CX trial off the IBM site but I only have a laptop which is a 32 bit system and the trial won't install.

I could try a Cog reseller (I'm in London) but tried one already but after 3 chases they just don't seem interested.

Any help or advice??

Cheers.

[jim wood]

If you look in the commercial section there a some good companies in London that could help you.

[stephen waters]

I could try a Cog reseller (I'm in London) but tried one already but after 3 chases they just don't seem interested.
Any help or advice??

Whorty,
Many "Cognos" reseller partners do not fully understand TM1 and even fewer have in-depth TM1 expertise to demonstrate and implement it. However, there are some companies from the former Applix partner community around who have made the transition to being IBM Cognos partners. They will generally have many years experience of TM1 and are much more likely to be able to help you.

We are one such company (though not the only one in london) and i will contact you via the forum mail to see if we can help.

You raised a couple of more technical questions in your post:
First, although the live licensed version of CX is 64 bit, the evaluation version is 32 bit so should theoretically run on your laptop. However installing CX can be a real nightmare compared to TM1 if you are not used to it. Have you had any experience with TM1 or Cognos tools before?

Qlikview as a front-end is a great tool for end user transactional reporting, but, my understanfiding is it depends on the data being in a reasonably well structured relational warehouse. It is definitley not a planning tool. If you could compare setting up and running a simple, driver based budget model in TM1\CX with doing the same in Qlikview I think it would make this obvious.

[lotsaram]

Anyway, I need to demo a simple planning model for IT to show them what Finance need and try to explain why Qlikview can't do the same. Any ideas? I've downloaded the CX trial off the IBM site but I only have a laptop which is a 32 bit system and the trial won't install.

Beyond looking up a TM1 and CX competent reseller in London I would recommend you get them to do the demo to finance. It's their bread and butter and they should know their stuff and be finance literate and have a demo many times better then what you will pull off IBM's website.

[winsonlee]

http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps ... search.jsp

You can try looking for cognos reseller through the above url. You definitely able to install the CX 9.5 evaluation on 32bit machine. There are some prerequisite software you need to install to get it working eg .NET Framework 3.5 and also IIS.

[blackhawk]

QlikView is not a planning tool, and although it can do calculations and create interactive dashboards, it is not a replacement for budgeting and planning. For example, you cannot perform interactive modeling, forecasting and budget collection that you can with TM1.

QlikView, although it has a few gagues and input tables for controlling variables, it is not designed to do the modeling and highly complex calculations that TM1 does naturally. QlikView also does not handle dynamic aggregation of data or dynamic restructuring of hierarchical relationships.

For these reasons, we have a number of customers that are using both QlikView and TM1 at the same time (in fact they are integrated) and they play very complimentary roles.

So if your needs are for planning, QlikView should not be part of any discussion other than the reporting aspect.

Perhaps communicating this to your IT team will help you.

[jim wood]

Haven't Gartner done a review of Qlikview? Documentation like that goes a long way with most IT departments.

[Whorty1970]

Hi All

thanks for the info. I have a call today with a consultancy who can help and hopefully move us forward with our IT friends

I'm almost there installing CX on my laptop (IIS is playing up so still need to sort out) so I should be able to build a simple demo. And if the consultancy pre-sales have a demo that will be great too.

As for Qlikview, I know it can't do the job but I'm in that position where IT won't even think about Cognos (even though it's the planning side) unless I can show them something tangible. We should be able to educate them though over the next few weeks!

Thanks again. Whorty