Requirement gathering for a cube?

[Cognostm1.ibm]

Hi Gurus,

I am very much new to TM1, and we are in requirement gathering phase.

I am facing a difficulty for which i need your suggestions,explained below:

I need to create a cube for sales forecasting, So i need to know what info shall be gathered from user.

for example, what are the dimensions I have to consider - Granual level of data,Measures,Products,Scenarios,Business,Geography(At what Level),Timescale,? etc...

Please share your experiences and best practices for designing the cube.

Thanks,
Barbara

[Alan Kirk]

I am very much new to TM1, and we are in requirement gathering phase.

I am facing a difficulty for which i need your suggestions,explained below:

I need to create a cube for sales forecasting, So i need to know what info shall be gathered from user.

for example, what are the dimensions I have to consider - Granual level of data,Measures,Products,Scenarios,Business,Geography(At what Level),Timescale,? etc...

Please share your experiences and best practices for designing the cube.

You need to look at it from the other direction.
1/ Who will the users of this cube be?
2/ Ask them (all of them) to describe the level at which they need both forecasting and reporting to be done. You'll probably find that there will be different levels needed; more senior management may need to only see it at (say) regional level while sales managers may need it down to local level. You then need to design for the lowest level required and use consolidations to aggregate it.
3/ Determine whether there will be any calculations needed, and if so what the specific calulations are.
4/ Determine whether you will need multiple versions or scenarios; whether it will be necessary to store multiple instances of the forecast over time.

Once you've done all of that put together a proposed specification and circulate it to all of the intended users to get their sign-off and/or feedback. You may find that as a result of this feedback you'll have to tweak the design.

Remember that TM1 is very easy to prepare "mock-ups" with, so any "draft versions" of the cube need not be the final ones. You'll have to try to work out the optimal order of the dimensions anyway. (There's a link in the FAQ about that, though it's as much art as science.)

But above all don't make the mistake of guessing what it is that the users may want. Ask them, talk to them, get an understanding of what they do and how they do it. Otherwise you'll probably have to come back and do it all over in 6 months anyway.