Page 1 of 1

TM1 Definition and basic use

Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:02 pm
by Gary16
Hi
Can you somebody please provide me with a relaible definition for TM1 and its basic use, and its basic use, its just for a HR presentation.
Thanks

Re: TM1 Definition and basic use

Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:51 pm
by Steve Rowe
Hi Gary, welcome to the forum.

The literal defintion of TM1 is Table Manager 1, not sure if that is what you are after? It's pretty meaningless, it's just a name attached to the product as it's evolved over the last 20 (?) years.
It's a RAM resident OLAP database.
Out of the box it's pretty much a blank sheet of paper so you can't really say it has a basic usage. You can make it do pretty much anything. It's often used in finance departments to produce the monthly accounts, I'd guess this is it's most common usage. This is a bit using a Ferrai for the school run though....

If you want some marketing speak for HR then the IBM site might be a good start for material if you are promoting TM1 internally.

Cheers,

Re: TM1 Definition and basic use

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:11 am
by Martin Ryan
Hi Gary,

As Steve says, because TM1 is so flexible it can be used for almost anything that has numbers. In general it is typically used to simplify reporting, especially for consolidations - e.g. multiple cost centres, multiple regions, multiple accounts. It can also be used for pretty complex calculations. For example I've used it several times to build activity based costing models that have been used to drive pricing and other competitive decisions. The other major area it markets itself in is budgeting and forecasting as it has tools for bottom up and top down data collection.

In a nutshell, if there are a lot of numbers that you want to be able to look at a lot of different ways, TM1 will probably be able to help.

HTH,
Martin

Re: TM1 Definition and basic use

Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 8:57 am
by Gary16
Cheers Steve and Martin, this will really help