Cognos Planning

[AWILDE]

Can anyone tell me what the benefits are in Cognos Planning. We are currently running TM1 9.4 but am interested to know what extra forecasting and budgeting benefits you get with Cognos Planning. Do you need TM1 to run Cognos Planning?

Any information anyone has would be helpful to know.

[rkaif]

Cognos Planning is a separate product from Cognos.

TM1 is much much better than Cognos Enterprise Planning (EP). Many companies are moving from EP to TM1. Since TM1 version 9.5 IBM has included TM1 contributor within the TM1 package itself - which gives you the same front end as of EP.

[merdal]

Hi,

Cognos Planning is a software tool from IBM Cognos for Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting. It has many superiorities with respect to Cognos TM1 on planning and forecasting features. Here is a basic list of some of such superiorities assuming version 8.4 of Cognos Planning and version 9.5 of TM1.

- Cognos Planning has much better scalability for deploying to thousands of planning users than TM1. Therefore it is much better for collaborative planning and budgeting. TM1 does not support hundreds or thousands of concurrent users in a reasonable hardware configuration, while Cognos Planning does.

- Cognos Planning supports Work-Offline feature while TM1 does not. Web client user can disconnect from network and can continue working anywhere and then they can save their changes to server when they connect to network.

- Cognos Planning web client has better interactivity features with Excel than that of TM1's web client. User can export data to excel with one click of a button and can import it back after working on Excel again with one click of a button. Web client users can also define custom links to transfer bulky data from Excel or text files to their Cognos Planning application. These are not available in TM1's web client.

- Cognos Planning web client pulls data to client and makes all the calculations in client machine without being dependant on the client's connection speed to the server. Finally when saving, it pushes the changes to the server. Therefore Cognos Planning web client uses/requires less bandwidth for connection to the server. While in TM1, all the calculations happen in the server and only the results are being displayed in the client machine making it heavily dependant on the network resources for seing the calculation results in the client screen.

- The modelling interface for Cognos Planning, which is Analyst, is much more user friendly than that of TM1, which is Architect. In Cognos Planning, there is no requirement to write rule scripts as in TM1 to make calculations or to transfer data from one cube to another. It has all visual objects to define those. Therefore finance analysts can do modelling in Cognos Planning very easily without being dependent on technical skills that reside in IT. While in TM1, IT programmers may enjoy more with the rule code writing capabilities, which give some extra flexibility.

- Cognos Planning web client supports highly advanced commentary features. It allows users to add comments on any cell, cube, or node, but it also allows users to attach documents to their comments. There is no commentary feature in TM1.

- Cognos Planning web client supports audit trial features which allows recording of each and every data changes made by the users. Such records can be visible to the users as well. There is no such audit trial feature in TM1's web client.

- Cognos Planning supports validation feature while TM1 does not. Administrator can define logical data validation rules. If the user violates any such rule, he/she may be stopped from saving or submitting or he/she can do both but would recieve a warning message about the rule violation.

- Freeze panes feature is available in Cognos Planning web client, but not in TM1's web client.

- Cognos Planning supports publishing its data and metadata to relational databases for data warehousing and for other external requirements, while TM1 does not support this feature.

Cognos TM1 is a tool not onyl for planning and forecasting, but it can also be used as an OLAP data source for dimensional analysis and reporting. While Cognos Planning applications or cubes cannot properly be used as an OLAP data source, it has tools to automatically convert its cubes and applications to DMR (dimensionally modelled relational) models using Cognos Framework Manager, or to OLAP cubes (Cognos PowerCubes) using Cognos Transformer, and accordingly it can utilize Cognos 8 BI tools for reporting and analysis requirements.

Regards,

[AWILDE]

Thanks for this information - Are you able to answer the following questions - I am interested to know more about Cognos Planning.

Do Cubes, Dimensions and Elements get built in the same way as in TM1 in Cognos Planning?

Without TI how can you transfer specific data from one cube to another if its in a slightly different format?

We are about to upgrade to TM1 9.5 and it is my understanding that contributor has facility to freeze panes and validation using pick lists.

Andrew

[stex2727]

Having used both products extensively over the last ten years, I feel I'm in a good position to evaluate the two products without a bias of history. I dont want to get into a slanging match comparing the two as its not really helpful each pro and con. The background and subsequent development gives a better pointer as to the future of the products.

- TM1 and Planning were competing products for about 15 years. Cognos bought the competing TM1 product. Did they purchase it to bury a competitor or were they eyeing up superior technology? (see below)

- Since the purchase I think there has been a minor upgrade to planning which would have been in development before the purchase of TM1. Why so little development of the existing product?

- The TM1 product has been placed front and centre of new development by IBM. Cognos Express, Contributor for TM1, Integration with Business Intelligence products. Seems an odd way to bury a competitor?

- In all the time Cognos had their Business Intelligence and Planning products they were never able to achieve live reporting off a Planning Cube (and yes I know for demos you could achieve this but the restrictions of cube sizing and response times made it impractical for any production environment). The live data connection to TM1 cubes was built within a year if I recall.

So if the future back end is TM1, what of Enterprise Planning? One concession has been the development of Contributor for TM1 which includes some of the niceties of the Enterprise Planning front end such as workflow and web grids (also undo and sandboxes). To me I cant see the benefit of an existing TM1 customer moving to this version as yet. Any of these niceties can be built with the existing tools available in TM1 with a bit of lateral thinking. Why incur the cost and hassle for a few pretty things?

I can certainly see the benefit of an existing EP client moving to this version. They will then have the benefit of no cube size restrictions and live reporting in Business Intelligence. Though there will be a cost as the model design is likely to be somewhat different in particular large data intensive models.


Steve

[merdal]

Thanks for this information - Are you able to answer the following questions - I am interested to know more about Cognos Planning.

Do Cubes, Dimensions and Elements get built in the same way as in TM1 in Cognos Planning?

Without TI how can you transfer specific data from one cube to another if its in a slightly different format?

We are about to upgrade to TM1 9.5 and it is my understanding that contributor has facility to freeze panes and validation using pick lists.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

The logic behind cubes, dimensions, and elements in Cognos Planning is very similar to the one in TM1, although there are some differences. There is no need to write rules and feeder scripts for cubes in CP. Calculations and roll up options are defined in dimension elements (d-list items) and are applicable in all cubes where the dimension is used. Therefore you do not need to define the same formula for each and every cube that has the same calculations.

To transfer data from one cube to another or within a cube, or from external sources to a cube, you define a link as a visual object where you define the source and target and define dimension mappings, and execution options, without any scripting in a completely visual interface. The links that should run automatically and the ones that should run in batch processes are defined in the same way. You just need to put the ones that need to run automatically into a cube update list of links targeting the cube. The links in Cognos Planning does the similar function that TI and DB rule functions do in TM1, but without requiring scripting and without defining feeders.

Contributor thin client in TM1 9.5 does not have freeze panes feature, unlike Contributor rich client of Cognos Planning 8.4.

The new dynamic pick list functionality in TM1 9.5 allows to have pick lists in which the available list of pick items are refreshed/validated based on a formula which can be dependent on inputs in other cells. However this does not stop user from saving or submitting if the user leaves the field empty when he/she should not. Moreover this does not provide any validation on numeric values. The validation capability in Cognos Planning can apply to any type of measure and can stop/warn the user from/while savng or submitting if defined validation rules are violated. This feature helps avoiding typical input mistakes by end users and helps in achieving better data quality for the plan. Additionally this can also be used to guide users to make inputs to achieve some pre-defined targets and to stop them from submitting the plans without achieving those targets.

Regards,

[AWILDE]

Thanks for all the information, it is really useful to understand the differences between TM1 and Cognos Planning.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Merdal,

I do not pretend to know Cognos Planning very well, I have only 'dabbed into it'.

Anyways, I think some of the advantages you mention of cognos planning are actually significant disadvantages rather than advantages.

>The logic behind cubes, dimensions, and elements in Cognos Planning is very similar to the one in TM1, although there are some differences. There is no need to write rules >and feeder scripts for cubes in CP. Calculations and roll up options are defined in dimension elements (d-list items) and are applicable in all cubes where the dimension is >used. Therefore you do not need to define the same formula for each and every cube that has the same calculations.

Or in other words. If you want to have a different calculation in another cube you are forced to create new dimensions. Also, you have very limited control (compared to TM1) on what formula is actually used at the cell level, since you can only set 'calculations' on dimensions.

Similarly the link feature that is supposedly equivalent to TI. TI is way more powerfull than the link feature in Planning, which works fine if you have an ascii file (for instance) that is already created to match your cube. Options to Transform data however are very limited. And typically I need to make significant modifications to datasets I receive. I.e. transform content of some cells, skip certain records, perform additional calculations...

Or to put it in other words: sure planning has a more visual interface and may be thought of as 'easier', and it probably is for very easy and small models. But the downside is that as soon as you need to do something that is more complex and not an 'out of the box feature ' it becomes very hard to do in planning (if it is possible at all) compared to TM1.

The biggest drawback of planning is imo its terrible performance with large datavolumes and lack of flexibility. (It does scale better than TM1 though).

I believe that most of the applications I have built in TM1 are impossible to build in Planning . (While the reverse is not true).

As stex already noted Cognos/IBM has very much taken the position that TM1 is the road forward. That alone should be sufficient to discourage any migration from TM1 to Planning.


Anyways, these are just my 5c and I will freely admit to being biased in favor of TM1 as I know it a lot better than Planning. I just wanted to remark that acoording to me some of the things you mention as an advantage in Planning are - in most situations - disadvantages rather than advantages.

[merdal]

Hi Jeroen,

I think some of the advantages you mention of cognos planning are actually significant disadvantages rather than advantages.
…
Or in other words. If you want to have a different calculation in another cube you are forced to create new dimensions.

I did mention this as a difference between TM1 and CP rather than being an advantage against TM1. Both approaches have its advantages and disadvantages against the other. However, since copying or creating dimensions and cubes in both tools are easy and quick, I think we should look at it from the easiness of maintenance&change point of view, rather than the one of creation of new items. The question should be “in which way is it easier to maintain and change models, whether in saving the calculations in dimension or when in saving them in cube?”. As in most cubes, you would have a specific calculation dimension for the cube that is not used elsewhere, it may not matter. However in cases where you need to use the same calculations over many cubes, I think it is more advantageous to have them in the dimension so that the calculations will be stored in one place and you will not need to copy them across different objects when you need to change.

Also, you have very limited control (compared to TM1) on what formula is actually used at the cell level, since you can only set 'calculations' on dimensions.

It is correct that you do not have full control on the calculations in each and every aggregation cell in Cognos Planning as in the case of Excel or TM1. However, there are “calculation options” and “calculation priority” options for each item in each dimension, which allows us to properly control the values being displayed in aggregation cells very easily without writing any rule scripts. On the other hand, wizard based Built In Functions (BIFs) in Cognos Planning also allows us to make very complex calculations in a very easy and quick manner. These features cover the delivery of requirements in all of the typical and non-typical business planning & forecasting applications in a quick and easy manner. While in TM1, you have the capability to control the calculations in each cell at an expense of writing complex rules and feeders even for very typical rollup calculations or for typical financial calculations. Moreover you will have to live with the challenge of not being able to visually see what type rollup mechanism is applicable for each item in your calculation/measure dimensions since those definitions are hidden in the details of the rule scripts defined for the cube. I think this theoretical flexibility in TM1, which is arguably flexibility in practice, comes with too much of an expense compared to Cognos Planning.

Similarly the link feature that is supposedly equivalent to TI. TI is way more powerfull than the link feature in Planning, which works fine if you have an ascii file (for instance) that is already created to match your cube. Options to Transform data however are very limited. And typically I need to make significant modifications to datasets I receive. I.e. transform content of some cells, skip certain records, perform additional calculations...

In Cognos Planning projects, we do not pull data only from formatted text files. As in the data integration requirements in TM1 projects, we do have similar such requirements in Cognos Planning projects as well, which we are able to deliver easily using the available tools in Cognos Planning. As it would be expected from any such planning toolset, there are easy to use tools that allow us to transform the data while pulling it to Cognos Planning cubes and applications. I will not go into the detailed comparison of such functionalities in TM1 and in Planning. However I would like to mention that, in addition to such easy to use built-in tools within the toolset to transfer data to planning applications, for each and every cube that is available in a Cognos Planning application there are also built in data staging tables, which can be populated using any external ETL tool, which will then allow the data to be transferred to the live cube in the application automatically. While this is not needed in most projects, it gives extra flexibility for sophisticated integration requirements. While in TM1, you have the only option to use TI to integrate external data into your TM1 cubes.

Or to put it in other words: sure planning has a more visual interface and may be thought of as 'easier', and it probably is for very easy and small models. But the downside is that as soon as you need to do something that is more complex and not an 'out of the box feature ' it becomes very hard to do in planning (if it is possible at all) compared to TM1.
……
I believe that most of the applications I have built in TM1 are impossible to build in Planning . (While the reverse is not true).

I would not agree on your point. I think, as your models need to be more sophisticated, you will need to have a better visualization of your model to be able to properly manage and maintain and further develop your models. Therefore having a visual interface to manage calculations, rollups mechanisms, data flow between cubes and from external sources becomes more and more important to be able to make thinks not only “manageable” but also “possible” as your model gets sophisticated. Therefore I think Cognos Planning is in a better position in that sense than that of TM1. The tools and capabilities in Cognos Planning allow us to build very complex and “not out of the box” modelling capabilities for the requirements around planning, budgeting and business forecasting. I have not faced with any real sophisticated modelling requirement around planning-budgeting-forecasting that I could not deliver with Cognos Planning. On the other hand, I know that, although most of those modelling requirements could be met with TM1 as well, it could not be done with the same time frame and it would take much longer to do the same in TM1.

The biggest drawback of planning is imo its terrible performance with large datavolumes and lack of flexibility. (It does scale better than TM1 though).

I think any application can get into performance problems when it is designed poorly and when it is intended to be used for the requirements that it is not built for. As per my observation on the Cognos Planning applications that I had to fix the performance problems, in almost all of the cases the reason for the performance issues was either poor modelling or the intention to use the same planning application for both planning and multidimensional reporting and analysis requirements. In Cognos Planning, you would not need to have large cubes for planning requirements. However, you would need those for multidimensional reporting requirements. Unlike TM1, Cognos Planning is not an OLAP reporting tool that can automatically handle sparcity in large reporting cubes. Therefore such requirements to have large reporting cubes should not be delivered in Cognos Planning applications, and therefore other OLAP style reporting mechanisms should be integrated, such as PowerCube or Framework Manager DMR cubes, which can also be generated automatically from a Cognos Planning application. If designed and built based on this logic, Cognos Planning solutions perform very well even in large volume applications. While on the other hand, the flexibility with TM1 is on its capability to use the same cube engine for both planning and OLAP style reporting requirements, which is why IBM is making the investment to enhance and develop this tool further.

As stex already noted Cognos/IBM has very much taken the position that TM1 is the road forward. That alone should be sufficient to discourage any migration from TM1 to Planning.

I think such decisions by the clients should be made based on the capabilities of the tools with respect to the requirements of the new projects on their pipe line, rather than unofficially communicated strategic directions of the software vendors. On the other hand, why should they migrate from Cognos Planning for their existing applications if they are happy with them as there is enough commitment from IBM to continue enhancing and supporting Cognos Planning going forward and as there is no communication at all for discontinuing it? Moreover Cognos Planning is still presented in IBM’s web site as a core component of its Enterprise Planning suit and thousands of companies in the world are currently using it for their core enterprise planning processes.

Although the extend of development being done in the labs for the next releases of TM1 can be encouraging for the future of this product, some people may consider this being an indication of an immature product that will take years to clean bugs and issues with a series of fix packs. In that case, some clients may prefer to wait for its new release proving itself.

In the future if IBM will encourage its Cognos Planning customers to switch to TM1, I think it would be and should be the time when IBM releases the necessary automatic conversion/migration tools that convert a Cognos Planning model/application automatically into a TM1 model/application. Therefore potential clients should continue making their decisions totally based on the existing features and capabilities of the tools with respect to their requirements in their projects.

Regards,

[David]

Merdal,

It seems like you have an extensive background in Cognos Planning and so I am.

I think it would be and should be the time when IBM releases the necessary automatic conversion/migration tools that convert a Cognos Planning model/application automatically into a TM1 model/application

but talking about automatic conversion, it is just an unrealistic dream. We all know what happened to the Impromptu to Cognos BI conversion.

David

[dkleist]

by David » Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:05 pm

Merdal,

It seems like you have an extensive background in Cognos Planning and so I am.
Merdal wrote:
I think it would be and should be the time when IBM releases the necessary automatic conversion/migration tools that convert a Cognos Planning model/application automatically into a TM1 model/application

but talking about automatic conversion, it is just an unrealistic dream. We all know what happened to the Impromptu to Cognos BI conversion.

What makes you think they haven't already tried? That it doesn't already exists says something about the equivalency of the two products.

[merdal]

Merdal,
but talking about automatic conversion, it is just an unrealistic dream. We all know what happened to the Impromptu to Cognos BI conversion.
David

Hi David,

As you would know, there are tools in Cognos Planning which converts a published application into a Transformer Cube or into a Framework Manager DMR Model. Although these tools do not handle the conversion of complex calculations due to the limitations in FM and in Transformer (as they are not planning tools), these tools have been very useful in transferring reporting requirements from Cognos Planning cubes to Cognos BI environment.

You know that Cognos Planning models can be exported as an XML file in Contributor Administration. That XML file has all the information needed for the model, from dimension, cubes, links, calculations…etc. It should be possible to use this file in creating TM1 version of the same Cognos Planning Contributor model. However it might be tough to handle the conversion of complex calculations of Cognos Planning model. But, if TM1 is claimed to be so flexible that it can handle the same calculations in its rule engine, then they should be able to do it in the conversion tool. Otherwise the whole point behind the conversion/switching project may become meaningless if the new TM1 will not be able to handle those.

Regards,