If you are still on a version of IBM Cognos TM1, it is time to plan your upgrade to its rebranded successor, IBM Planning Analytics.

Recently the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) started a firestorm when they published an article titled “Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tells Staffs” (https://www.wsj.com/article_email/stop-using-excel-finance-chiefs-tell-staffs-1511346601-lMyQjAxMTE3NjMzMDQzNDA4Wj/).

One of the advantages of being a Business Analytics consultant, is that you rarely know what a feasible solution looks like until you have taken the time to truly understand your client’s business, strategy and culture. This applies to financial performance management (including financial reporting, planning and customer profitability modeling), just as it does to predictive and prescriptive analytics problems which may not always directly impinge on the Office of Finance.

Try Googling “TM1 Performance problem” and a lot of advice comes up. Some of it contains useful information, for example http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21454290.

And then there is the “shot in the dark” stuff like this which is only helpful if your problem happens to have this one cause (and is useless otherwise): http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/ctm1/v10r1m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.tm1_api.10.1.0.doc%2Fc_tm1serverperformance_n802b4.html

YES! Do you agree? If so, read no further :) !

Is it time to jump on the “cloud computing” bandwagon with your TM1 application? It depends. A month ago we talked about IBM’s new TM1 on Cloud offering, in which we explained what it is TODAY. In this blog post we will try to give you some guidance on how to make decisions around it.

It turns out that TM1’s nature makes this a surprisingly interesting topic (by the end I hope this comment will be clear)!

Are You Ready to Love TM1 on Cloud?

As a technology professional, I think I love the Cloud, or perhaps I just love the idea of it. There are a ton of opinions and articles out on the web extolling its virtues. For example, who would not want 1.7 times greater ROI with the Cloud vs. an on-premise implementation?