Written by Mike Bernaiche, June 20th, 2024
IBM Planning Analytics is a powerful tool that helps organizations streamline their planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes. To make the most of this tool, IBM offers a range of pre-built applications that can be easily integrated into your existing planning processes. Planning Analytics Core Financial applications can help you plan and make forecasts of what is going to happen in different areas of your organization. You can use the applications to create comprehensive business plans, manage projects, determine the demand and supply chain, and calculate workforce costs.
These applications are designed to address specific business needs and can help you get up and running quickly with IBM Planning Analytics. Some of the pre-built applications available include:
Included with Each Application
When you purchase one or all the IBM Planning Analytics Core Financial Applications, they include:
- Data Models
- Cubes
- Turbo Integrator Process
- Rules
- Feeders
- Planning Analytics Workspace Books
- Websheets
Each of the below IBM Planning Analytics Core Financial Applications is plug and play with the other, meaning all of them play nice together for integrated planning.
While this is a quick start guide, you will need to load your data and tweak the models to your business use case. However, by using these quick-start applications you can shave significant time off an implementation saving time and dollars.
For all the details check out this link.
Planning Analytics Core Financial Applications - IBM Documentation
Sales Planning and Forecasting
With this application, you can produce precise sales predictions and strategies, considering aspects such as past sales data, market movements, and seasonal variations. The Financial Planning application offers the essential modules that any company requires to make budgets and forecasts. It also lets you create the three main financial statements that are vital to any business: Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow. Moreover, the Financial Planning application enables you to evaluate other measures and perform more business analysis as needed.
With the Financial Planning application, you can prepare forecasts and budgets at the following levels:
- Company (entity or business unit)
- Departments
- GL accounts
- Period: monthly level
- Currency
- Data sources
- Data versions
The following models are included in the FPA model flow:
Project Planning
The Project Planning application is a tool for planning and managing projects in any part of an organization. The application has a main module for planning and monitoring. It also has a section for Project profitability, which you can use if it is relevant for the projects you manage.
You can manage projects at the following levels:
- Project
- Company (entity or business unit)
- GL accounts
- Period: weekly level
- Data versions
- Customer
Demand and Supply Planning
The Demand and Supply Planning application enables demand planning from the viewpoints of both the product planner and the customer planner. Planning is done at a level above the SKU, such as product family, class, or subclass. However, the application can be adjusted to plan at the SKU level if needed. Demand planning is done at a weekly level, and the plan has actual, budget, and forecast versions.
Advanced Workforce Planning
The Advanced Workforce Planning application uses data like employee information, assumptions, incentives, and driver data to calculate the workforce costs. Users can export the final results and use them in other models or applications of Planning Analytics.
The Advanced Workforce Planning application uses data like employee information, assumptions, incentives, and driver data to calculate the workforce costs. Users can export the final results and use them in other models or applications of Planning Analytics.
- Hire date
- Employee ID
- Name
- Job description
- Pay type (hourly or salary)
- Merit information (date, month, percentage increase)
- Bonus information (date, month, percentage increase)
- Medical plan
- Incentives the employee is eligible for
Take Planning Analytics to the Next Level
As you can read, taking Planning Analytics to the next level is much easier with IBM Planning Analytics Core Financial Applications. You can purchase 1, 2, 3 or all 4! Reach out to me at services@lodestarsolutions.com to discuss what might be right for you and to see a demo of these applications in action!
There are several benefits of using pre-built applications for IBM Planning Analytics. These applications are designed to address specific business needs and can help you get up and running quickly with IBM Planning Analytics. By using these applications, you can streamline your planning processes, improve the accuracy of your forecasts, and make more informed decisions about your business
Have you seen what is coming soon in IBM Planning Analytics? If not, check this blog out! Trust me, there is some very exciting stuff coming soon!!
