Cognos Planning to TM1
Are you thinking about moving from IBM Cognos Planning to TM1? Well, let me tell you, for those of you who have been using Cognos Planning, moving to TM1 will be like going from having a pot-luck dinner to a catered gourmet dinner.
The biggest difference is the cube sizes.  TM1 can handle HUGE cubes of data. And yes, size does matter.  If you currently have planning models where you created separate applications and use Admin Links to pull your data together because the models were too big for Planning, you will LOVE TM1.  Lodestar Solutions has migrated a large number of Planning clients to TM1 and many have been able to consolidate their models to simplify maintenance.   You still have the ability to limit users to what they need to view and edit, but it will all be in the same database.
When you make changes to your model, like adding an account to the dimensional list, guess what?  There is NO sync and NO Go-To Production process.  Yes, you heard me right.  Sync and GTP do not exist in TM1.  When you make a change to the dimensional list, it’s immediately updated in the model, including on the web for end users.  Now if that doesn’t make you excited, maybe this will.  When you pass the data to Cognos BI to update the reports, NO PUBLISH required!  Yes, that Publish process that caused everyone to pull their hair out because users want immediate updates in BI is gone.  The data and structure in TM1 automatically pass to your IBM Cognos BI reports and dashboards.  We can even share security between TM1 and BI.
Another key difference is in the modeling itself.  TM1 allows the calculations to be at the cube level, whereas Planning was at the dlist level.  In Planning, this could create problems because you had a rule that had an exception.  For example, you have a calculation of ‘all employees director level or higher get an X% raise unless you are in the state of FL.  In Planning, we need to leverage dlist formatted items in our calculation and probably have some hidden items that are just used for calculation purposes.  Since the TM1 calculations reside at the cube level, exceptions are easily handled in TM1. Additionally, we don’t need to move data from one cube to another with dlinks to do a calculation.  Rules can reference data like total sales from another cube without having to physically move the data to the cube.  Goodbye link order nightmares.
As for licensing, if you are currently on Planning and have Cognos Enterprise Planning Contributor licenses, all you need to purchase is the Analytic Server and TM1 Modelers for your power users. Your Enterprise Planning Contributors can be leveraged on TM1. For those of you who have smaller deployments of Cognos Planning (meaning less than 100 users), you may want to consider migrating to Cognos Express. Cognos Express has a version of TM1, but at a lower price point.  To make sure you understand your licensing options, please contact one of our certified Lodestar Solutions representatives.
My goal was to get you excited about moving from Cognos Planning to TM1.  Hopefully, I have accomplished that.  So that you will learn even more, we are creating a ton of content you can use. One of which is a free Move To TM1 Program that provides videos and templates to help you evaluate the benefits and costs of migrating from Cognos Planning to TM1.  We encourage you to view our short video on Future of Cognos Planning and get access to our Move to TM1 Program.
If you would like to talk to a Lodestar Solutions certified team member, please contact us at coaching@lodestarsolutions.com or give us a call at 813-254-2040.