IBM Planning Analytics vs. Pigment

For a CFO or a COO to do budgeting and planning, IBM Planning Analytics would be essential. It is a tool that can take in multiple data sources and showcase them in a multidimensional way. If you are looking just for a BI or reporting tool, Planning Analytics would be considered "overkill".

Planning, financials, and even sales tracking are greatly helpful for project planning. This makes product planning easy; you can simply see what the industry is demanding and what should be produced more in coming quarters. If you have really huge data, then this sometimes crashes.

Incentivized

• Handle very large data volumes.
• Scale to a large number of users.
• Not having to compromise on business complexity.
• It can be run by business users.
• Availability of highly qualified consultants to support businesses.
• REST API allows for an open eco system and a variety of solutions to extend the product.
• Vast integration possibilities.
• AI-infused engine with IBM Watson.

Incentivized

• Helping organizations assess the impacts of various business decisions effectively​
• Seamlessly integrates with multiple data sources
• Collaboration with other teams and teammates

• sometimes it is hard to produce pixel perfect reports from the Web UI. I know it is not made for this, but still, it'll be great
• getting in e.g. an Excel file just by drag and drop, and the AI should "understand" what the data is all around

Incentivized

• Its not that stable, need some improvements in stability of the product. Gets crashed sometimes
• There is learning curv for script as pigment have its own logic things

Incentivized

Since IBM Cognos Express is suitable only for medium data warehouse environment, we are not sure if this tool solves the long term need as the business keeps growing rapidly. So its a 50/50 ratio to renew Express license. But having said that, the components of IBM Cognos Express are also available in other Cognos BI suites like Cognos 10.x version. So we will probably upgrade our environment to IBM Cognos 10.x which comes with more new features.

IBM Planning Analytics is generally good in terms of functionalities. It can be used reduce time for budget planning, resource planning, demand forecasting, etc. The performance of IBM Planning Analytics is acceptable, but user interface can be improved. It would be good to see new features that allow users to customise the dashboard.

Incentivized

Overall most of Pigment is self-service and meant to be used by the business users. It usually doesn't require reaching out to a technical or IT resource to make changes to reports or the models we have setup.

Incentivized

Although I find the IBM Planning analytics documentation quite time consuming, their support with email and call is something i can term as very considerate and patient, I have had few calls about the features and how i would want to implement them within my projects, and the teams have been super helpful to resolve my issues

Incentivized

For strong technical teams and flexibility IBM Planning Analytics is the way to go. For quicker adoption and less technical teams Anaplan is the best option. If consolidation, financials, and moving from legacy tools are main focus than OneStream will be a really good choice. If deeply invested into SAP already than the SAP BPC will be the best fit to maintain the investment.

Incentivized

Pigment has a lot of the same self-service capabilities but offers a more robust infrastructure to plan and report on more than just the financial data. It allows for more extended planning and the reporting and dashboard capabilities are very strong.

Incentivized

• Much higher degree of accuracy in forecasting with the use of predictive analysis from historical data
• Dozens of man hours saved in routine processes that are now handled with minimal human interaction
• One system that holds the "source of truth," consolidating multiple systems together that were only accessible individually before

Incentivized

• Reduced the time our finance team spends on data preparation and consolidation
• Planning capabilities have improved our decision making processes
• Improved collaboration of our sales, hr and finance teams