It provides all the required functionalities for Financial Performance Management, such as planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidation and dimensional reporting and analysis.
TM1 is actually a modeling tool that allows us create our own customized budgeting, planning and reporting solutions.
We have been using this software to implement solutions in many different areas of business.
For example, in budget applications, it helps a lot in running the budgeting process properly. All budget inputs, calculations, submissions, reporting and analysis during the budgeting process are handled with TM1 properly.
The CAFE Excel plug-in needs to be improved to handle all the features of older TM1 Perspectives plug-in for Excel.
CAFE is an Excel add-in that allows interacting with TM1 data from within Excel, especially for generating Excel-based reports out of TM1 data. It is actually called IBM Cognos Analysis For Excel, but usually referred to as IBM Cognos CAFE. It comes with TM1. For the same purpose, we have been using IBM Cognos Perspectives for Excel for many years. CAFE is a newer tool than Perspectives, and it needs to be improved to cover some of the functionalities that already exist in Perspectives.
We know that IBM is already working on improving CAFE. In the upcoming release, probably, we will see a lot better functionality in CAFE.
We have been using it for the last seven years, since version 9.4.
It is a very stable software product; no major stability issues.
Scalability is the best feature of TM1; it is highly scalable. As the data and model grow, all we need to do is to keep the HW aligned with the increasing size of the model.
All technical support information is available by Google search, but for new issues, IBM provides a good level of remote support.
Prior to TM1, we had been using IBM Cognos Planning.
TM1 is a lot more scalable than IBM Cognos Planning. IBM Cognos Planning is only an Enterprise Planning tool. However, TM1 is also an OLAP reporting and analysis tool, in addition to being an enterprise planning tool. TM1 provides more capabilities for customization.
TM1 is not a packaged application. It is an application development platform and toolset for performance management. Hence, you need to do a good implementation project to get an application built based on your requirements. Therefore, it is important to work with people with the proper technical skills and business knowledge. Technical installation of the platform was relatively straightforward.
For companies that require less than 50 users in TM1, it might be better to get IBM Cognos Express PM licenses. If you require more users, then you might need to get IBM Cognos PM licenses. There is also an unlimited user licensing model, which is based on server PVUs.
I recommend making a proper requirement analysis and model design before start developing models with TM1.
In your first implementation of TM1, it is very important to work with experienced TM1 developers.
It is better to choose TM1 consultants with both technical and financial skills and knowledge.
In recent years, IBM has worked towards the integration of two major components of its Information Management offering: Cognos BI and Cognos TM1.
The pairing of the two IBM IM flagships is gradually becoming an appealing combination for the vendor on the BI front. In this article, I will describe some of the main integration points from a technological point of view, some of their advantages for the business and related considerations.
Portal integration
Historically, the first effort made towards the integration of the two products consisted of making TM1 components available in Cognos Connections. Today, we have a series of widget and servlets serving this purpose. A user can, for example, access TM1 Applications (formerly TM1 Contributor) from within Cognos Connection or browse a TM1 cube in Business Insight. Although this approach provides a single point of entry for both products and represents a first step towards the integration, it can barely be considered an applicative integration as no real communication occurs between the two toolsets. For example, users are forced to identify twice (once in Cognos BI, once in TM1) even if they seem to be working in the same application. The workaround for this issue is discussed in the paragraph on shared security.
TM1 as a datasource of Cognos BI
Since Cognos 8 latest versions, TM1 cubes are fully supported datasources of the BI suite. This allows the TM1 cubes to be analysed and reported on within the various Cognos BI studios. The direct advantage of this is that TM1 has renowned performance when handling large amounts of data and can be leveraged in the Cognos BI reporting suite. Another not so direct advantage is the ability to mix budgeting and forecasting data from the TM1 cubes with operational data from a classic data warehouse. This requires both TM1 cubes and the data warehouse to be prepared upstream, but the benefit can be huge (actual vs budget data comparison, strategic dashboard). It has to be emphasized that in order to use TM1 cubes in Cognos BI, some additional developing effort is necessary. For example, in TM1, it is important to create aliases for the elements of the dimensions so that they are properly displayed in the BI reporting tools. A measure dimension has to be explicitly defined as well and named levels have to be created to allow the use of all the Report Studio functionalities when consuming a TM1 cube.
Framework Manager as TM1 logical Layer
Thanks to the more recently introduced IBM Package Connectors, Framework Manager Packages can now be used as datasources in TM1 Turbo Integrator, not unlike Cognos Transformer using Framework Manager Packages (or Impromptu IQDs for those who have been in the game for longer) as a datasource. The difference being that TM1 requires dimensionally modelled packages. This means that all the dimensional modelling happens in Framework Manager and that TM1 role is limited to storing and retrieving the data. Cognos FWM acts in this case as the sole semantic layer for classical BI packages (relational or dimensional) and TM1 cubes. If governed properly, this strategy will facilitate data consistency across the TM1 and Cognos BI platform and ensure the business logic is the same across all the solutions. This method requires the creation of TI process based on Framework Manager DMR package. The main TI process then generates a series of sub-processes (one per imported dimension) automatically. The code created this way is not necessarily easy to read (and probably was never intended to be read), which can be confusing for TM1 developers used to be in control of their TI processes.
You can now browse your FWM DMRs and use them as datasource in your TI processes.
Security
Major steps towards a unique authentication/security service for the two products have been taken in the recent years. TM1 can access Cognos BI authentication namespaces, including the third-party authentication provider namespace, meaning that BI users and user groups can be used to implement security in TM1. The implication for the end user is that they can use the same login to access both TM1 and Cognos BI content by identifying only once in the Cognos Connection portal. However, row-level security strategy implemented in Framework Manager (using security filter, for example) will have to be re-implemented in TM1 using element or cell level security.
On the other hand the groups on which the security is based won’t need to be recreated as they can be imported from Cognos BI. Ways of reducing the amount of duplicate work include creating and maintaining a relational table on which both Framework Manager Security filters and TM1 element/cell security would be based.
Cognos BI Groups and Users are available in TM1 Security.
As we have seen, TM1 and Cognos BI are more integrated version after version. Although the integrating process is not entirely smooth yet, it is already possible to achieve very interesting outcomes using this combination. As for all BI toolsets, there is no one size fits all and this may not be the best option for your needs. Generally speaking, the TM1 / Cognos BI combination is an option to be seriously considered when TM1 is already implemented in the company as a forecasting solution.
Disclosure: My company is partners with SAS, SAP, MicroStrategy, Informatica, Panorama & AnalytiX
