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Using IBM Planning Analytics to go beyond Spreadsheets

Posted by Marbenz Antonio on September 28, 2022

A phone call in the early hours of the morning informed you that a team member had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. This was the beginning of your experience with IBM Planning Analytics. His passing was awful for him personally as well as for the entire company. His decades of experience were a huge asset to our employees as they helped us strategically prepare and foresee the future.

Overall, the organization had faced challenging circumstances. We had to execute our budget process on a complicated network of 27 linked spreadsheets because there was no money left over after a costly enterprise resource planning (ERP) setup to fund additional systems. The only one who understood how they operated was Fred, and now he was gone.

If there was ever an example of key-person risk, this was it.

A world without spreadsheets 

We did our best to muddle through the following budgetary process up until we discovered IBM Planning Analytics with Watson. For the first time, we could visualize a world devoid of spreadsheets. We could see a society where everyone collaborated on a single platform and shared a common philosophy to unite and reach a consensus on data-driven decisions for the benefit of the company. Even better, it was a world where no one person was needed.

But that is not where the story ends.

Making sense of the data

We learned the value of data management after we got away from spreadsheets. We discovered a ton of issues with our master data that had all been concealed through spreadsheet aggregation. For years, we had been blissfully unaware of these difficulties, but now it was time to deal with them. We could now make sense of all of our data together because IBM Planning Analytics gave us complete visibility over everything.

These issues were not small ones. In reality, we realized we had been selling some products for less than what it cost to create them after finding instances where our product costs were significantly overstated. Working at a high level and manually updating spreadsheets made it possible to miss errors, even ones that seemed obvious.

You do not doubt that the money you spent on IBM Planning Analytics more than paid for itself. We got so much more than just reducing the key-person risk, which was all we intended to do. We influenced the organization to appreciate its data and desire to use it for the benefit of the company.

Data value unlocking with the promise of AI

Leaders sometimes struggle to recognize the significance of analytical tools. Spreadsheets appear to be fine yet are not. They create a false sense of security in you. The business logic associated with the spreadsheet owner is a risk in and of itself, but the spreadsheet’s extreme simplicity also hides a wealth of information.

The potential of AI is appealing. It can offer perspectives that humans could never find. But honestly, can we ever expect to succeed if business continues to operate according to rows and columns? Although the sadness of our professional colleague’s premature passing, we are forever thankful for his legacy. We encourage company executives who are serious about improving their bottom line to investigate a continuous integrated planning solution like IBM Planning Analytics, which does away with manual labor and enables them to:

• Enable automated planning processes
• Encourage cross-functional collaboration
• Embed predictive AI capabilities for more accurate predictive forecasting

Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.

For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com