Performance Management Considerations before Migrating from Cognos PowerPlay to Cognos TM1

For some time, Blue Line Planning has seen a growing trend, where existing Cognos PowerPlay owners embark on a replacement solution, opting for Cognos TM1. We believe it is useful to explore the thinking here, to ensure that expectations are met and that such decisions are undertaken for the right reasons in the first place. If you will or have already made the move to TM1, this should help you better understand and maximize the value of your new solution.

Two factors may have contributed to the confusion: (1) similarities in past marketing messages for the products and (2) recent attention focused on TM1 as the newest member of IBM Cognos product family. The two products are both OLAP solutions with various user interfaces (native client, web, Excel). There is functionality common to both but they also enable distinct capabilities and exploit different technologies. TM1 is far more than (and often far different than) a mere upgrade option while a PowerPlay solution should not automatically be seen as lacking.

As a general basis for comparison, we look at typical implementation of each product. For a PowerPlay solution – one that primarily deploys PowerCubes built in Transformer yet may also allow users to analyze a variety of cubes types. For a TM1 solution - one where dimensions and cubes are automatically updated in TM1 while source structural & transactional data may reside in a variety of applications.

Since both products have been around for quite some time, a valid question is, "where are they today?" PowerPlay and PowerCubes are alive and well in the current IBM/Cognos 8 platform version, and TM1’s latest version is fully contemporary - written in Unicode, with functional parity across clients, and capable of basic integration with Cognos 8.

In this evaluation, key questions to ask include:

• what issues if any cause PowerPlay owners to be dissatisfied?
• what new requirements lead PowerPlay owners to seek a new solution?
• what are TM1 strengths?
• in what ways can TM1 address the current and future needs of PowerPlay owners?
• what might PowerPlay owners be giving up?

In developing answers, Blue Line frames this comparison by using 4 major evaluation factors:

• User orientation (Finance/non-Finance) & skill level
• Data complexity & volume
• Analysis needs (depth, breadth, speed)
• IT Architecture impacts

We have pulled it all together in Figure 1 on the following page for a high-level view, in "heat-map" style, to help you evaluate your own organization's appetite for change. Within each major factor we list some common situations that PowerPlay owners may recognize. Green areas indicate that PowerPlay will likely continue to fit well while areas trending toward red indicate that a change to TM1 could be beneficial if not vital. In the middle zone are requirements that merit closer review to understand priorities and options. Certain key aspects appear in bold as Must-Know highlights. We go into more detail for those situations as well.

User & Analysis Factors
In looking at your users and their analysis styles, it is important to know how the majority work with PowerPlay. It is well-suited for broad distribution to workers for quick reporting and analysis (slicing & dicing) tasks and recurring updates of those tasks.

A typical profile might be a user in Finance or Marketing who is familiar with PowerPlay features such as Ranking, Exception highlighting, 80/20 Filtering, Subsets, Categories, and relative time comparisons. This user manipulates the current data in a report template to detect unique conditions or trend it out over time. These features are invoked via PowerPlay’s GUI icons and menu drop down choices, without having to build formulas. If your users rely on PowerPlay’s built-in functions and are unlikely to become spreadsheet jockeys, make sure your data requirements are critical enough to force them to migrate.

In contrast, other users may have a greater need to interact with the data, to manipulate it ad hoc by using Excel features and formulas. The PowerPlay for Excel user interface supports such activity, but Excel based reports are not interchangeable for viewing with other PowerPlay clients. Alternatively, combining Cognos 8 Business Intelligence reporting with PowerPlay analysis can greatly expand the ways users interact with and share data for decision support.

Further along this data-centric track there are users who not only interact significantly with data, but change or input additional data to perform new what-if analyses, for example. This capability is one that PowerPlay/PowerCubes do not support, but is ideally suited to TM1. An added advantage that TM1 gives users is the ability to access multiple cubes in the same Excel analysis.

The TM1 engine and its clients are the perfect technology for analyzing fast-changing data and running numerous scenarios to further optimize the business operations. For example – you could quickly re-price all of your company’s products, and then reallocate all the fixed costs.

Or using TM1, you could model headcount changes in almost any format – from departmental, to geography, to role … in seconds.

Data and Architecture Factors
More stark differences emerge when comparing PowerPlay and TM1 along structural and technical lines. PowerPlay can be used with a variety of OLAP cubes. Specific to PowerCubes, Transformer does offer a visual interface for cube design, but you may face tradeoffs as your data expands. Users who need to analyze growing activity in deeper detail will find that scheduled PowerCube maintenance requires more time, more labor, or both, as well as other compromises.

Cube partitioning strategy becomes more critical, and PowerCube builds take longer. Eventually, in terms of dimension size (category count) and hierarchical constraints (parent-child ratio), companies will find PowerCubes too limited for their needs. Even with multi-processing, the largest PowerCube will dictate the length of the build window, most likely still consuming hours and requiring IT attention. Although transparent to a user accessing a given cube, different design strategies (compression, multiple files, sub-cubes, etc.) can degrade performance response time. Partitions also forces trade-offs in summary versus detail report performance, or choosing between features of data security and dimensional functionality.

Requirements of fast-changing data and intra-day updates will naturally sway the decision to move to TM1. Since processing runs entirely in RAM, every-thing from dimension updates to cube builds to recalculation happens in real-time without constantly writing to disk. Another advantage of TM1 is the ability for a cube to reflect calculations that depend on values in other cubes, reducing the redundancy found in many models. The 64-bit TM1 solution is a powerhouse.

TM1 clients work only with TM1 cubes, but using its built-in ETL tool, companies still have the flexibility of sourcing metadata and data from a variety of sources. This can eliminate the intermediate reworking and restructuring often needed to optimize PowerCube generation.

Conclusion
While we have touched on just a few key factors of the PowerPlay–TM1 debate, firms now using PowerPlay should consider a broad spectrum of current and future requirements to assess the fit of any solution. We invite you to contact Blue Line for help in any transition – to ensure lasting success.

CONTACT US:
Craig Thier, CEO
609.577.0100
cthier@bluelineplanning.com

Adam Thier, CTO
203.275.5061
athier@bluelineplanning.com


Gary Connors, Partner
609.618.9847
gconnors@bluelineplanning.com

Paula Burton, Practice Lead
609.273.2381

pburton@bluelineplanning.com

Performance Management Solutions That Work.

The Right Experience, The Right Skills, The Value You Demand.

About Blue Line Planning
Blue Line Planning, a Platinum Partner of Cognos/IBM, specializes in Financial and Operational Performance Management (PM) and Business Intelligence (BI). Blue Line has the depth of experience and skills in PM that over 100 blue chip clients have drawn upon. Blue Line's senior management delivers PM insights honed from prior key career positions at major software firms (SAP, Hyperion, Cognos, Lawson) and from guiding over 300 full cycle implementations.

About IBM Cognos
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.