TM1 Forum

We're Cognos Planning users and need to move to a more contemporary solution. Cube size on Analyst, GTP for Production have become too much. I've been evaluating TM1 and it looks good; albeit quite technical. I've also been asked to evaluate Anaplan - which I believe is from the founders of Cognos Planning. First demo looked incredible - much easier to understand than TM1 and looks more powerful. What am I missing? Does anyone have any experience of Anaplan?

I've never heard of it. I thought you meant arcplan at first. Without seeing the product I can't really comment on it.

The only thing I would say is that you will need to be prepared for all advantages / pit falls of dealing with a smaller company / product,

Jim.

Being a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, Anaplan is promising for future, while there are no SaaS option for Cognos Planning or TM1 or Cognos 8 at all . But Anaplan may not be fully ready yet from all technical aspects. Worth keeping an eye on this product. Data integration will be a challenge for Anaplan for now.

Anaplan competes very well with TM1, actually allows you to build solutions quickly with lower costs overall, not too good for any consultants out there as they will have less work as a result.

Price points around the same as Cognos Express licensing, alot less than TM1...

Data Integration - either through Java based API or utlility...or Snaplogic snaps...

I've watched a couple of videos and it seems to be adaytum onteh cloud. It would be interesting to see if via the cloud it can handle large amounts of users and also if it has the same restrictions as adaytum.

As we all know it was built by the original adatym team, but it certainly is not adatym in the cloud. No dlinks, cube size isssues, slice only calcs, clunky contributor admin, bugs, hardware, client installs, dated analyst front end etc. They understand the limitations of EP, but the power of self service and keeping it simple with a lean towards natural language formulas very similar to excel.

think the guys have reallised its nearly 20 years since they developed the Adatym product and are able to leverage their experience and knowledge to build a simple, easy to use, scalable and powerful platform.

Good thing is if you are comfortable with Excel, then you will be comfortable with Anaplan... I believe this is the intention of IBM longterm judging by the features and direction of TM1 10... problem here is they are not building from the ground up, just cobbling the old engine, therefore a long way off.

It's funny but Anaplan have a video comparing it to TM1 but they don't have the same for Essbase. There's 2 ways you can read this: 1) They hope to partner / sell to oracle at some point or 2) they are bitter because their old product is being replaced by TM1. I recommend you watch the video and find out for yourself. Personally I had to switch the video off. I can't stand school yard finger pointing from sales boys (not men). (This will give you clue that it's not option 1. Sorry for the spoiler.)

Option 3 is that they regard TM1 as their biggest competition. Either because it's the best tool out there and sets the benchmark, or it's the worst (in their view) and they think they can most easily filch potential customers from TM1.

There is that. It still doesn't excuse the childish marketing tactics. You can call another product a great big pile of steaming turd without the childishness. I don't know if it's me? I've seen so much of this I may be a bit to sensative to it. Watch the video and let me know what you think....

Which one? I did a search on youtube for "anaplan tm1" and the first one that came up was anaplan talking about spreadsheets as the competition.

Incidentally, I noticed even on that one that their marketing angle implied in a snobbish manner that you were very behind the times if you were using spreadsheets. Didn't strike me as a great way to endear yourself to potential customers.

They have the videos on their web site.

You are right. They seem to be that far up their own arses they're smelling what they are had for lunch.

It's been a while since I viewed the videos but there was one (possibly the vs TM1 vid) that implied somewhere that it was better than TM1 since ALL movements are automatic... sounds like it was suggesting anaplan has no executable TI equivalent... and somehow that is a good thing

Martin Ryan wrote:Which one? I did a search on youtube for "anaplan tm1" and the first one that came up was anaplan talking about spreadsheets as the competition.

Incidentally, I noticed even on that one that their marketing angle implied in a snobbish manner that you were very behind the times if you were using spreadsheets. Didn't strike me as a great way to endear yourself to potential customers.

The video in question is in the Resource Library (second page of it) which you access via the "Explore" tab. Short link is here.

I agree completely with Jim, these guys strike me as being full of it. They lost me at 3 minutes in when I got the impression that they didn't know or care whether they were lying through their teeth. Actually they lost me quote a bit earlier than that with apparent claims that nothing had happened in the BI/OLAP space since their exalted team's departure from it, that no BI product covered their self-drawn four quadrants (even though most can in one way or another, and TM1 certainly can), and the overall tone of FIGJAM.

Oh yes, we attended a bake-off against TM1 and it took them 2 days to install their server. Yeah, it takes me 2 days to install a server too. As long as I spend about 1 day and 22 hours doing something else.

And I loved the claim that analysts should be analysing, not managing models. Yeah, right. The model is the analysis. Without constructing models you're just looking at raw data. This is what we call "reading" rather than "analysing", anywhere outside of Anaplan-land, anyway.

At that point I doubted the wisdom of spending a further 30 minutes of my time and just switched off.

It wasn't very clearly annunciated but the opening remarks from the CEO sounded something like "... the moves of TM1, that hopeless planning tool foisted on people by IBM"

Bitter much?

I didn't bother listening to the rest.

I'm glad it's not just me then. It's official they do market their tool like the US republican party... I mean school kids!!

Martin Ryan wrote:"... the moves of TM1, that hopeless planning tool foisted on people by IBM"

He actually said "... and discuss the move to TM1 that helpless planning folk have been compelled to make by IBM."

It sounded to me as though he was primarily addressing existing Cognos Planning customers in the light of IBM adopting TM1 as its flagship planning product.

Which is what they are (and I can't blame them) not happy about. Before and after Cognos bought Adaytum they were bitter rivals with TM1. Now they have to stand back and watch what they spent so much time working on get run over by it. I would be a little bitter as well to be fair. I think that's the tone that comes out during the video.

Duncan P wrote:

Martin Ryan wrote:"... the moves of TM1, that hopeless planning tool foisted on people by IBM"

He actually said "... and discuss the move to TM1 that helpless planning folk have been compelled to make by IBM."

It sounded to me as though he was primarily addressing existing Cognos Planning customers in the light of IBM adopting TM1 as its flagship planning product.

Ah, that's makes a lot more sense. I guess it's a fair enough comment, but in the consolidation of all the planning tools some people were always going to be backing the losing horse. I'm not entirely sure how adding another tool to the options addresses the Cognos Planning customers having to move though. It just gives them something else to move to.

I've generally heard good things about Anaplan as a tool and I think there's definitely room in the market for it, I just wish their marketing was a little less combative - that includes someone like the partner who start a fake discussion in a LinkedIn group. At the moment I feel that if I started to look at it too much I'd be supporting a bunch of personalities that I'd rather not see promoted in business.

Martin

The history goes farther back than that. Applix hired ex-Cognos Finance execs who got pushed out after the Adaytum acquisition. Then, when Cognos bought Applix, the Applix exec team took over most of the leadership roles and pushed out what was left of the Adaytum folks. Sadly, during all that, there was little conversation about what the customers wanted.

Re: "Adding another tool" - it gets to customer perception of the products among the base of Planning users. I believe a significant percentage of Planning users recognize that they won't be using the product for too much longer, but accept that it won't be TM1. I think Anaplan is just trying to tap into that (clumsily, perhaps).

Martin Ryan wrote:I've generally heard good things about Anaplan as a tool and I think there's definitely room in the market for it

Me too. The tool is good but the major problems are and will continue to be data integration, automation and loading as well as the whole concept of cloud as the be all and end all which isn't quite in step with corporate reality and sensitivity around confidentiality of data. On the other hand cloud and access to real live models and all the weird things people will try to do that engineers and developers who never actually use the tool never considered or have a clue about absolutely gives them a huge leg up on the competition in being able to fix bugs and add features that are useful to customers (as well as effectively monitoring what features actually get used). Just imagine all those painful support calls, bug replication and packaging that doesn't have to happen!

Martin Ryan wrote:I just wish their marketing was a little less combative - that includes someone like the partner who start a fake discussion in a LinkedIn group. At the moment I feel that if I started to look at it too much I'd be supporting a bunch of personalities that I'd rather not see promoted in business.

There will always be sour grapes and bad eggs, and there certainly are a fair amount of former Planning people who just couldn't get their heads around TM1 and OLAP planning (although I have met and worked personally now with more people than I have fingers to count who have worked extensively with both tools and none of them would prefer planning as the tool of choice, even the ones who took a few years to jump on the bandwagon.) I think we all know who you're referring to with regards to some pretty appalling and inept marketing tactics but I will say that if you look at all of Guy Haddleton's comments and posts around the general blogosphere I've been impressed that he seems to be above that and focuses on solving planning problems and user needs as opposed rubbishing the competition, something his followers might learn from.