The Top 5 Issues

[mzatta]

Morning all

What are the Top 5 Business Challenges that people use TM1 for today?

[rmackenzie]

Marco - shouldn't you announce the prize before you run the competition?

Like you know, if you are looking for good ideas for promotions ('tell us in 25 words why _you_ think TM1 is awesome...') then I want to know whether I get to goto the Bahamas or the Maldives.

[mzatta]

It was simply a generalized question.

[Alan Kirk]

Marco - shouldn't you announce the prize before you run the competition?

Like you know, if you are looking for good ideas for promotions ('tell us in 25 words why _you_ think TM1 is awesome...') then I want to know whether I get to goto the Bahamas or the Maldives.

Bahamas or Maldives? Meh, I was hoping that it may involve a trip to Paris, Rome then Morocco, since for some reason I've acquired a desire to visit both Marrakech and Casablanca. I just get the feeling that if I don't visit Casablanca, I'm going to regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of my life. Or maybe not since I'll always have Paris. The only problem is that I don't think I've ever done anything in 25 words or less in my entire life except when doing Clint Eastwood impersonations.

(The duplicate thread on this has been deleted.)

[rmackenzie]

My favourite:

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster

[jim wood]

My favourite:

How do you know he was going to rape the woman?

Because he was chasing after her with a hard on and a meat clever

[tomok]

This still is the TM1 Forum, isn't it? I had the most horrible dream. I went to my computer, clicked on the link for this forum and got redirected to a Linked In group. It was horrible.

[Alan Kirk]

This still is the TM1 Forum, isn't it? I had the most horrible dream. I went to my computer, clicked on the link for this forum and got redirected to a Linked In group. It was horrible.

If you're ever worried about that just do a quick scan of the page for the name "Richard Branson". If you can't see that, you know that you aren't anywhere on Linked In. They like to mention him. A lot. But then, so does he.

Besides, if this was a LinkedIn group the topic would be "The Top! 10! over-simplified platitudes from self-styled thought influencers on how to negotiate a raise during an awkward interview which raises the subject of your spirit animal while simultaneously dealing with difficult colleagues and creating an internet start-up in your lunch break and how mentoring the tea lady can boost your career." I agree that this thread has the "Top x" thing covered, but it lacks the requisite volume of corporate employment buzz-concepts.

And the e-mail from Linked In notifying you about it would start with your first name. Always. Because anything that starts with your first name can't possibly be time and bandwidth wasting junk-email, can it? And it would end with a request to raid your email contact list, only "so that you can keep up with what your contacts are doing", of course.

Yes, this thread devolved into silliness in pretty quick order but there was really nowhere else for it to go. Asking what the "top 5 issues" are is like asking "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything". The only meaningful answer is that there is no answer. The predominant uses of TM1 will be in the business intelligence area (both analysis and reporting) and in the budgeting, planning and forecasting area. Hands up anyone who didn't already know that?

Aaaaannnyyyybooodddyy?

No? OK, that's good.

The specifics of what those uses are and what particular business problems are being solved will not be common to very many companies since the companies will all have different "challenges". Some will do zero based budgeting, some will do rolling forecasting, some will do production cost modelling, some will do customer analysis, some will do revenue projections, most will do at least something that I haven't even mentioned here and the specifics of how they do those things, not just in modelling techniques but in the granularity of both assumptions and outputs will almost invariably differ between individual companies (as will the reason why they do them) which is but one reason why I loathe catch all terms like "best practice".

Consequently the closest you'll get to a "top 5" is:
- BI analysis;
- BI reporting;
- Budgeting;
- Planning;
- Forecasting

which is something that is:
(a) Intuitively obvious to the casual observer and
(b) Such a broad set of usage classes as to make the answer irrelevant in a practical sense to anyone who already knows what TM1 is.

Hardly surprising then that the thread should turn to meeting up with Clint Eastwood in the Maldives for a few beverages and to discuss the relative merits of the .44 Magnum and the 9mm 92FS Beretta. (Personally I favour the latter, sorry Clint.)

[declanr]

Alan, you forget to mention the top reason it's used:
"Unqualified consultants wanting to make a quick buck" (while leaving a trail of destruction)

[TJMurphy]

Well two of my top 5 are tracking contacts and also something that tracks reporting performance by our business units.

The other ones are more traditional uses