IBM® Cognos® 8 Planning enables finance organizations with even the most complex business models to build enterprise-wide plans, budgets and forecasts faster and more efficiently.
You can create, compare and evaluate business scenarios, conditions, drivers, rates and assumptions. Proceed from what-is to evaluate what-if scenarios critical to forecasting future performance. The result: improved predictability and greater accountability across the enterprise.
Contributor Web client offers
personalization features
including: hierarchy support,
sorting and hiding, freeze panes,
zoom and more.Create plans and models to fit your business needs
Sophisticated modeling capabilities let you create linked models that accurately reflect cross-functional interdependencies.
Build models in days, not months. Import data definitions from sources such as ERP systems.
Change underlying business logic and principles quickly and easily. Compare alternatives and assess the impact in real time.
Driver-based planning and flexible rolling forecasts provide greater visibility into likely operating performance.
Finance manages the solution without the need for arcane programming languages or scripting. No IT input is required.
Take advantage of rich Built-In Functions to add power and sophistication to your business models.
Familiar Microsoft Excel interface
offers power and precision
for complex needs.Spend less time on process, more time on analysis
Drill-down and multidimensional slicing-and-dicing help you explore data, evaluate models, and test assumptions in minutes. Quickly compare current performance with historical actuals and external benchmarks.
"Break-back" automatically spreads high-level targets across any profile, such as previous-period actuals or projected seasonality, and across multiple dimensions such as products, customers, territories, or time periods.
Unified view of plan data connects with key metrics and information so you can make decisions instead of debating definitions and accuracy.
Eliminate unproductive activities such as tracking down numbers, fixing broken links and debugging macros.
Financial data populates
dashboard for decision
support and consistent
performance management.Enable high participation across the enterprise
User-friendly Web browser or familiar Microsoft® Excel® interface require minimal training and encourage participation, collaboration and commitment.
Single sign-on provides immediate access to linked, role-specific planning templates while pre-defined rules ensure that individuals see only the templates they require.
Distributed architecture is optimized for end-user performance, even with thousands of concurrent users across divisions and geographies.
Complex calculations at the client give users instantaneous response and eliminate unnecessary traffic and server consumption during high-use periods.
Users enter information in their own business language—not finance terms—and predefined formulas translate that into financial data such as gross revenue, net income, or earnings per share.
Users can work offline. Plans and forecasts are automatically updated when they check back in.
Online administration makes it easy to change data structures, user rights, model parameters, and more—24x7—without taking the system offline.
Advanced personalization features blend planning and analysis to improve user productivity and accuracy and empower uses to take greater control of their view of the planning process. New features include: hierarchy support, sorting and hiding, freeze panes, user tab management, calendar selector, zoom and word wrap.
Build effective Plans using enterprise data
Cross-enterprise planning data stored in a single repository provides perpetually accurate information on demand.
Synchronized enterprise plans link operational and financial plans to show the impact of operational change on financial performance.
Dynamic linking of individual plan components in real time facilitates consistency and accuracy.
Planners can attach files to a cell, model or submission of a forecast.
Quick commands allow users to modify plans and analyses, while an audit trail tracks all changes.
Powerful business intelligence and scorecarding tools in IBM® Cognos® 8 Business Intelligence produce detailed, multi-dimensional reports and analyses.
Real-time aggregation displays
the impact of new forecasts and
plan contributions in real time.Streamlined workflow management
Collaborative features facilitate communication to shorten planning cycles and enable managers to e-mail groups based on hierarchy or workflow status.
Reviewers can quickly monitor workflow status—not started, in progress or ready for review—with intuitive, color-coded icons.
Distributed administration shares role-based responsibility for planning across functions, geographies, and business units.
Corporate policies are enforced with validation rules that review data entry values prior to submission.
Continuous feedback loop minimizes the multiple iterations and negotiations that can slow down—or even shut down—the planning process.
Automatic aggregation displays the impact of new forecasts and plan contributions in real time to let you pinpoint gaps at a glance. No overnight batch processing.
Popular Cognos 8 Planning downloads
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