What is IBM Planning Analytics?

When people first encounter IBM Planning Analytics, one of the most common questions we hear is:

“What actually is Planning Analytics, and what does it do?”

It’s a fair question. Especially because the platform has evolved significantly over the last four decades.

Where it all began

Planning Analytics began life in the early 1980s as an in-memory OLAP engine designed to make financial planning and analysis fast, interactive, and easy to model. IBM acquired the technology in 2007 and has since transformed it into the integrated, enterprise-grade planning suite we know today.

At its core, the software still uses the powerful TM1 engine a lightning-fast, multidimensional database built for real-time planning and analytics.

How Planning Analytics Structures Data

Instead of traditional relational tables, PA stores information in dimensions that mirror the way the business actually thinks:

• Accounts

• Cost centres

• Products

• Staff groups

• Customers

• Time (days → months → years)

These dimensions combine into cubes, which you can think of as a supercharged, enterprise-scale version of a pivot table.

This means you can slice, drill, and explore data from any angle without rewriting queries or rebuilding spreadsheets.

Once data is in the model, whether loaded from files, databases or entered by users, it becomes a single source of truth for planning, reporting, forecasting and scenario modelling.

Planning Analytics can be accessed as:

Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE)

Connects Excel directly to TM1 cubes.
Gives analysts the freedom of Excel with the power of a governed, connected backend. Build reports, enter data, run calculations — all without manual consolidation or version control chaos.

Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW)

The web-based experience for dashboards, reporting, planning workflows and visual modelling.
Create board-ready summaries, department-level detail, scorecards and interactive views — all using the same trusted data.

What Makes Planning Analytics Different

Although widely known as a planning and forecasting platform, Planning Analytics is capable of much more. Organisations use it for:

• Operational modelling

• Budgeting and scenario planning

• Profitability analysis

• Workforce planning

• Sales and operations planning

• Any process that needs structured, multidimensional data

If you can model it, drill it, calculate it, or forecast it, Planning Analytics can help.

Planning Analytics turns disconnected data, spreadsheets and processes into a single, intelligent planning ecosystem. And when implemented well, which is something we at Aramar have lots of experience in, it becomes a practical, high-impact decision-making engine for the whole organisation.

Learn more about Planning Analytics