Planning Analytics Workspace vs Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE)
Which one should you be using… why and when?
That’s a question that comes up often.
“We’ve got Planning Analytics… but should we be using Workspace or Excel?”
And the honest answer is… that’s the wrong question.
It’s not really about choosing one or the other. It’s about understanding what each one is actually for.
IBM Planning Analytics Workspace is often the first thing people see. It’s clean, visual, and built for interaction. You can click through dashboards, explore trends, and quickly get a sense of what’s going on in the business. It’s the place people naturally gravitate to when they want to understand the numbers.
It also provides many workflow features that can be a game changer for month-end submissions. Features that can seriously reduce a ten-step data submission process down to fewer than five.
Planning Analytics Workspace is fully web-based. This gives users portability, allowing them to access information from anywhere, at any time, provided they have an internet connection. The scaling capabilities of PAW are another winning feature. This means dashboards can be accessed across a range of mobile devices.
IBM Planning Analytics for Excel is where the detailed work happens.
It’s where finance teams can build ad-hoc customised and heavily formatted reporting, forecasts, sandboxing, templates, and drill into the detail within a familiar Excel interface, using native Excel functions enhanced by powerful Planning Analytics functions. It’s familiar, structured, and precise.
PAfE is optimised for wide area network reporting. This ensures your team can interact with a single version of the truth when connected to the database. The TM1 engine that powers the database ensures fast queries compared with traditional data structures. You can also work with static datasets and then update the database information at a later stage.
For a lot of teams, that familiarity is exactly what they want.
Instead of comparing them directly, it helps to think about the role each one plays.
Planning Analytics for Excel is where you work with the data and build familiar distributed reporting. It’s structured, detailed, and built for control, while also offering far more flexibility when it comes to formatting and customisation.
Planning Analytics Workspace is where you experience the data. It’s visual, flexible, engaging, and built for analysis and AI capabilities.
Think of it as a simple web application builder based on what you want to communicate to your user base. To get real value from Planning Analytics, I recommend using both.
Build custom reporting and Excel-based analysis with PAfE.
Use Workspace for database design, model applications, administration, and sharing data visualisations.
Presenting insights in graphs often works better than rows and columns of numbers. It helps you reach and communicate with a wider audience.
Final thought
Planning Analytics is at its best when it feels familiar.
When finance teams have the structure they need, and the wider business has the visibility they want.
That balance is what makes it one of the best tools in the financial planning and analysis space.
Want to see it in action?
If you’d like to see what both tools look like in practice, check out my YouTube video or contact Aramar for a live demo.
Read More Planning Analytics Updates & Insights