There is a point in every project where the organisation has to take over the built solution. Challenging times can lie ahead however this is the opportunity to reap the benefits, to materialize the ROI envisioned. In this presentation Ambrus gives you practical guidelines on how to prepare for this phase, how to deal with the pitfalls and how to build and maintain relevant competency and knowledge in your organisation on the long run.

1. Beyond a TM1 Project
Building a sustainable solution and competency
for your organisation
Ambrus Vancso

2. Introduction
AMBRUS VANCSO
TM1 close to 10 years
linkedin.com/in/ambrusvancso

3. The ideal system – It just works

4. The ideal system?

5. Where do you want to go?

6. Are you buying a solution only
or building a competency?

7. Where do you want to go?
There can be lots of reasons to do a TM1 project.
Is it essential for your business?
• Do you plan to internalize it?
• Then you need to own it from a business point of view and you need
business sponsorship
Do you envision a tailored agile system?
• Do you need flexibility, now?
• Should it be cost efficient?
• Then you need to skill up on the technical side

8. Where are you heading
Complex vs simple business logic and scope
There are many ways to do headcount planning, a simple example:

9. Where are you heading
Technical decisions made
User interface
– Cube views
– Simple excel reports
– Dynamic excel reports
– TM1Web
– Cognos
– Custom web applications
Architecture
– Black box calculations (e.g. In TI) – challenges in reconcililiation
– Growing over the limits of the technology too much (e.g. in UI)
GrowingComplexity
Data connection
– Text files
– Relational data source
– Staging database (relational)
– OLAP source (/target)
– Direct connectivity to ERP (e.g.
SAP)

10. Where are you?

11. Rethinking the project

12. Project methodologies
Achieving the Ideal Outcome – as per Bedrock White Paper on Managing TM1 Projects
How “Agile Ready” is your TM1 project team?
Write down
requirements
Build
Application
Business User Involvement
High
Speed of Decision Making
Low
Agile
Waterfall
“Iterative”
Prototyping
“Efficient”
Waterfall
Can achieve close to ideal
outcome discovered during
the project
Effectively
Can achieve only outcome
agreed early on in project Can achieve outcome agreed
early on in project
Efficiently
Can achieve ideal outcome
discovered during the project
Efficiently & Effectively

13. The cycle
Build Run Extend

14. Rethinking the cycle
Build &
Learn
Run &
Implement
Iterate &
Extend

15. Build & Learn
To have true business ownership over a solution, one has to:
Instead of single handover a continuous learning process
Know the data model
Know the tool
Know the data
Know the business
 Data model, structures and flow
 Familiarity with the tool - up to
power user and report builder level
at least
 Possibility to learn further model
building skills, like rules
 Dynamic reports

16. Project phases
Classical waterfall, emphasis not
on learning but on delivering
pre-agreed scope
An agile / mentoring project
focused more on ‘the road’,
knowledge transfer and iteration

17. Implementation in the organisation as part of a project or similar change.
 Live Testing as true UAT
 Applications are not tested to the full unless used
 Ensures inhouse knowledge and training material is sufficient
 Time is allowed for review and follow up
 Reserves for potential reengineering
 Building reports (involving the broadest user base possible)
 Managing business change
 Communication to shareholders and stakeholders
 Educating users
 Finding key users
 Instead of handover maintenance toolset
 Live Testing as true UAT
Run & Implement
 Maintenance toolset instead of handover
 Building reports (involving the broadest user base possible)
 Managing business change

18. Rethinking the cycle
Build &
Learn
Run &
Implement
Iterate &
Extend

19. The Human Capital

20. The Human Capital
Skills and team
Skillsets needed to deliver:
 Project Management
 Change Management
 Any new or amended solution will require business transformation
 You’ll need a change manager – should be a TM1 Champion
 IT infrastructure skills
In Core Team:
 Business skills
 Technical skills

21. The Human Capital
Recruitment and Retention
 Finding the right people
 Project team > same team to run the solution?
 Business vs Technical skills
 Recruiting new people can be challenging and take long
 Skilling up in-house staff with IT skills to a technical delivery level
- half a year the very least *
 Skilling up in-house staff to understand the data flow and the tool well
- at least 3 months *
 That’s for smaller systems and easily up to half a year or more for larger systems *
 Retaining people
 Who will be the backup person (aka taking a holiday)
 Key factors to maintain motivation
 Rotation / speed of
 How can a solution die
* Take this with a grain of salt – lots of variables
 Finding the right people
 Retaining people

22. Living with a solution

23. Maintenance
practices
Knowledge
management
Dealing with
change
Living with a solution
.

24. Knowledge Management – it is a practice
Documentation
 Documentation
 Various audiences
 Different levels of detail
 Ultimately a tool in the hands
of the (business) champion to
 Document the data
model and flow
 Coach key users
 Support users
 Train users
 Training environment has to
be available
 IT knowledge can be sourced
externally
Detailed
Technical -
automated
Training
material for
power / users
System
Maintenance
(actionable)
High
Level -
Data flow

25. Maintenance practices
Automate
Automate as much as possible. Lots of tools and best practices available now.
 Reconciliation
 Huge benefits to reap in terms of system stability and staholders trust
 Various approaches like reconciliation cube, excel dashboard, etc.
 Monitoring data flows
 Monitor chores and process
 Various tools available, including TM1 only
 Alerts
 For missing mappings, data quality, outage, etc.
 Email from TM1 directly
 Usage monitoring
 Key users, license compliance, etc.
 Detailed Technical Documentation
 Manual maintenance not practical, automating and discovery possible now
 Tools to assist / do migration

26. Maintenance practices
Automate – Reconciliation tool

27. Maintenance practices
Automate – Monitoring data flows

28. Maintenance practices
Actionable guide – the admin cockpit
 Catalog all the tasks, like
 Loading actuals
 Changing master data (from source system or
manually for planning)
 Opening or closing plan cycles
 Create an actionable admin cockpit to
 Serve as a step by step guide
 Add enough detail / narrative to each step
 Interact with the system directly (run processes,
change parameters, etc.)
 This opens up the possiblity to delegate:
 Temporarily (backup)
 Permanently (hand responsibility over to
business area)

29. Dealing with change
Change
Business
changes
Issues
IT
changes
Enhan-
cements
 It comes in many forms
 Keep track of them
 Tickets and Change Requests
 Manage them
 Set the pace. Manage
expectations.
 As important as scope
management in a project
 Readiness
 Environments available (Prd,QA,Dev)
 Backup. Monitor changes.
 Consider a ProdCopy environment
 Testing changes
 Training
 Rapid Prototyping
 Resolution paths defined
 Both for support and development

30. Maintenance
practices
Knowledge
management
Dealing with
change
Living with a solution
.

31. Key Success Factors
Building a sustainable solution and competency for your organisation
Business
Sponsorship
Team
Retaining
Competency
Maintenance
Practices
Change
Management

32. Thank You