The Silent Killer: Poor Documentation 

Losing margins? The culprit isn't your pricing overhead. 
It's unbilled documentation time. 

Here’s the reality: Inaccurate time estimates are the #1 driver of project overruns (Project Management Institute, 2018). According to McKinsey, the top reason why 45% of IT projects exceed budgets is due to poor documentation. 
 
Furthermore, most consultants don't track documentation time. This wastes consultant hours and significantly erodes profit margins: London Business School quantified the damage: 15% of consultant time is wasted on chargeable but unbilled activities, often including documentation.

Are you recognizing this scenario in your practice? Don't worry, it's not too late.  
This post gives you clear, actionable strategies to prevent scope creep, avoid costly mistakes, and simplify documentation.  
 
You can reclaim your lost time and unlock 20–35% higher margins on your next project. 

What You’ll Learn in This Post 

✔ 3 Most Costly Mistakes to Avoid 
✔ TM1 Documentation Scoping Formula 
✔ Field-Tested Strategies to Recover 35% of Project Margins  
✔ How 10-Minute TM1 Documentation is Possible 
✔ A 2-Week Plan to Reduce Complexity and Save Time 

Whether you implement IBM Planning Analytics daily or manage teams that do, these insights will fundamentally change how you approach project profitability.  

Let's look at the 3 most costly mistakes that TM1 consultants make, and how they silently destroy your margins. 

3 Most Costly Mistakes that Reduce Your Margins 

Mistake #1: Treating Documentation as an Afterthought, not a Deliverable 

“We’ll document it at the end.” 
This might be the most expensive phrase in TM1 consulting. 

When documentation becomes project cleanup instead of a core deliverable, you're on the road to margin compression.  
 
This is because backtracking through complex models takes 3-4 times longer than documenting incrementally. 

The Financial Impact 

Poor documentation incurs significant costs: 

1. Productivity Losses 
   Poor documentation causes employees to waste about 2.5 hours daily (30% of their work day) just searching for information (The ECM Consultant, 2025).  
2. Support Ticket Spike 
   67% of users submit support tickets due to poor documentation (Archbee, 2025) 
3. Cost Per Employee 
   Productivity losses from poor documentation costs businesses an average of $20,000 per knowledge worker annually (IDC, 2020).   

Conversely, organizations with standard documentation increase new hire productivity by 70% (Oak Engage, 2023). 

Recommended Fix: Use The Documentation Scoping Formula 

Each process takes 30 minutes to decipher. 
Each rule takes 15 minutes to read. 
Each additional cube to the solution has an increased ballpark factor of 20% for every 30 cubes due to increased interdependencies between TM1 objects. 

Documentation Hours = (0.5 Hrs x Number of Processes) * (0.25 Hrs x Number of Cubes Rules) * Factor of Complexity for Number of cubes in solution  

Documentation Hours = (P × 1.5) + (C × 1.2) + (D × 0.8) + (R × 0.5) + (L × 2.0) 

• P = TI processes 
• C = Cubes 
• D = Dimensions 
• R = Rules 
• L = Data integration sources 

Validated across 60+ finance projects we have undertaken, this formula standardizes documentation effort and improves quoting accuracy.
It will prevent margin loss from underestimated scope.

Mistake #2: Using Labor-Intensive Documentation Methods 

What manual TM1 documentation processes typically encompass: 

1. Manual screenshots of TI processes 
2. Annotate logic in Excel or Word 
3. Draw Visio maps of dimension hierarchies 
4. Use Spreadsheets for cube and rule documentation 
5. Update documents on an ad-hoc basis (or let’s be honest: not at all) 

This consumes 15–25% of total project hours, which are often partially or completely unbillable.

Why Manual Documentation Fails 

According to QueBIT, 2023, TM1 models require 3–5 major updates annually.
The harsh truth: Manual documentation simply cannot scale. 

Case Study

The fundamental challenge with TM1 documentation: Model complexity grows exponentially while documentation efficiency remains linear with manual methods.

This means that a model with 2x the components requires more than 2x the documentation effort due to the increased relationship complexity. 

For example, a financial services implementation we handle once included: 

• 87 TI processes 
• 32 cubes 
• 46 dimensions 
• 118 rules 

Typically, this would require 210 hours of manual documentation.  
However, with Omni, an automated documentation tool, it was completed in 10 minutes. 

Additionally, the model included relationship diagrams, data lineage visualizations and interactive documentation that automatically updates when the model changes. 

Manual vs. Automated TM1 Analysis: What’s the Real Cost? 

"After using Omni, our documentation time dropped from 52 hours to 4 hours. We gained a 15% margin lift." — Anonymized TM1 Solution Architect 

Recommended Fix: Automate TM1 Documentation 

To say the least, the benefits are endless:

1. Efficiency Gains 

✔ 90% reduction in reporting time (Octane Solutions, 2025) 
✔ 70% cut in planning cycle time (Association for Financial Professionals, 2025) 
✔ 63% cut in labor time for annual budgeting (Forrester & IBM, 2022) 
 

2. Cost & ROI Impact 

✔ 70% average cost reduction (Gartner, 2023) 
✔ 60% ROI (Octane Solutions, 2025) 
 
The choice is clear: Automate complexity analysis.  
Reclaim 90% of your time and recover lost profit, without rewriting a line of code. 

Mistake #3: Failing to Monetize Documentation 

Although a sizeable segment of customers (about 33%) are willing to pay a premium for superior service (Statista, 2023), tiered pricing remains rare in professional services (Qwilr, 2023). 

Most TM1 consultants include documentation in standard project fees, rather than positioning it as a value-added, billable asset.  
 
As a result, documentation becomes a cost center rather than a profit driver.

Recommended Fix: Reframe Documentation as a Product 

Forward-thinking consultancies have reframed documentation as a value-added service through strategic packaging: 

Use This Client Script

When discussing project scope with clients, a useful framework would be as follows: 

"We offer 3 documentation tiers:
Basic (included), standard (+15%), and enterprise (+25%).  

Most clients choose the enterprise option as it reduces their internal maintenance costs by approximately 40% annually and accelerates new members' onboarding.  
 
Which would align best with your team’s needs?" 

3 Moves to Instantly Improve Your Margins 

Here’s your immediate action plan: 

1. Scope your last 3 projects using our Documentation Scoping Formula 
2. Automate your team's manual repetitive, error-prone tasks 
3. Offer tiered documentation packages to turn documentation into a revenue stream  

Without having to expand your team or adjust rates, these strategic shifts can unlock 20–35% higher project margins. 

The Bottom Line for TM1 Consultants 

Unbilled documentation work isn’t just admin overhead. 
It’s margin leak that’s silent, steady, and entirely avoidable. 

Whether you’re underquoting, overdelivering manually, or failing to monetize documentation as a premium service, the result is the same: profit loss. 

But it doesn’t have to be. 

With the right process and automation, you can cut documentation time by 90%, reclaim 20–35% in project margins, and turn documentation from cost center to revenue generator, without touching your day rate. 

Ready to Stop Losing $100K a Year?

Omni helps TM1 consultants eliminate scope creep, automate documentation, and lock in margin on every engagement. 

Want to see how? 
Watch this 3-minute demo to see Omni map your entire TM1 model: Cubes, rules, processes, and dimensions, without the manual grind. 

No wasted hours. No margin drain. Just precision.