You are nearing end of support for IBM Cognos Series 7 and you would like to get up to the latest and greatest IBM Cognos Analytics platform. However, the challenge is that the architecture on which IBM Cognos Series 7 is based is generations behind IBM Cognos Analytics 11. How would you go about planning for your migration from IBM Cognos Series 7 to IBM Cognos Analytics version 11? Indeed, it takes careful planning and setting the...

An organization’s BI needs grow as business strategies adjust to a new business landscape. Acquisitions and mergers, regulatory requirements, and the user community can drive changes in BI requirements. To support the key decision makers with a 360-degree view of the business, data from existing sources needs to be integrated with new data sources, such as from SAP B1, that may arise from such changes. Data integration strategies...

Organizations have been familiar with Business Intelligence (BI) for many years. BI provides data and analytics to help business leaders make more informed decisions. We are seeing the evolution of Business Intelligence and it’s happening right before our eyes. Enterprise has been progressively entering an era ruled by data. Consequently, BI has evolved to include other types of analytics. Descriptive Analytics Reporting engines make...

Reporting Requirements Does your business require you to provide your customers with insight into their own data from your system, along with the ability to create their own ad-hoc reports and dashboards?  Regardless of your industry, you may be faced with this new requirement being requested by new or existing customers.  Or, perhaps your system already supports some of your customers, but you have been struggling with the various...

The most popular method of information gathering in corporations today is through ERP software. An ERP solution is a powerful, but complex set of sophisticated programs designed to gather information from the daily operational activities of your business. In a typical company, mundane but essential tasks such as accounts receivable collections, supplier payments, payroll, invoicing, etc. are performed every day by members of the...

IBM Cognos Analytics empowers business users to bring in any external data together with Cognos managed data for greater insight and agility.  A common business use case would be to bring in your monthly sales targets for each sales person. Here is the scenario – You would like to create a simple Sales versus Targets report by salesperson, however, you do not have your sales targets data in your system.  Sales targets are only...