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 available in an Excel file. Here is your desired result:
The following steps in IBM Cognos Analytics would accomplish this:
Step 1: Upload your Sales Targets file into IBM Cognos Analytics per below:
Step 2: Inspect your uploaded data and ensure it is coming in as expected:
Step 3: Create a new Data Module:
Step 4: Add your uploaded targets file source to make it available in the new Data Module:
Step 5: Add your existing package to make it available in the new Data Module:
Step 6: Drag and drop both the Sales Targets and your current package source to your new Data Module:
Step 7: Select one of your sources and select “Join” to create a relationship between sources:
Step 8: Select the columns which will be used to relate your sales targets and your current package. This usually means selecting related key columns common to both sources representing identical data. Select the appropriate cardinality or talk to your DBA and/or business analyst if unsure:
Step 9: After the joins are established between your data sources, save your new Data Module
Step 10: Create a new report against your new Data Module now containing your sales targets. You now can analyze both your sales and your targets in the same report:
IBM Cognos Analytics enables the business user to bring in their own source data into the mix without IT intervention and to create their own scenario, as an example, for analyzing targets and actuals in the same environment. That’s the power of self-service BI.
What Data Modules have you created and made use of to analyze external versus managed data in Cognos Analytics that has brought you greater insight and agility? Comment with your use cases below – we want to hear from you!
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