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Reporting, planning and Analysis for the Masses
I spent many years at AT&T watching organizations, divisions and departments build their own Excel-based reporting and planning systems. These systems took on a life of their own; with production MIS systems reduced to the role of data source for these business-maintained applications. Business users did this for a number of reasons:
- They were familiar with Excel
- They could easily train others in Excel
- They couldn’t get what they needed from IT on a timely basis
- IT solutions did not meet their requirements
Although this approach provides a solution, there are several issues with Excel as a solution for reporting, planning and analysis:
- Lack of audit-ability
- Difficult to maintain
- Loss of a key resource could cripple the planning and reporting process
- Lack of security
- High error rates
- Resource intensive
All these same reasons for using Excel and the issues it creates exist for small and mid-sized businesses as well. Although reporting, planning and analysis tools are somewhat broadly adopted at the upper mid-market and Fortune 500 companies, managers at smaller companies are yet to adopt them. Companies with fewer than 1,000 employees sometimes lack the user base required to generate sufficient returns; and software solutions are cost-prohibitive.
As a former technology liaison to business executives, I am excited about the future for small and mid-sized companies, as well as Divisions and Departments within larger companies. In September of 2009, IBM Cognos launched IBM Cognos Express, which is a reporting, planning and analysis application designed specifically for small and midsized companies. The application provides tools and functionality in areas that include reporting, analysis, dashboards, scorecards, planning, budgeting and forecasting. The application’s functionality is available in three modules which can be purchased separately:
- IBM Cognos Express Reporter, which enables end users to independently build reports and perform ad-hoc queries.
- IBM Cognos Express Advisor, which connects to operational data sources so that users can perform analytics and create assets such as interactive reports and dashboards. It also has visualization tools that enable users to create highly customized reports for presentation purposes.
- IBM Cognos Xcelerator, which enables Excel-based planning and business analysis.
With the introduction of Cognos Express, users can still work with an Excel interface that is familiar to them, but do so in a way that is secure, auditable and maintainable. All work is stored in a central database, as opposed to individual user desktops. All calculations, reports, queries, and dashboards are stored in Cognos Express. If people walk out the door, their knowledge does not walk with them. But the key for small and mid-sized business will be the price point and the speed to value. Companies can deploy this for $40,000 to $50,000 and be up and running in days to weeks.
Enablers:
- Pre-configured solution includes everything required for simple deployment and management
- Self-service access empowers business users and removes the burden from IT
- Packaged and priced right… Start small, start anywhere, deliver immediate value, and grow
- Ease of use. User interfaces are designed to enable novices to independently perform relatively complex tasks such as report authoring, drill downs, dashboard creation, planning applications, and querying.
IBM Cognos Express modules
IBM Cognos Express Reporter - Reporting and Ad Hoc Query
- Simple, intuitive authoring for novice to experts
- Reports and dashboards to meet the needs of different users
- Breadth of report coverage – operational, transactional, managed, dashboards, ad hoc Connect to any type of data and in any combination – relational, OLAP, desktop files
- Flexible report delivery via web interface, PDF, Excel, email or Portal
IBM Cognos Express Advisor - Analysis and Visualization
- Real-time analysis with in-memory multidimensional capability
- Slice and dice, drill down/through capabilities
- High impact data visualizations
- Simplified business view creation and building
- On-the-fly business view changes
- ‘What if’ scenarios with write-back
- Embed live content into MS Office applications
IBM Cognos Express Xcelerator - Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting
- Transforms Excel with a powerful in-memory analytics server for multi-dimensional analysis and planning
- Centrally managed data, business hierarchies, rules, calculations
- Continuous planning, aggregation, analysis
- Excel or Web Interface
- “What if” scenario modeling & write-back
- Role-based security and clear audit trails
- Workflow management
The Technology Evaluation Centers recently kicked the tires. You can find their review here.
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