Business Intelligence Journal

Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics news and resources

Cognos Previews New Analysis Tool for Microsoft Excel

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Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) today previewed Cognos 8 BI Analysis for Microsoft Excel®, a new enterprise BI capability that enables Microsoft Excel users to directly access centrally controlled and secured Cognos 8 BI performance information for improved decision-making.

The self-service nature of the new capability will make it easy for business analysts, financial analysts or line of business managers to interactively explore and analyze multidimensional information within Microsoft Excel, without draining valuable IT resources. Using formula-based data access, business users will be able to find answers, solve business problems and report key results in the format most convenient to them, while leveraging the Cognos 8 BI infrastructure for data consistency, freshness and security. For richer analysis and formatting, or for broader enterprise distribution of reports, they can re-use the results of their exploration within other worksheets or Cognos 8 BI’s proven reporting and analysis capabilities.

“The ability to conduct drag and drop exploration and analysis of controlled BI data within Excel will really benefit the business analyst who wants to solve analytical problems in a familiar spreadsheet environment,” said Vivian Adashek, financial systems project specialist, Manpower. “These analysts are gaining direct access to the underlying data sources within Excel so they can flexibly analyze trusted secure information from Cognos 8 BI together with other data sources without requiring IT to do this for them. As always, Cognos is listening and partnering with its customers on new product innovations.” [Read more…]

Ace Hardware Gets Business Intelligence Makeover With Information Builders

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Information Builders announced that Ace Hardware Corporation, the largest retailer-owned hardware cooperative in the industry, has chosen WebFOCUS as its enterprise reporting tool due to the solution’s ease of development, scalability, and data access and integration capabilities.

Founded in 1924, Ace grew a few Chicago hardware stores into a company that includes more than 4,600 stores in 50 states and over 70 countries. As the company grows in size, employees and revenues, it has become critically important to have a business intelligence (BI) standard that can get users the information they need, when they need it, for better decision-making. [Read more…]

SAS Brings Business Intelligence to the IBM Mainframe

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Mainframes are established critical components in an organization’s technology infrastructure, housing vast amounts of data that decision makers can use to gain historical hindsight and predict future outcomes. This is why SAS has tightly integrated its Enterprise Intelligence Platform – which includes data integration, intelligence storage, business intelligence and analytics software – with the IBM System z mainframe. In addition, the introduction of sub-capacity pricing – a pricing structure that reflects the industry movement towards server consolidation – provides SAS mainframe customers with a cost-effective way of adding new workloads and new applications to the System z platform.

“As the only combined BI and advanced analytics vendor to run on the mainframe, SAS is clearly committed to helping organizations take advantage of IBM’s application and data access solutions for System z,” said Claudia Imhoff, President of Intelligent Solutions, Inc. “The BI market is growing, mainframes are established elements of a company’s technology foundation and leveraging the two together just makes sense for long-term success. Regardless of size, SAS and IBM have declared that they are in it for the long haul – enabling enterprises to perform sophisticated data analysis and other BI functions while protecting and leveraging their mainframe investments.” [Read more…]

Achmea Insurance Selects Cognos For Performance Management

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Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN) announced today that Achmea Insurance Group has standardized on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence to support its financial and business planning and reporting.

Achmea, the largest insurance group in the Dutch market, employs 22,000 people working in six departments: Care, Pensions, Social Security, Direct Distribution, Monetary Distribution and Intermediary Distribution, and Group IT Services. Each division has its own key activities and operates under several brands. Cognos will be implemented across the enterprise to support business-critical and strategic goals, including financial and business scenario-based planning.

With Cognos 8 BI, Achmea will have a single product that easily integrates into its existing infrastructure, which has multiple systems and data sources. After Cognos successfully implemented two performance management projects for the Social Security Division in 2006, Achmea decided to implement Cognos across its enterprise. The Cognos consulting organization played a crucial role in the successful completion of the projects by aligning Achmea’s strategic objectives with the Cognos 8 BI implementation.

“We use integrated business performance management to monitor the strategy execution,” said Miloje Stevanovic, Manager of Change Management and IT at Achmea. “Cognos 8 BI provides us with a very solid base and a strong information platform.” [Read more…]

Oco Deploys Business Intelligence Solution For Dunkin’ Donuts in Six Weeks

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Oco, Inc. announced a new customer deployment for Dunkin’ Donuts. This new application from Oco gives Dunkin’ Donuts management and reporting capabilities for franchise development, supporting the company’s aggressive growth plans.

With Oco’s fixed cost, fixed time approach, Dunkin’ Donuts was up and running in just six weeks. Oco’s solution replaced a manually intensive approach used previously and the intuitive web interface resulted in rapid user adoption. Oco aligned their solution with Dunkin’ Donut’s business processes, and the benefits of the “software as a service” model put minimal demands on internal IT resources.

The six week implementation began with a profiling session to understand how Dunkin’ Donuts tracks and manages its franchisees, and how different users would need to see the information. To capture and host the franchising data for Dunkin’ Donuts, Oco’s uses proprietary technology based on an artificial intelligence engine which takes data from multiple sources, then cleanses, normalizes and organizes it into an intelligent data schema, all in a matter of days. By the second week of the implementation, Dunkin’ Donuts’ managers were reviewing their franchising reports with actual data. [Read more…]