University of Sheffield Selects Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the provider of business intelligence and performance management solutions, has announced that the University of Sheffield has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence to reduce administration time for all student and staff reporting.

Information on over 24,000 students and 6,000 staff from the University’s student, finance, HR and payroll, research management and admissions systems needed to be combined in fewer reports for staff to analyse more easily. Whether admissions handling, student fee payments, funding or students’ progression year on year, university staff can now see a single version of all this information at a glance. They are able to draw out trends to help with better decision-making for improved performance.

The University of Sheffield decided to tender for a new BI and ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Load function) solution to analyse reports on each individual aspect of the University.

As part of a product evaluation, the University looked at offerings from leading vendors, and selected Cognos 8 BI for its ease-of-use and single architecture for integration of all data. This included the Cognos Data Manager ETL function, which unites disparate data and automatically delivers the information to users, in real-time distribution.

“A drive to revamp our IT meant that we needed a faster and more efficient way of dealing with the amount of data being collated,” said Roddy Flynn, Data Administrator at the University of Sheffield. “Having worked with Cognos previously, we knew we could rely on the technology, and the upgrade to Cognos 8 BI meant we were able to standardize on one robust platform for all data, rather than bundles of multiple technologies and architectures that the other providers offered.”

“With all information in a central place, we now have one set of data to work with,” continued Flynn. “Redundant reports have been identified, enabling us to cut down on the number of reports created from 1,800 to 1,000. The quality of our information has improved, as staff can focus their efforts on analysing the data for best performance to spot trends between each department, instead of spending additional time gathering the information.”

“Using Cognos 8 BI across the organisation will provide faster reporting and higher level analysis of critical information for the University,” said Graham Walter, vice-president of Cognos UK, Middle East and South Africa. “The technology will pull together all relevant information for better visibility across the University in a faster and more efficient manner, to provide better service to both the students, as well as the staff.”