One Unified Experience
Email
Print
And
with the launch of Cognos 10, IBM is
delivering the most significant analytics offering since the acquisition of
Cognos, one of the largest acquisitions in IBM
history. IBM closed its acquisition of
Cognos in January 2008 for about $5 billion. And for the first time, this new
software brings together the power of social collaboration with Lotus
Connections software and business analytics with Cognos in one unified
experience with intuitive navigation capabilities and simplified user experience.
This removes the frustration of having to interrupt user train of thought
resulting from the need to switch between views to get right information. The
software supports the natural path of seamless views from browsing to
investigation to decision making.
Cognos
10 provides business users with an integrated view of historical information
with real-time updates to give users a complete picture of their business, IBM
said in a press release describing the technology. Now, business users
can benefit from accessing information with a range of views from simple
real-time information to advanced predictive "what if" analysis. The
integrated social networking capabilities with analytics allow the employees to
interact with each other in real time in communities, wikis and blogs. This
combination fuels the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in
the decision-making process, but is typically lost in meeting notes, manual
processes and e-mails. Users can now initiate activities, engage others with
their expertise, post messages, files, links, and discuss or review opinions -
all in real time for faster, more accurate decision-making.
For
example, IBM official said a regional sales
manager can spot a spike in sales in a popular pair of shoes with the store
manager and marketing team in real time to identify the cause and
brainstorm to resolve the issues around managing supply and demand. Doctors can
spot trends for patient treatment of certain diseases, share insight with other
doctors and agree on a preventative course of action and treatment with a team
of doctors, all without having to change a single view with this in-depth
information. A brand manager sees product sales declining and needs to discuss
the issue with the store manager, production department, and marketing team -
all at the same time. The manager can instantly set up a decision network to
connect the right people and information to share insights and capture
annotations.
A
video of IBM's Ashe talking about analytics
and the IoD news can be found here.
"We're
bringing more of an unconstrained interface into the data," Ashe said. "We're
bringing some social interface stuff into the data - more searches, more
images, not just tabular information. The other big thing is collaboration,
What we've been trying to do is give people a platform to make decisions more
effectivlely. We've integrated and will ship Lotus Connections with Cognos 10
out of the box."
In
addition, "We're making sure everything users do they'll be able to do in any
environment they're in. So we're supporting mobile, with new iPhone and iPad
support.
Meanwhile,
one example of IBM business analytics at
work is at Office Depot, which identifies customer buying patterns with mobile
analytics. With more than 49,000 associates worldwide, Office Depot is a
leading global provider of office products and services with annual sales of
more than $15.5 billion. It provides products and services to its customers through
1,598 worldwide retail stores, a dedicated sales force, catalogs and a $4.2
billion e-commerce operation. With IBM's
analytics software, Office Depot can track, analyze and report on store
performance in real-time to help drive profits, reduce losses and provide
business insight to management.
