There is no doubt that IBM Cognos Analytics is a piece of business intelligence software that many rely on for valuable insights into their operations. As with any tool of this nature, insider knowledge is the key to unlocking its potential. Of course, the sheer scope of capabilities is sometimes a little overwhelming at first. If you need a few tips on using IBM Cognos Analytics to its full potential, keep reading.

Team Training

Cognos features, such as the intuitive user dashboard and fantastic reporting functionality, are designed to drive innovative and sustainable decisions. While it is simple enough for you or your staff to dive straight into the data, it is worthwhile to source some tailored training. This will enable you to get expert advice on the features your business will most benefit from in Cognos, as well as helping you use them effectively.

There really isn’t a better way of ensuring ROI than properly training your team.

Coming Soon: egforit Software’s Cognos Analytics Training courses! 

Harness the Power of Cognos

As a business intelligence tool, Cognos Analytics offers many functions to assist with decision making within your company. Once you have got to grips with all of these, make sure to use them! For example, harness the power of IBM Cognos Analytics to generate reports that draw together data from various sources, allow different users to work on a collaborative report in a safe manner.

Keep Your Cognos Analytics Updated

As with all software packages, IBM Cognos Analytics regularly releases new versions. It is worth keeping up with these, as new versions have updated functions that can really help your business, as well as security patches. By sticking with an older version, you are in effect limiting what the software can do for you.

Is your business using the most up-to-date Cognos Analytics release?

Buy the Latest Cognos Analytics LicenceQuestions? Ask Our IBM Team

Use Reports to Drive Yourself Forward

The only way you can use IBM Cognos Analytics to its full potential is by taking the data and reports it generates, and using them to create insight into your business. This is at the heart of what business analytics and intelligence are all about. Once you have the necessary reports, make sure to share and discuss them to inform future plans or engage in problem-solving.

Get the Full Potential of IBM Cognos Analytics

Need some help unleashing the full potential of IBM Cognos Analytics? Get in touch with us today and let us show you how this tool can create invaluable change for your business.

Contact our IBM Cognos Analytics Team

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Business Intelligence software is now mandatory for organisations wanting to enjoy strategic and profitable growth. BI is the only way to support and sustain lean and agile operating systems.

However, company growth doesn’t just come from better efficiency. Successful organisations have a vision. They also have the confidence to innovate and take well-planned risks. Does that mean business inspiration relies on the best data analytics tools as well?

What If You Contacted egforit about Cognos Analytics?

BI and ‘Out Of The Box’ Thinking

IBM Cognos Analytics is a great launch pad for business discussions and thinking that includes a “What if…?” Businesses that thrive on innovation are constantly looking for new product or service ideas, as well as new markets to pursue. In that case, the last thing you need is an ocean of information to navigate – or a complicated piece of software with whistles and bells.

When inspiration is one of your driving business needs, having a centralised, easy-to-use business dashboard helps cut through data quickly. For example, you can use IBM Cognos to design and create your own intuitive BI dashboard. Configure it to provide the sort of autonomous and simple-to-access analytics that are your specific “food for thought”.

Be warned though: not all BI offerings have this “self-service” flexibility and versatility.

Team Inspiration and Collaboration

Inspired and inspirational companies know the importance of unlocking the creativity and motivation of their team. Some of your potentially profitable “What if…?” leads may come from anywhere in your organisation. Your teams need a tool that is readily available to explore and share ideas. That’s another reason why choosing the right BI system is crucial.

For example, IBM Cognos Analytics provides quick access to information via its drag and drop dashboard, that any user can navigate on any device. They can hop on for either enterprise-wide reporting or “dip in” to specific areas of interest or concern.

As it’s web- or cloud-based, users can then report, share, and collaborate on their ideas instantly. So “What if” IBM Cognos Analytics could deliver this and more? You need never miss a good idea again!

For Data You Didn’t Know You Needed

You can hit a brick wall in your innovation. Creativity can dry up. This is another time when data analytics can become your “new best friend”. For example, IBM Cognos Analytics is particularly adept at drilling down into data and uncovering information your organisation may have previously missed. In fact, you could end up with insights you didn’t even realise you needed!

Having access to these hidden depths and angles can make a big difference in well-informed and confident decisions. And for answering the question, “What if….?”

‘What If’ IBM Cognos Analytics Has the Answers You Need?

What if you contacted egforit Software to find out more about IBM Cognos Analytics? There’s one way to find out.

egforit Software is an IBM Egypt , middle east Partner. We offer complete IBM Cognos Solutions: IBM Cognos Licence Sales, IBM Consultancy, and even Cognos Analytics support packages to suit.

HULFT-transfer.co.Egypt , middle eastQuestions about Cognos Analytics?

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IBM Cognos Analytics ranked highest in the following categories:

• Richness of functionality and product features
• Quality and reliability
• Technical innovation
• Product potential and revenue
• Ease of integration and compatibility

Why Did IBM Cognos Analytics Do So Well?

The majority of enterprises are well-versed in collecting the huge amounts of data on offer, but they need assistance in turning this data into insights and leads to be acted upon and distributed across the organisation for superior business value. This is where IBM Cognos Analytics enters the field.

The software’s self-service solution gives people great tools to work with complex data and make discoveries about what is actually happening within their businesses. This can lead to the development of more strategic decision-making, driven by data. This has enabled thousands of enterprises worldwide to swiftly transform data into relevant insights. Within minutes, you have all you need to produce compelling reports that can be distributed securely and measurably, in accordance with corporate policies.

IBM Cognos Analytics Trophy Cabinet

This isn’t the first time Cognos Analytics has won a major award. Earlier in 2017, the software ranked highly in a BARC Score Business Intelligence report. This report analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the most prominent enterprise BI platforms, and is a leading think tank in the industry.

The bottom line is that IBM Cognos Analytics is recommended by some of the most trusted and highly regarded authorities in the business world.

Award-Winning IBM Cognos Analytics

At egforit Software, we have spent over 25 years implementing data solutions for enterprises in the Egypt , middle east, and we are proud to be an IBM Partner.

Buy Cognos Analytics licences in flavours to suit your business needs, from Cognos Express for SME’s to Cognos Enterprise.

Buy IBM Cognos LicencesAsk Us about Cognos Solutions

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IBM Planning Analytics Flavours

Get the Predictive Powers of IBM Planning Analytics

Give Your Business Predictive Powers

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“What’s wrong with spreadsheet reporting?” I hear you ask. Quite a lot, actually.

Spreadsheets are designed primarily as an accounting tool, to digitally represent worksheets. They are not the versatile, multi-purpose solution that all-too-many business professionals mistake them to be.

In fact, businesses’ over-reliance on spreadsheets for processes like reporting is a well-documented problem, with expensive inaccuracies. There are numerous reasons why, but let’s focus on some of the key ones first.

The Problem With Spreadsheets

1. It’s easy to make mistakes.

Spreadsheets rely heavily on manual input, and human error is an obvious element of risk. Various studies over the years show that almost 90% of spreadsheets out there have errors, some creating financial discrepancies of billions – that’s right, billions.

Despite the costliness of potential errors, only a fraction of users are trained or experienced enough to leverage them properly. Those that are trained would know that they’re rarely even the right tool for the job. With such a high margin for error in spreadsheets as a reporting tool, how can you fully trust the answers you’re gathering?

2. They’re a productivity drain.

It’s simply time-consuming having to manually fill out hundreds of little cells, copying and pasting information from one sheet to the other and producing clumsy, ineffectual reports. Duplication of data is a frequent occurrence, requiring yet more time to fix if it’s even spotted at all. For so many companies this sort of process is conducted weekly, meaning a scheduled routine of time-wasting that few can afford.

Did you know?
You can leverage our own low-cost data management and reporting solution today:

ATLAS Publishing Intelligence

3. Collaboration is difficult.

In fairness, this has been improved marginally through adoption of cloud-based platforms where you can better maintain a single copy of the spreadsheet – the all important “single version of the truth”. However, even with cloud-based spreadsheets, it’s tricky to govern how users input the data. Who is inputting? When are they inputting? If mistakes are made then there is no ‘paper-trail’ for auditing, and locally-stored and shared spreadsheets are even worse; multiple copies with conflicting input from numerous sources.

4. They’re simply no good for analytics.

Analytics are a vital part of reporting, and spreadsheets offer virtually nothing for this. Critical data gets hidden or lost completely in a mass of rows and columns, with no way to easily translate anything into tangible insights.

Data visualisation is almost impossible with the limited range of chart-building functions that spreadsheet programmes have to offer and without that there’s no way to summarise key data. Examining data from different spreadsheets becomes another manual process and there’s no way to link data from sheet to sheet – a link that is often as important as the data itself.

What’s The Right Tool For Reporting?

Did you know?
egforit are IBM Advanced Business Partners

Find Out More

So what’s the alternative? The short answer: dedicated, purpose-made software, allowing your spreadsheet software to go back to doing what it does best for your business.

To report on your data it needs to be stored somewhere. The proper way to do this is with a database or data warehouse, not a spreadsheet and indeed not stored away in anything on your local machine. Databases allow for automated integration of data into storage, with the ability to access it on an ad-hoc basis.

Once stored and accessible you can view, manage and visualise your data in dedicated platforms. They range in scale from products such as Cognos Analytics, Microsoft Power BI and SQL Server to Dynistics dashboards and our very own intelligence and reporting platform ATLAS Publishing Intelligence.

Need to exchange data between systems? Instead of exporting and importing CSV files from system to system, why not expose your data to an API? This not only paves the way for frictionless connectivity between your systems, it is the foundation for improved integration with other applications, partners and customers.

All of these tools are configurable and easy to use. You and your teams can customise dashboards, data visualisations and reports to give you the data you actually need, in a fraction of the time, error-free. The benefits to your productivity and business intelligence are well worth the investment to get started and you’ll never regret kicking the spreadsheet addiction to the kerb.

Does your business reporting process need a spreadsheet intervention? It might be time to get help.

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IBM Alert: Update Your Cognos TM1 SSL Certificates

IBM support has issued an urgent message to all premise Cognos TM1 and Express users:
You must refresh your SSL Certificate or your TM1 System will Stop Working on November 25, 2016.

Put simply, all SSL certificates bundled with Cognos TM1 will expire on November 24th, 2016.

If new certificates are not updated before this date communication between clients and the TM1 Server will be prevented. In effect, Cognos TM1 will become unavailable.

Is Your Data At Risk?

All users of Cognos TM1 could be affected and urgently need to review their SSL settings.
If you are NOT using custom SSL Certificates on both your TM1 Admin Server and TM1 Server or using the v2 TM1 Certificates – then your organisation will be affected.

It is important to note – custom certificates on your WEB TIER (if SSL Secured) are not a solution.
Unless you also configured custom certificates for the TM1 Admin Server and TM1 Server – then you will still be affected.

Updates need to happen before November 24th. 
After that date any bundled TM1 SSL certificates which are not updated risk loss of functionality.

Why is the update needed?

Historically, TM1 have bundled certificates. This makes certain every client has SSL enabled, which ensures communication between clients and the data server are secured. This is unusual as most SSL Configuration is now transferred to the customer base by vendors.

The reason why the TM1 team continue to bundle certificates is to simplify the ability to have secured communication. By allowing customer owned custom certificates to be used as well it ensures all TM1 users, regardless of skill level and understanding, will have secure communication.

While on the one hand, this is great news on the other certificates expire every 10 years. At this point an update is required to prevent a mass outage – which is the current issue this November.

IBM Support put together a useful FAQ to help users understand the IBM Cognos TM1 certificate expiry issues.

How to update IBM Cognos TM1 Certificates

Get in touch with your Cognos Support Team!
The first port of call is to check with your support team. If they are on the ball, like the helpful egforit Support team with our in-house Cognos TM1 Solution experts, then you will already have had a step-by-step plan actioned to ensure your TM1 connections run smoothly and uninterrupted.

Alternatively: IBM Support suggest 4 different options.
IBM Support put together a simple guide to Updating Cognos TM1 SSL Certificates outlining the 4 methods they recommend:

1. Manual Certificate Updates Process: IBM Cognos TM1 SSL Expiration
2. Apply an Interim Fix Updater: Using Cognos TM1 SSL Expiration – Updater Kits
3. Using Custom Certificates
4. IBM Cognos TM1 v2 Certificates (Technote)

Get Cognos TM1 Support

If you need Cognos TM1 support egforit are certified IBM Partners. We offer Cognos TM1 Licences and Support services. We can work with you to review and assess your Cognos TM1 installations.
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First, What is Business Intelligence?

In the last article we looked at Admin & HR Processes, an all-too-often overlooked part of business that can have some costly consequences for inefficiency.

Our journey in this series has taken us across internal and customer-facing processes where automation can:

• streamline efficiency
• reduce costs
• enhance customer experience & retention

But how do you monitor, measure and make informed decisions about these processes? The answer: ‘Insights & Business Intelligence’.

What is ‘Business Intelligence’? In its simplest terms it’s about gathering and translating business-critical information to enable operational insights and strategic decision-making.

The where, how, and why businesses need to do this is more complicated, with countless different layers of processes involved, and a vast selection of tools available to help you.

We’ll revisit Business Intelligence (BI) in much more detail in future articles, but for now let’s take a broad look at some core BI processes and how automation is essential to them.

Data Integration & Developing Insights

It starts with data. From where? Everywhere – as up-to-date and fast as possible. The more data you can gather, the more accurate your insight will be. So do you have a streamlined processes for gathering, organising, and extracting pertinent information, or are you looking for insights without all the facts?

Without Automation
Your business generates data – whether internal KPIs, sales figures or marketing feedback. Where does this data go? Not far – glanced over in application admin panels; exported to an excel sheet if your applications have reporting features, transferred to a spreadsheet manually if they don’t. Some data only exists in emails, or from what productivity you witness from your office chair.

Most data isn’t written down and the little that is only offers a small sample of the overall information. Forming actionable insights from this muddle of incomplete and subjective data is difficult if not impossible.

With Automation

Did you know?
MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform solves the most challenging connectivity problems across SOA, SaaS, and APIs

Learn more on our dedicated MuleSoft® microsite

Now imagine all your data in one place, seamlessly integrated from multiple sources regardless of inconsistent systems and applications. Information is stored as soon as it’s generated and is accessible ad-hoc. Intuitive applications run searches and queries across all your data – both recent and historic. You can view, collect and analyse your data however you need, uncovering trends, patterns and insights about your business, processes and performance to fuel your decision making.

It seems fairly obvious which scenario is better. With solutions like bespoke data warehouses, you can consolidate your data in a single location to give you a holistic view that may uncover insights that previously lay hidden.

Integrating data smoothly from multiple sources can be tricky, but tools like Mule ESB makes easy work of connecting systems and applications of all types and sizes. Software suites such as SAP Business Objects are leading experts in BI, allowing you to search, extract and find meaning in your data, giving you insights you can trust.

Data Visualisation & Business Intelligence

Insights from your data are only any good if the decision makers can understand it. Reports from data scientists can be filled with numbers and percentages that are impenetrable to the people that have to act on them. Do you leverage the full value of your insights, or is indigestible information a barrier to your understanding?

Without Automation
Hours are spent scouring spreadsheets looking for trends and patterns amongst the rows of data. If a pattern is spotted it is then painstakingly transferred manually to its own spreadsheet or document for reporting. In this format it’s difficult for your c-level personnel to absorb and understand the information quickly enough for it to aid decision-making.

Graphic visualisations are limited to whatever chart or graph can be created within the spreadsheet application and interpreted summaries can be subjective, undermining the value of the data accuracy. You, the decision-maker, rely entirely on data analysts to translate insights into actionable information – if you have a data analyst at all. With no system in place to make full use of your data and insights, you experience a low ROI on your data warehousing and insight development investments.

With Automation

Did you know?
egforit has a new original Business Intelligence & Reporting solution:
Atlas Publishing Intelligence

Visit the Atlas Publishing Intelligence page to learn more

Now imagine user-friendly, intuitive dashboards that provide graphic visualisations for your data insights on a self-serve, ad hoc basis. Imagine a streamlined interface that different users can customise for their specific department needs, facilitating easy communication and collaboration on data at any given time. You can watch chart widgets update with your data in realtime, giving you the most recent, accurate information in easy-to-understand formats. Hours are saved by the removal of manually updated spreadsheets lowering costs and increasing operational efficiency.

You can take control and get to grips with efficient data discovery yourself. These data visuals show you what business processes are costing unnecessary funds, where bottlenecks occur and what’s generating the most return. With enterprise-grade business intelligence in the hands of yourself and other key decision makers you can streamline your business to maximum efficiency and stay informed.

There are numerous tools and solutions for this. IBM Cognos Analytics is a powerful self-service BI tool that delivers instant insights in an easy-to-use interface. There are also tools like Active Dashboards from Dynistics that offer sleek, real time visualisations for your data.

Forecasting & Business Analytics

The next step of Business Intelligence is about looking deeper into the data to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind it. The answers to these questions inform what might happen in the future, facilitating predictions for your business and market trends. Harnessing these insights gives you a competitive edge and reduces the element of risk in business decision making. Without it your decision making is based solely on ‘hoping for the best’ – an approach that could just as easily lead to disaster.

Without Automation
You take a look at your business and you think you understand what you see. You believe you’ll spot a trend or pattern if one occurs and your business plan is based on what you hope will happen, not what you know. Budgets and forecasts come from discussions and speculation between department heads based on subjective perceptions. In short; you’re guessing.

Your guesses don’t account for all the factors – just the ones you can see or that you’ve been told about. The information you miss could be critical to the success or failure of your plan. You’re betting high stakes in a game of business roulette and the success of your strategy relies on luck, not expertise. Red or black; odd or even; pick a number. The lure of winning may cause you to bet high and fast, but the risk of losing could cost you everything.

Did you know?
Business Intelligence Solutions aren’t just for large companies.
Tools like IBM Cognos Express are tailored specifically for medium to small sized business
Visit egforit’s Buy A Licence site to learn more

With Automation
Now picture a system where data organisation and visualisation leads seamlessly into analysis. Expertly developed tools analyse and report on your data,helping you investigate and understand your data on a whole new level – not just what happened and when, but why and how. You can access these tools on premise, on cloud or mobile, collaborating with other decision makers on reports built on data you can trust. These tools help you develop and deploy strategic plans and forecasts, dynamically linking metrics to your actions and objectives to assess profitability in real time. These educated predictions for project outcomes empowers you to make plans and budgets with reduced risks and greatly improved return on your BI investment.

Unified BI platforms such as IBM Cognos Tm1 offer a powerful one-stop-shop for strategic business planning and forecasting, streamlining the planning cycle from start to finish. It’s just one of many analytics tools out there, that can aid in the transformation of your business critical data into careful predictions and forecasts on which you can base your key decisions.

Empowered & Informed Decision Making

Business Intelligence is a critical process for business growth and success. Automation doesn’t just enhance Business Intelligence, it facilitates it. Without automation many of these processes aren’t intelligence at all, just guesswork.

Guessing your way through business decisions can land you in all kinds of trouble, costing time, money and resources. For some businesses, these unsuccessful gambles are massive blows to growth and for others it’s the end of business entirely.

Can you afford the risk of guessing?

The road to successful business intelligence and strategy starts with asking the right questions and egforit are ready to provide the answers.

Take Control of Your
Business Today

Want to read the whole series?

• Part 1: What is Business Process Automation?

• Part 2: Improving Internal communication & processes

• Part 3: Streamlining Customer Service & Management

• Part 4: Enhancing Admin & HR Processes

• Part 5: Developing Insights & Business Intelligence

For 25 years egforit Software has delivered quality business software & data solutions from within the Egypt , middle east. If you would like to talk to us about a business intelligence solution, software solution or any IT project you need to deliver successfully, please contact us.

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egforit’s partner IBM set the business standards for Business Intelligence for many years. The groundbreaking IBM Cognos range had unbeatable BI performance and for so long it was the go-to choice of IT specialists. Yet the last major release, Cognos 10, was five years ago. That’s a very long time in business intelligence. New trends are shaping the industry and many new competitors have emerged.

To keep in the BI game IBM needed to deliver something special, and they may have done just that. A new look, new focus release, Cognos Analytics aims to breathe new life into IBMs flagship BI range. Tweaking the name to ‘IBM Cognos Analytics’ and dropping the version number (Cognos 11) are only the tip of the iceberg.

So, what changes have IBM made, and is this the release Business users have been waiting for?

egforit Analytical Insights

IBM’s key move is to directly empower business and enterprise users.

The positive impact of Cognos Analytics is being felt by egforits’ IBM Business Intelligence clients. Early reports say that the new simplified interface is more user-friendly.

Those in business focused roles feel they now have more control with far less reliance on the IT department.

IBM has managed to do this by focusing on three core areas:

• An improved User Interface
• More efficient data discovery
• Making BI truly self-service

If your company is considering a Business Analytics Solution but had written off IBM as too complex or cumbersome it would be wise to look again.

Speak to our Cognos Team today and find out how you can enhance your business by switching to IBM Cognos Analytics

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