Cognos, a business intelligence and performance management vendor, has announced that the Cognos Innovation Centre for Performance Management has expanded its focus to advance BI competency for the strategic application of business intelligence on an enterprise scale. This expansion is designed to help customers optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of the BI initiatives they undertake across their organisations.
The first initiative of this new focus area is helping companies launch BI Competency Centres (BICCs), where IT and business users align business objectives, technology, departmental priorities, and stakeholder needs to drive increased usage of strategic BI. Gartner projects that 50% of large enterprises will have established a primary business intelligence platform for most reporting and analysis capabilities by 2012. According to Gartner, the "standardisation of these business intelligence platforms and technologies requires business intelligence competency centres that lead the evaluation, balancing and prioritisation of business and user requirements."*
Through the Cognos Innovation Centre`s BI Competency community, customers will have access to resources designed to help them improve the value derived from business intelligence across the organisation. These include:
* Thought-leader resources and best-practices for championing and establishing an effective BICC including structure, people, process and responsibilities;
* Discovery workshops to uncover organisational readiness for a BICC;
* Peer meetings to share ideas and strategies for creating and implementing a framework for success;
* Access to a partner ecosystem with specific expertise in technology and business issues such as change management and organisation communication;
* Strategies, tips and techniques on the application of BI technology, from departmental to enterprise-wide deployments; and
* A wealth of rich content available to support expansion beyond BI to bring best practices in performance management.
Customers will be able to further leverage deep BI competency expertise through an engagement with Cognos Global Customer Services.
"To really be in control of the business, companies need an enterprise-wide strategic BI initiative," says Ton van den Dungen, manager, business intelligence and control, ENECO Energie. "We have found the best way to bridge technology with business issues and support BI throughout our company is to form a BICC. Cognos has given us a lot of support in this area already, and we look forward to the new content and knowledge-sharing opportunities through its enhanced focus on building enterprise-wide competency."
"The BICC can provide an unparalleled view of your business - that can span from the `50 000 ft view` to as `in the weeds` as you want to get; and it can do it with the flexibility to get the right information to the right person in the right time in the right manner," says Kory Upton, senior vice-president, finance, AmerUS Annuity Group. "However, C-level support is mandatory for corporate success. Learning new ways to improve our BI competency helps us build the necessary company-wide support we need to keep this unparalleled view focused and clear."
Cognos has combined its BI reporting capabilities with its enterprise planning, and financial management and control applications to create Performance Blueprints that accelerate customer solutions to typical performance management challenges across departments and across industries. In addition, more than 100 Cognos customer thought leaders have been meeting as a virtual group to study and discuss BI Competency Centres and associated proven practices for the past several months.
"The Cognos Innovation Centre for Performance Management is ideally positioned to augment its offerings with expertise in business intelligence technologies and best practices," says David McWilliam, managing director at Cognos SA. "With this expansion, customers will have immediate access to the proven practices necessary for accelerating BI success in the enterprise. In addition, both business and IT professionals will be able to tap into a network of peers to share ideas and foster new discussions to speed time to value from BI and performance management."
Further information is available at http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/index.html.
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The Cognos Innovation Centre was established in June 2004 to advance the understanding of proven performance management best-practices and enabling technologies. Staffed by experts in planning, management processes, and technology, the Innovation Centre partners with more than 500 Cognos customers, academics, partners, industry leaders, and others who want to accelerate adoption, reduce risk, and maximise the impact of technology-enabled performance management practices. Depending on their area of interest, members focus on advancing performance management practices or business intelligence competency, gaining insights from experts and peers who have experienced similar challenges and paths to success. Visit: http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/.
Cognos
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organisation`s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions - How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? - and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.
Cognos serves more than 23 000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3 000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.
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