The Mississippi Management and Reporting System, an office of the Department of Finance and Administration for the State of Mississippi, has implemented a business intelligence solution from Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI). The Cognos solution helps provide access to mission-critical financial data to state government officials from over 100 different agencies.
Cognos BI is a key component of the MERLIN system, a system that supports management decisions for Mississippi state agencies, the executive branch and the Legislature. Mississippi officials use Cognos to report and analyse on key budget and economic data stored in the state`s large and complex IBM data warehouse, as well as analyse revenue sources and track expenditure patterns. Cognos also helps build and distribute key financial reports in accordance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).
"With Cognos and IBM we have been able to create a `one-stop` data shop that meets the complex and diverse requirements of our key stakeholders," said Teresa Hayes, MMRS E-government Team functional manager, State of Mississippi. "We have had tremendous success using Cognos, including improved data accuracy and consistency as well as the ability to create and distribute reports quickly and easily via the Web. The state must comply with strict reporting requirements as mandated by the Office of Fiscal Management - Cognos has allowed us to significantly reduce the manual labour and costs previously associated with that process."
"We use the MERLIN system to generate all financial reports and analysis including GAAP and GASB reporting," said Diane Langham, director, Office of Accounting, Department of Education. "We are now able to reliably and accurately analyse accounts payable data, determine activity volume across our 32 offices, and properly allocate workloads per employee. The MERLIN system has greatly improved the quality and speed of our financial reporting."
"Cognos offers the most secure, scalable, and comprehensive business intelligence solution that meets the complex requirements of our customers` e-Government initiatives," said Dave Laverty, senior vice-president, global marketing Cognos. "Cognos software provides user-friendly, zero-footprint Web-based reporting and data retrieval, a critical element to user self-service for e-government. Constituents can find information and analyse it over the Internet with guaranteed speed and reliability."
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The Mississippi Management and Reporting System (MMRS), established in 1993 under SS7-7-3, Mississippi Code of 1972, Annotated, is charged with providing automated delivery of accurate and relevant information to the State`s executives and agency managers in a form that is easily manipulated and understood. MMRS is responsible for the State of Mississippi`s enterprise budget and accounting systems and enterprise payroll and human resource systems.
The Department of Finance and Administration, as the executive branch agency for fiscal and asset management, provides services, solutions, regulations, and guidance to its customers to help improve the quality of life in Mississippi. For more information, visit the DFA Web site at www.dfa.state.ms.us. For more information about Mississippi, please visit Mississippi.gov.
Cognos
Cognos delivers software that helps companies improve business performance by enabling effective decision-making at all levels of the organization. A forerunner in defining the BI software category, Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage -- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) -- achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale.
CPM lets organisations measure execution against business strategy to ensure the two are aligned at all levels across the enterprise. Cognos provides a framework for CPM that links people, information, and decision-making processes throughout the organisation, and enables the complete management cycle with integrated software for planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and scorecarding.
Cognos serves more than 20 000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence 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.