IBM Cognos has helped improve the quality of our KPIs because we can now deliver data and reports without human intervention.

We are using the self-service capabilities for business users in the new version and it is a blessing to us because now we don't feel any pain with regards to the IT department. We can use the full functionality and develop dashboards without the help of the IT people and without having to start up a whole new project. This is very important because we can multiply the results. With no bottleneck coming from the IT department, we reduce the cost of improving our KPIs.

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Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly.

With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions.

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It has improved our credit department. They can get information quickly about client debts, and we've seen a yield through this solution. In addition, we combine sources like sales and production and have multiple reports that our team receives.

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IBM Cognos did provide information and data that was utilized by the lines of businesses, in order to make their business decisions. It was a database of record information type reporting, that was disseminated out into the different lines and they made their business decisions based on that data.

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• Active Reports: More detailed data is available to sales reps and management. The reports are configured for the rep/manager role with a focus on their own territory/market data. The reports are delivered to email, so there is no difficult and lengthy navigation to get the data to the recipient. The ease of use and access meant that more of the audience was utilizing the reports. The amount of inquiries, issues, and complaints was greatly reduced. We received a great response from everyone involved.
• Self Service: The demand for reports was much greater than our resources could provide. Being able to produce self-service models and deliver tools such as Workspace and Workspace Advanced was a huge benefit to my team and to the company as a whole. The fact that we could modify the current models with self-service style packages helped us to provide consistent, dependable solutions without having to “reinvent the wheel”.

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I have many clients using Cognos for their ad-hoc query and standardized reporting needs. It fits the category of an “enterprise” business intelligence platform very well. It also integrates seamlessly with IBM’s Cognos TM1 financial performance management solution for corporate planning, budgeting, and forecasting needs.

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IBM Cognos Transformer cubes are one of the widely used OLAP data sources. Normally, a PowerCube contains calculated and aggregated data that is organized as dimensions and measures, which can be viewed and analyzed in Analysis Studio and Report Studio (versions 10). Users find it easy to use and quick to access aggregated summary data which help in better analysis. IBM Cognos PowerCube data is static, and building a PowerCube naturally becomes a repetitive process. At my work place, cube data is refreshed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Since the data volume and the number of dimensions and measures in the cube are big, the build process takes 3-4 hours to complete. In order to ensure the most benefit from the cube, having a scheduled and automated cube build is essential.

Deployment and Activation a new feature which was introduced in version 8.4 that allows the cube file to be automatically copied over to a specified local or network location, activated and/or archived depending on the requirements.

Basically one needs to set the Deploy properties on the .mdl file using Transformer.

– Deployment Strategy: select the “Copy to available locations, then activate” option. This will copy the cube .mdc file to target server location.

– After building the cube: select “Automatically copy and active”.

– Deployment location: add a path for production and/or a place that .mdc file should be deployed too. You can select multiple locations. For instance, the same cube may be deployed to both the Development and Production servers.

– Check “Enable automatic PowerCubes deletion”

Once the changes are made, we need to use the Cognos Transformer command line is capable of performing certain modeling and cube-building tasks on the Windows, UNIX or Linux platforms.

The general syntax for using windows command line is as follows:

cogtr -n -lcognostr10=

Notice that after the cube build completes, Transformer automatically deploys and activates the newly generated cube. It doesn’t require any changes to the data source connection. The live cube swap is effective immediately.

Just a few more steps (on Windows environment), you can now schedule the cube build via a job scheduler application, such as Windows Scheduled Tasks. Here once the ETL process is complete, a Flag file would be sent to Transformer box to trigger the cube builds. You will not need to manually rebuild or deploy the cube any more as everything will be done automatically on schedule.

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It is serving as the single source of truth, consolidating information from various systems.

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This solution has provided us with a single control tool, which allows us to easily provide reports for the different sections of our banking environment.

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I’m a freelancer; I am a consultant. I’ve helped hundreds of customers to better understand their business and to make better decisions.

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1. It helps us deliver information to people in different functions. 
2. It is possible to have people make their own reports, so they have service functionality.

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The tool identifies trends and anomalies before it is too late, i.e., before the end-of-the-year results. This prevents customers from getting angry and provides savings opportunities.

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This software identifies normal product sales, margins and costing, which are basic key performance indicators. We then use this to identify service of customers and vendors. Recently “COST TO SERVE” reporting has been a “HOT” supply chain tool because this identifies the business activities and overhead costs. This reporting is NOT your (ABC) activity-based costing reporting, but a mixture of costing drivers, which usually provides surprising results.

We have also seen improvements in manufacturing processes because the tool identifies bottlenecks quickly. Most recently, the ability to have mobile reporting to our user site has been very important to drive down information.

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We have several reports that users access on a daily basis. We have also created multiple custom solutions to access reports from within an external application, as well as execute and deliver reports in a batch to a network location.

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• Better collaboration

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We use it mainly to augment / replace the reporting deficiencies in the reporting tools that ship with the vendor products.

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The product takes away the need for mundane reporting via Excel spreadsheets freeing up the business areas to concentrate on growing the business.

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With BI in place, our staffing department is able to review staff assignment and quickly adjust resources in near real time.

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Currently, we just use it for user-requested reports. It has more features that, if we had the manpower, we could better set up the tool so users could do their own reporting. IT here are just getting around to letting users do their own reporting.

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We are able to automate annual reports.

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This product has improved the way our organization and our customers truly interact with information, really putting the capabilities into the hands of the key decision makers and not having to rely on IT resources that do not have the business knowledge to do this for them; true self-service analytics.

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The upgraded visualizations and more user-friendly interface have increased the acceptance rate of this tool.

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It has improved things in a lot of areas, such as in better decision making for the company. People are relying more on the reports coming out of Cognos, or a BI tool, rather than their own spec sheets. It gives them time to invest in other activities.

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Risk analytical reporting has become easy as there is more compatibility. Also, in the future, a Cognos analytic version will be launched that works well with advanced features like cloud, big data and machine learning (Watson analytics).

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• We are able to rapidly communicate financial reporting and statements for reconciliation purposes.
• People are able to self serve with the provided authoring tools.

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It results in less manual work, process performance improvement and improved real-time data availability.

It is also possible to check the report utilisation via Cognos audit reports.

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We are able to launch Cognos reporting across thousands of stores and have them access the status of their stores and products.

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We have been able to provide managed data sources and packages to end users. They can use this content to do their own reporting without IT assistance.

It is similar to a competency center, in which IT will help resolve or work on complex requirements or projects.

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We developed sophisticated reports in the fundraising area, which pulls in data from many different databases and presents graphs, charts and summary financial information over any time period that the person wants to see. This set of reports are run or used on average 15,000 times per month by hundreds of end users.

Another example is building financial data using cubes. The cubes contain 11+ years of financial data and we have the add-in for Microsoft Excel, which allows end users to build their own ad-hoc reports for trending and analysis.

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This product has a wide variety of options to present data. The solution has improved our organization in the following ways:

• Builds different kinds of report like lists, crosstabs, and charts.
• Sends the report output to users.
• Offers mobile dashboard options. Client executives and directors can pull the reports to their mobile phones. They can view all kinds of data related to their organization.

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Moving away from a manual, Excel-based consolidation to a largely automated one has enabled us to reduce our reporting timelines.

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Our company was able to do a profitability analysis previously unavailable to us due to the nature of our data. We were able to save approximately $650k per year after cutting unprofitable areas of business.

Additionally, Cognos BI provides us "one source of the truth." Everyone uses the same data and can access the same reports, so everyone is on the same page.

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• Extremely fast solution using IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes. Aggregate aware querying providing a fast-on-fast solution (in combo with Netezza). In addition, the interactive viewer of Cognos Analytics and dashboards provide for a unprecedented experience of key users with their data, enabling them to change visualizations on the fly, applying different sorts, filters, etc. This enables them to do further analysis than what is possible with a predefined application.
• Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive.
• Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.
• Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc.

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BI has allowed our product to become open ended as far as the client data is concerned. We have proprietary reporting that is standardized but doesn’t capture everything. BI expands that functionality to include any and all customization a client may have and still get their data.

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It has provided visibility into our customers; specifically, it has given us insight into high-value customers.

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After centralizing the data, the people using the product have the ability to view all the numbers through one single platform. It is also providing them the information they need in order to make their business decisions.  

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Every day-to-day decision is driven by data. With this tool, we are able to provide it to relevant parties. They are happy with the data and the way it is presented.

We have users who can build ad-hoc reports on their own. They don't have to reach out to technical teams. This reduces dependencies and eliminates the turn-around time.

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We get to create customized solutions for many users. In our organization, we reach 40% of the employees with information from the data warehouse.

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It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information.

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Cognos software accesses several data sources and runs on major IBM platforms to help your business get the consistent data it needs. Also, Cognos software provides native interfaces to major ERP and legacy systems for fast access.

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It has allowed end users to explore data without having to copy it into Excel first.

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This BI tool helped automate and centralize production reports. It provided intuitive navigation for end users. It helped to positively change the reporting landscape while addressing customer needs View full review »

Dashboards and reports bring all the needed figures to our direction on a daily basis and it's available from various devices (apple, android, windows 8.) View full review »

This product has helped to provide basic reporting for reducing manual work as well as some dashboard visualizations for executives to see what's going on in one glance.

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I have been a business intelligence and analytics consultant for 15 years and I have always provided value to my customers.

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Our client was very unhappy with the v10 and earlier UX. They wanted something "sexy". Our UX team came up with a very pleasing design mock-up of the dashboards using Marvel (www.marvelapp.com/1c19h7d). I despaired that it couldn't be done in v10.2.2. However, we got v11.0.4 installed, and amazingly I was able to get very close to the "sexy" UX the client wanted! This is being done using the reports functionality of Cognos Analytics (Report Studio + Workspace Advanced + Analytics Studio + Query Studio all in one, but with a better UX).

Also, the tool UX is more more easily customised in this version.

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The added power of Excel with Cognos TM1 allows my company to generate dynamic Excel-based reports to our customers much faster with the look and feel of Excel that they are accustomed to.

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We reduced IT requests for reporting and improved reports standards. High quality reports.
We used templates and reuse components so it's easy to change lots of report quickly.

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We are a Cognos-only training and consulting company so our business depends on Cognos.

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The use of ad-hoc tools, like Workspace, has reduced the number of design requests, freeing the reporting team for more pressing and difficult problems.

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Report readiness has really improved! Cognos provides multiple tools to help create reports. That helps provide clients with what they need ASAP!

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• Allowed the organizations I've worked for to standardize the information they deliver to hundreds of decision makers.
• Allowed insight into the operations and trends of the business with speed and accuracy.
• The toolset allows you to create a framework to deliver a range of BI solutions. These scale from high level strategic dashboards with key performance indicators to tactical and operational reporting for the day-to-day running of business activities.

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It provides us with a wide range of professional report types through the central report designer tool, Report Studio. Standard reports, used through the whole international organization, have been made with user security to personalize the report output.

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For our clients, this product helps them make decisions faster, based on high-quality data.

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IBM Cognos is a Decision Supports Tool that draws an organization's picture and gives you a general scene overview of your organization.

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It enables me to see trends of data we have from different angles and each end-user can run ad-hoc queries themselves.

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I work with a few organizations. IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team. For example, we know which offers work and which offers don't. We've got a very good record of that. We have the very good ability to check the meetings of the actual salespeople. When they are made, who is in them, how effective the meetings were compared to what we estimated. It's very, very good on that level.

Additionally, the budget control is very good. We get triggers once a budget is crossed. It creates and sends an email to the person who needs to know, "Hey, you're in trouble. Basically, you've crossed the line." Which a lot of times you don't realize. You have a team of 20 people and the manager gets an email if somebody has done something or there's a problem, and it gives them a very strong awareness.

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• It gave the organization a better insight in the quality of the data, which in many ways was poor.
• It gave the call center the possibility to monitor its effectiveness and efficiency a lot better.

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This product has made enhancements in building dashboards, incorporated changes to make it easier for the business users to import and use their metadata to do analysis. That is included in Cognos Analytics version 11. It is more user friendly and in some areas, you do not necessarily depend upon IT to build reports. There is one tool like Cognos Workspace Advanced, which is the hybrid of Query, Report and Analysis Studio.

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• We have used this tool to retrieve data from the SQL Server, SSIS packages, and Oracle tables/views.
• We have built the FM model by creating views or query subjects as needed. Different reports can come from one model. This was used for relational and dimensional reports.
• We have created cubes which were built in Cognos transformer and then used as a data source in the model. This was used for creating dimensional reports using Kimball methodology (dimensional and fact tables). The surrogate keys were built by another developer using the IBM data modeler or SQL/Oracle. The dimensional model was used to create robust dashboards using the advanced workspace.
• We have used IBM Cognos Administration to deploy the reports/packages from one environment to another. Drilling through reports was used to go down to granular reports. Reports were given access per their Cognos role or LDAP access. (MS Active Directory was set up by another developer.) Different packages, such as the audit package, can give detailed information about the metadata.
• The entire process can be created in the IBM tool from source, to reporting, to administration.

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• Automating common reports
• Standardizing metrics and reports utilized through the company
• Enabling efficiency through reducing manual report creation via Excel
• Offline data source use

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Creating dashboards for sales and suppliers for about of 1.4 billion EGP of income and about 55 distribution locations

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Cognos Analytics allows our business the freedom of movement and self-sufficiency we require, while keeping the IT team happy that information is secure and easily sharable. A light data modelling tool allows business users to source and analyse their own data in a managed environment. This is the only tool I know of that keeps both business and IT teams happy.

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It gave the organisation the possibility to have a closer look a the data in a more organized way. If they would have had the stability to see it through, they probably would have required insights in their (in)efficiencies that greatly would have improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the core activities (it was a callcenter).

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As a consultant, I have seen many cases where Cognos has helped organizations to increase business performance, and support managers in decision making.

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This solution has helped us in the distribution of reporting content to one hundred and fifty users. It has also helped in the management of self-service BI.

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The organization was able to:

• Reduce the reporting efforts by 50%.
• Have more insightful reports.

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Centralised, balanced, scorecard-based dashboards with drill-through to detailed OLAP; datawarehouse; and operational reports keep the organisation focused on KPIs.

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We shared the molap cube file, which means can do analyses on their desktop.

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We're thinking about a different product.

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As a consultant, I've had the pleasure of working with a very wide range of clients with very specific needs. So far, Cognos has not failed to meet their needs, and surpass their expectations. The beautiful thing about Cognos is its flexibility.

One client, a government research organization, uses the tool to track specific incidents. When certain criteria occur, specific reports should be emailed. An SMS should be delivered. The researchers needed to be able to view the incidents from as many different perspectives as possible, and quickly go from one perspective to another without losing the context. Dynamic filtering and linking prevailed here.

Another client wanted to expose Cognos to the general public, embedding report outputs in their own portal system. This required a heavy security presence, with redundant levels of data and object security. Even if a report developer did leave a hole in the report, malicious end-users would never be able to get any data they weren't permitted to see. Cognos withstood the probing of professional pen-testers with admirable results.

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IBM Cognos has allowed our company to manage all the data we generate and helped us improve the results.

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I will provide customer examples:

• Time savings on report creation and distribution
• Real-time data analytics to make real-time decisions to make or save money
• Eliminated silos of information for a true enterprise solution
• Offline reporting for executives
• Real-time dashboards
• Many others

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Any area for which developer has requirements can be improved, streamlined e.g. Marketing, Compliance, Surveillance, Hotel Accounting, Casino Accounting .

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It's very easy to use. You can use cubes, you can create reports and you can create dashboards in it. It's all in one. Also, the integration on Cognos Analytics with Cognos IT Analytics also is better. 

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It allows manually derived reporting via the DB and excel dumps to automated reports and dashboards.

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I have not worked for an organization who is a direct beneficiary of the product. I have worked for vendor companies who have implementation expertise or have worked for OEM.

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There've been no improvements since implementation.

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It forced us to look into the data warehousing of our entire existing products that we were using to better evaluate data retrieval.

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Cube reporting functionality has been simplified for analyzing daily productivity.

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Dashboarding presentations of key metrics.

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The product is the main reporting tool for our clients.

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I implement projects using the product, and every time we implement we end up discovering a lot of unaccounted cash that was either being paid to the wrong person or extra money being paid which was unaccounted for. This helps auditing the sales personnel's incentives and also analyzing what incentives show a correlation to an improved performance.

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We have the ability to create reports that monitor the organization in a very easy way.

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With Cognos we are able to present and analyze the KPI's and outcomes our hospital needs to take decisions.

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It's compatible with the whatever applications we have. That's why we got it.

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As a consultant, I build complete business decision reports with Cognos.

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Users used to have to wait long times to see information but can now view their information quickly and easily with IBM Cognos and also given the availability you can create your own reports.

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It includes a dashboard developed for use in all branches across the country. This has improved their time to acquire the proper information to make decisions on a daily basis.

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It improved sales monitoring, the enterprise business unit performance (costs, revenue, human resources, etc.) and other financial aspects. It also improved the responsibility for the data input into the transactional applications.

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Cognos gives a consistent single source answer for many users to retrieve easily. It allows for prompted value, so many questions can be answered.

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Fast KPI tracking, Complex data analysis for decision making.

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It provides enterprise-level reporting across all departments.

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