28th January 2008
Cognos the provider of business intelligence and performance management solutions recently acquired by IBM , has launched the latest version of its popular Cognos 8 suite (Cognos 8 BI v3) which it says is designed to provide organisations with more targeted performance information across a broader and more diverse range of decision-makers, with extended modelling and administration capabilities to simplify deployment and maintenance for administrators.

Cognos 8 BI v3 is the third major release of Cognos' business intelligence flagship that was introduced in 2005. It addresses the needs of large enterprises and mid-market organizations alike as they capitalize on their ERP investments and turn data into actionable, relevant performance information for improved decision-making across industries . Cognos says that new highly targeted information delivery and improved analysis capabilities let knowledge workers, ranging from front-line managers to executives, receive strategic business information where, when and how they need it to make better decisions. New deployment and administration advances also make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage their performance management environment, while growing their user communities.

The new user capabilities of Cognos 8 BI v3 include an “Express Authoring Tool”, what Cognos calls “Business Driven modelling”, “Scorecard Portlets”, “Briefing Books” and “Self Service Personal Alerts”.

Express Authoring Mode p rovides a self-service, streamlined, purpose-built reporting interface for finance and business analysts to access financial and operational data sources and create financial, statement style reports.

Business Driven Modeling provides business groups with the ability to easily create and manage their own perspectives of performance information by creating smaller, faster data sets of very specific, relevant line of business performance information for more targeted exploration, analysis and faster decision-making.

Scorecard Portlets is a BI portal-based dashboard, which business users and executives can use to access all of their organization's relevant strategy management, scorecard information and diagrams in one comprehensive, at-a-glance view.

Briefing books, says Cognos help busy IT administrators or line of business users address special requests from senior management for a comprehensive view of performance information. Professional authors can combine different styles and formats within a single report, making it easy for executives to navigate and print multi-style, multi-page reports that contain related, critical business information.

Finally, Self-service Personal Alerts allow business users to create their own timely personalized alerts for scheduled reports, controlling when and how they receive critical performance information relevant to their specific area of responsibility.

Cognos 8 BI v3 is available direct from Cognos or its network of resellers worldwide.