Basic components

IBM Cognos 8 Planning — is a universal solution for strategic (long-term) operational and financial planning and forecasting for organizations and company groups. The system is designed for financial planning specialists who do not have programming skills. IT-specialists are not required for the planning model management.

IBM Cognos 8 Planning integrates operational and financial planning in real-time and offers wide opportunities for plan\actual analysis due to the support of different sources of actual data, including ERP system financial modules, data storages based on various DBMS, etc. Administration functions allow the liability distribution within the planning process based on business roles, territories or a relation to this or that business department in one single unified and secure planning environment.

IBM Cognos 8 Planning allows creation of unified, interrelated business models for organizations of any level and size. It also provides wide opportunities for creation, comparison and estimation of commercial scenarios, conjuncture, business factors, and prerequisites. By applying IBM Cognos 8 Planning and IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence and/or IBM Cognos TM1 tools the enterprises get wide possibilities to create various reports and to analyze planned and actual data.

Functional possibilities and features:

• Flexible and easy to modify planning models;
• Models’ visual design and display;
• Wide analysis opportunities (including “what-if” analysis);
• Multi-versions for budgets and plans;
• Support of different planning types;
• Support of financial and quantitative data;
• User-friendly personal data input interface;
• Support of plan approval and confirmation processes;
• Possibility for off-line operations in data entry and correction modes;
• Possibility to work entirely via Microsoft Excel interface;
• Support of wide range of actual data sources;
• User actions control and audit;
• Full integration with other IBM Cognos 8 Performance Management components, including report and analysis tools.

IBM Cognos Controller — is a complex solution for the automation of financial consolidation and generation of consolidated reports processes in holding structures and company groups of any size and structure. This solution is used by more than 1.4 thousand holdings and company groups all over the world.

The unique feature of IBM Cognos 8 Controller is the combination of a powerful functionality (this solution is first of all focused on large geographically distributed holdings) and simplicity to use and to implement. Like all other IBM Cognos solutions, IBM Cognos 8 Controller is managed by business users (specialists in financial consolidations) and is a fully customizable solution.

Functions and features:

• support of various international standards (different GAAP and IAS formats, as well as FASB);
• in accordance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act;
• easily definable consolidation templates, possibility to create own templates;
• wide possibilities for data import, including the support of Microsoft Excel format;
• data plausibility check during import;
• personalized data entry interface;
• convenient control over all consolidation steps, full-functional audit trail;
• more than 200 standard easy to modify report templates;
• full integration with other IBM Cognos 8 Performance Management components to expand report generation and data analysis possibilities.

IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is a complex solution for creation of a data analysis system on en enterprise level. It is used by thousands of companies all over the world and comprises almost the 40-years experience of IBM Cognos in the BI-solutions market.

IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence provides real-time monitoring of key indicators, quick report creation “upon request”, complex parametrical reports, information panels, data analysis and much more other opportunities within a single database, which is based on a modern service-oriented web platform. Like all other IBM Cognos 8 Performance Management components, IBM Cognos 8 BI is managed by business users and is a fully customizable solution.

IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence solution possesses the unique features for creating reports of any type: from the simplest, that any user can get in several minutes to the most complex both internal and provided.

• the most simple tools to create “upon request” reports;
• no limitations to the report complexity;
• multilanguage report templates;
• wide possibilities to manage reports via your own portal;
• wide delivery possibilities: portal, email, mobile devices, Microsoft Office;
• possibility to use simultaneously the data from various diverse sources, including other IBM Cognos 8BI objects;
• support of the business notification system for the generated reports.

Analysis tools of IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is based on the leading technologies IBM Cognos that has been in development since 1990. The multi-dimensional data analysis in IBM Cognos 8 BI includes:

• powerful and high speed OLAP server;
• easy to use and functional OLAP client;
• wide analysis possibilities (support of drill-down, drill-through, filters, hierarchy, sorting, asymmetric analysis, etcl);
• possibility for relational data analysis;
• cube creation process is fully automated;
• mobile client and all IBM Cognos 8 BI analysis possibilities for Microsoft Excel environment;
• support of third party OLAP-servers (including Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase).

With the help of IBM Cognos 8 BI Scorecarding tools the business users can create and modify the necessary key indicators and metrics in the designer mode; as well as to link them to reports and to build on their basis any (even the most difficult) maps in accordance with the company strategy. Key indicator management subsystem allows to:

• create indicators, metrics and maps in the designer mode;
• create maps with the help of a master;
• use Balanced Scorecard, TQM, Six Sigma, etc. methods;
• create business notifications:
• use any data sources.

IBM Cognos TM1 is the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence solution for the multidimensional analysis of especially large amounts of data in the real-time mode. This solution is based on the acquired Applix technologies. The basis of IBM Cognos TM1 is 64-bit OLAP server that works with data directly in RAM without their preprocessing. This results in the data processing speed impossible for standard analysis tools, especially in cases of large volumes of data (tens and hundreds of millions entries). The outstanding speed for processing large and enormous volumes of data combined with the powerful analysis functionality and simplicity in usage (Microsoft Excel based client is one of the analysis interfaces) make IBM Cognos TM1 the necessary solution for such industries as financial sector, telecommunications and retail trade.

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