BI for Professional Users
Learn how everyone from executives, professional users, business managers, analysts, to casual users can to be a part of the report development cycle.

BI for Business Users
Find out how the flexible access to information inherent in IBM Cognos 8 BI gives users the answers they need regardless of location or environment.

Five Steps to Better BI System Management
Understanding your BI system to resolve issues and adapt to change.

Building the Case for Business Intelligence ROI in a Turbulent Economy
Six tactics you can use by author Dave Kasabian from Pervasive Performance Group.

Get more from BI by understanding your analysis needs
See why companywide BI deployment that adapts to the analysis needs and styles of key sets of users within the organization is the key to unlocking the true potential of BI.

Improving confidence by increasing understanding in information
Read how organizations with a baseline of data management maturity will get better value from their BI investments and how they are also more likely to outperform organizations less mature in data management.

Maintain momentum by showcasing your BI initiative
The best way to keep the momentum going and get the troops on board is to showcase your BI initiative – communicate success and demonstrate value, and keep on doing it.

Metrics and dimensions in IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Performance
This document provides reference material for IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Performance. It provides details on the metrics that are available in reports within the application, as well as the dimensions by which the metrics can be viewed.

Scorecarding best practices
Choosing metrics and setting targets for performance management.

Scorecarding concepts: How to drive strategy and manage performance
This IBM Cognos® white paper explains the common types of scorecards, the information they can present, some reasons they sometimes fail and the critical concepts for success.

Build or Buy: Selecting an Analytic Application
From simply harnessing the untapped potential of emerging markets, success in the global economy now involves a business view that demands greater organization and market integration on a global scale.

IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
Two industry leaders, one powerful result.

Testing the 'Typical BI Day'
Scalability testing of an IBM Cognos 8 BI enterprise deployment. Conducted at the IBM Center for Business Partners.

Building a Business Intelligence Competency Center
Establishing a culture of best practice.

BI agenda for midsize organizations
Six strategies for success.

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence for IBM System z
Read how operational business intelligence is emerging as a valuable adjunct to the typical data warehouse infrastructure.

Picturing Performance Dashboards and Scorecards
This white paper outlines the three types of dashboards (operational, tactical, strategic) as described by TDWI's Wayne Eckerson and illustrates how to build them using IBM Cognos Now! and IBM Cognos 8 BI. Explains the role of dashboarding in a performance management deployment. Illustrations.

Visual Communication: Core Design Principles for Displaying Quantitative Information
Learn to build reports that communicate more clearly, based on the latest research into perception and understanding. Part 1 of a 3-part series by Stephen Few.

Why move to IBM Cognos 8 BI PowerPlay?
Read why organizations should consider moving up to the IBM Cognos 8 BI platform to take advantage of its full range of BI capabilities (dashboards, scorecards, reporting, analysis, planning).

IBM Cognos 8 BI Software for use with SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator
Learn about the seamless integration between IBM Cognos 8 BI And SAP BW Data Accelerator and read the performance test results.

BI Strategies Series: Broad User Adoption
This paper describes in order to attain broad user adoption of your BI implementation, an enterprise-wide, standards-based approach is one of the best ways to make that happen.

Dimension Management
Learn how to maintain, govern, and share data hierarchies.

How IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence meets the needs of financial and business analysts
Business intelligence for business & financial analysts. Break down barriers for more meaningful analysis.

Visual Pattern Recognition: Meaningful Patterns in Quantitative Business Information
Bar chart or line graph? This paper examines the data patterns and relationships common in most business reports and provides practical guidelines for communicating these relationships effectively using points, lines, and bars. Part 2 of a 3-part series by Stephen Few.

Data Visualization: Past, Present, and future
Spanning more than 2,000 years of recorded human history, this paper examines the birth and evolution of data visualization, from early Egyptian tables used to organize astronomical information through to bar charts, treemaps, and geo-spatial visualization tools (such as Google Earth). Part 3 of a 3-part series by Stephen Few.

Rapid Scorecarding for financial services
Find out the value of scorecarding and the five key steps to creating an effective one.

The Full Promise of Business Intelligence
Read about the value of a Web Services architecture, how IBM Cognos 8 BI provides all capabilities to all users, and using all data, and how IBM Cognos 8 BI provides a foundation for performance management.

Seven Steps to Flawless Business Intelligence
Gartner has identified the “Fatal Flaws” that prevent organizations from realizing the promise of BI. Here are seven steps you can take with IBM Cognos 8 BI to avoid making them in your organization.

The Right Architecture for Business Intelligence
Read why the right architecture is a key factor in successful BI deployments and how the single, open IBM Cognos 8 BI architecture can reduce IT workload, improve productivity, and make better use of your IT budget.

A Broad Information Reach: the Gateway to Information Management
Learn how to access all of your data, in any format and location, and turn it into information that you can trust to manage your performance.

Choosing a Standard for BI and Reporting
Read about the factors to consider in standardizing your BI, the importance of TCO, and why IBM Cognos 8 BI is the only choice for BI standardization.

Reporting for Midsize Companies
Learn the benefits of a single reporting solution for all users, all types of reports, and all data sources.

Reporting with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
Read how IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence delivers complete reporting to all users with one business intelligence product—to make it simpler, faster, and easier to manage.

The Strategic Importance of OLAP and Multidimensional Analysis
Read how OLAP and multidimensional analysis provides organizations with the deep business insight needed to make more informed decisions.

Scorecarding with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
Read why organizations struggle with alignment and accountability; how scorecarding overcomes these challenges, and how you can use IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence to enable a scorecarding system in your organization.

Business Event Management
Learn how BEM improves decision-making and how using IBM Cognos 8 BI in conjunction with BEM systems can drive higher performance.

Reporting on Powercubes®
Read how IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence reporting integrates with PowerPlay to provide high-definition reporting on the comprehensive business information stored in PowerCubes.

Managing the Complexity of Business Change
Read about the Adaptive Application Framework.

What's new in IBM Cognos 8 BI

Dashboarding

Business Viewpoint

Planning

Business Analytics

IBM Cognos 8 Platform

Service-Oriented Architecture

Integrating, Modeling and Managing Data

System Management

Data Management

Data Security

Operational Business Intelligence

Providing decision-makers with up-to-date visibility into operations
Learn to use cases for operational BI; The difference between enterprise BI and operational BI; Criteria for a successful operational BI deployment.

Enterprise Business Intelligence

The Watertight Organization: Plug the leaks draining money with IBM Cognos Performance Applications
This business-focused paper describes how Cognos Performance Applications can plug leaks that drain money and other resources from a business.

IBM Cognos Customer Analytics: Know Your Customers
Gain clear insight into which of your customers are of most value to you.

Spreadsheet Planning: Rough Road Ahead
Read how using spreadsheets for planning can cost you more than lost productivity, but can actually cast doubt on the integrity of plans.

Analyst Reports

The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008
The Forrester Wave notes that 'IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects maintain their leadership positions' in the BI Platforms market, and that "IBM Cognos provides one of the most modern and scalable BI environments".

BARC Report - Organization of Business Intelligence
From IC. Discover the five factors that lead to pervasive BI, such as user training, executive support, data governance and the presence of a performance management methodology.

IDC Case Study - Pervasive BI at The School District of Palm Beach
Discover the internal and external factors that drove PBCSD to re-evaluate its decision-making processes and BI technology and the benefits of moving to IBM Cognos 8 Business intelligence.

IDC Case Study - The Path Toward Pervasive Business Intelligence
Discover why the Steak n Shake restaurant chain chose to re-evaluate its decision-making processes and support systems and its decision to move toward pervasive business intelligence.

Nucleus ROI Case Study - IBM Cognos U.S. Army
Read how The United States Army’s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center saw an ROI of 146% and payback in 1.5 years by upgrading to IBM Cognos 8 BI version 3 and creating a competency center for the propagation and standardization of BI-related best practices.

Briefs

Metadata and IBM Cognos 8 BI
Read how IBM Cognos Framework Manager, the powerful metadata administration tool of IBM Cognos 8 BI, saves time and resources for IT by re-using existing models without having to redesign and develop reports and analyses, and by applying consistent business rules, dimensions, and calculations to all your enterprise data.

Multilingual Reporting with IBM Cognos 8 BI
Read how to use the multilingual capabilities in IBM Cognos 8 BI to empower your global enterprise, reduce your IT workload, lower your total cost of ownership for BI software, and aggressively compete in the global marketplace.

IBM Content Discovery for Business Intelligence
Take one step closer to realizing the vision of "BI for everyone", using an open framework to build applications that process information to find latent meaning, relationships and relevant facts hidden in unstructured text.