1. How does IBM Cognos 8 BI meet all the reporting needs of the professional report authors in my organization?

• A complete range of reports. Present Information in the most effective way to get the answers you need. Includes managed reporting, ad-hoc queries, production reporting, dashboards, analytical reporting, and express authoring. Whatever the need, users can publish their own way.
• Scorecarding. Create scorecards to ensure alignment, increase focus, and ensure ownership and accountability across the organization. Users can track progress against plan. They gain an at-a-glance view of performance against targets, and can drill through to underlying details.
• Analysis. Professional report authors are successful when users get fast answers to business questions. They can analyze large volumes of OLAP or relational data, and compare business performance across multiple dimensions (time, product, customer).

2. Can you use IBM Cognos 8 BI to create an environment where business users leverage the tools and information they need in one authoring environment?

• Zero-footprint, Web-based. Supports business users wherever they work, in any location.
• Intuitive, browser-based interface. Users can easily create reports by dragging and dropping data and format elements onto the page. No database logic or programming is required.
• Go! Search. Integration with enterprise search engines allows users to quickly find related company reports and information.
• A single metadata layer. Apply common business rules, dimensions, and calculations to all reporting data - so users build reports based on a single, consistent view of information.
• Heterogeneous data support. Gain a complete view of business information, so users spend less time gathering or reconciling data. They can explore any data including relational, dimensional, flat files, and XML.

3. How can users distribute reports and information to consumers in different formats and locations?

• Delivery to any consumer media. Users can publish information to any media without re-authoring - BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices, MS Office, PDAs, third-party portals, or Web pages.
• Multilingual reporting. Authors can create a single report, and deploy in more than 25 languages. IBM, is locale-sensitive, with full Unicode support.
• Event-driven BI. Automates the detection, management, and communication of time-critical business events or issues. IT can set alerts and deliver information to decision-makers anywhere.
• Bursting capabilities. Reports can be distributed quickly and efficiently to a mass audience in multiple output formats, destinations, and views.

Learn more:

• IBM Cognos 8 BI Demo: System Professional Module
• Read about IBM Cognos 8 BI capabilities