Cognos Reporting
Reporting is one of the most important part of performance management process. As well as analysis, it guides to identifying three vital, business intelligence questions and, then, finding the answers to them. The questions are: how is a company doing (whether it's on or off track), what is the reason, and - what's the last step - what to do with that? For rationalizing the first stage, that plays an extremely important role - reporting - IBM Cognos solutions contain Query Studio and Report Studio.
The general, dictionary definition of reporting states that it's data presentation performed to allow target make more efficient decisions. That seems simple. But the real view of reporting depends on perspective - it really changes along the person.
It might be useful to notice, that more than 95% percent of companies and enterprises have already invested in different reporting solutions and use them in their everyday work. Those solutions have been supposed to support the insight and , thereupon provide better and simpler efficient decision making. Even though reporting is so common and widely used, many of already implemented solutions do not really meet the expectations. Their work (and the results they reach) are far less efficient than it's possible. Therefore, customers are augmented with additional tasks to correct the reports and make them useful enough. As a consequence, reporting itself absorbs too much time, effort, and money than it should, changing the priorities. Necessity is a solution, that supports reporting at its bests. It's thought, that Cognos is one of such solutions.
The phenomenon of reporting
The same as in cases of other automation and customization tools. Due to the a rapid growth of data importance, recent management aspire to decision making acceleration and increasing efficiency. New reporting was thought to challenge that goals, as it provides deeper insights into past and recent company performance. Basing on that, managers have a great facilitation in planning company's future, predicting performance, and preventing losses. As it's generally a role of the whole business intelligence, reporting still plays its most important part.
The choice of best reporting solution depends on a few factors, which defining is indispensable for recognizing the company's requirements.
- What does reporting exactly mean to a customers?
- How do they precise their needs?
- How do they want their reports to look like?
- For whom do they want to create reports?
- What is a point of these reports? How are they going to use them?
It's important that both sides - business and IT users - answer the questions above. A comparison of different expectations might help finding the best compromise.
What is wrong with already implemented reporting solutions?
Let's trace an ordinary example. Business unit come across the problem and need to find the "why is that?" answer. Reporting specialists follow their needs to the IT department, where - finally - the report is being prepared basing on owned data. After that, the report is sent back to the orderer. And there start the troubles.
Even though the IT prepares as good report as it's possible, they do not know its reason - the accurate look of the "why?" question. Therefore, the report cannot exactly fit the business unit requirements. Furthermore, all the additional activities, engaging different specialists, multiplied expectations explaining take a lot of time. Time, during which, market conditions change, performance differentiates and situation might significantly turnover. As a consequence, the question itself remains often unanswered and - what's more - the response is wrong and out-of-date.
What has changed?
Even though, business evolves every day, a few change trends are the most significant. The first, and probably the most important thing is business speed. Easier data flow and its higher importance have caused that business users can no longer wait a few days for the report. The time needed for decision making must have been maximally shortened. The second, the meaning of IT resources has been dramatically reduced, due to money limits. Finally, changed the dimension of most businesses - nowadays, former local businesses offer their services in every part of the world, therefore easier data and decision sharing must be provided.
Nowadays, the cooperation of IT and business managers is much closer. Thank to that, the report preparing process lasts shorter and demands significantly less iterative tasks. That results in faster and more accurate reports. Furthermore, the business units do not have to depend on data stored by IT - they have their own resources, that reports might be based on. Then, consumers want reports in different - PDAs, Excel, PDFs - formats. All in all, the need is common. Organizations want a system able to generate reports readable for every consumer they need - independently on consumer's location, time flexibility and format preferences.
Next, across the organization, different types of information and different styles of communication are needed. Other way an employee reports to his corporate officer, and other way he exchanges information with coworkers. As a consequence, an information flow across the organization has a critical meaning.
Business aspires to as high simplicity as possible. What if follows is a need of rapid access to all kinds of information independently on their location and complexity, so employees are able to make responsible decisions immediately. That means that most of decision making process should be possible to be done by business units themselves - without engaging IT. All in all, great diversification of users' requirements comes out from different ways of understanding reporting process.
Reporting styles
The basic difference between IBM Cognos and other reporting solutions vendors is a possibility of using different reporting styles. It's come out that many departments across the organization have their own reporting preferences, therefore - to agree them all - the best would be a one tool offering many styles rather than many tools with one style.
- The first, and the most common reporting style is called managed reporting. A report, created by IT, is developed further to different stakeholders, who then personalize data they got. Using diversified filters and prompts, they can finally receive the information they really wanted. Sales report is its good example - IT share link on a weekly basis, then every customer might customize which products, where sold, what income generated, et cetera, he prefers to compare. Managed reporting might be widely used, due to its personalization options.
- Second style is preferred usually by operation and line managers, and senior managers, as well. This style reports are being created by professional authors (often from IT). The feature characterizing these reports is their clarity - they're created in a way that allows a customer find what he needs almost immediately. These reports apply to operational database, pointing out the performance. And - the last - they're called transactional and operational reports.
- Next is a statement report style. Indeed, it's a financial report, but it doesn't necessarily provide any financial intelligence. These reports - created usually by someone from the business units - contain all the useful information - detailed financial data, assets, expenses, liabilities and so on.
- Production reports contain a number of characteristics and diversified volumes. Made by professional authors, production reports demand fulltime printer readiness. The best example of production reports is Visa statement.
- Finally, there are also ad hoc reports. Its flexibility of form makes it significantly different from the other styles. Ad hoc reports are prepared only when such a need comes out - they're not daily, weekly, or even monthly prepared. If a customer need - he might prepare an ad hoc report once a year, but also five reports a day. Ad hoc reports are concentrated accurately on finding answer to a concrete question. Then, they may be deleted or sent further, as well. There's no rule. These reports often demand including data from diversified sources. Also, a high formatting discretion is important - user has to be enabled to find the answers he needs as soon as possible, without struggling with complicated formatting. Therefore, IT is very rarely involved in preparing ad hoc reports - that would cost too much time. Thereupon, this kind reports are usually created by business managers for business managers.
To sum up:
| Reporting style | Features |
|---|---|
| Managed reports |
|
| Operational and transactional reports |
|
| Statement reports |
|
| Production reports |
|
| Business ad hoc reports |
|
How cognos meets these expectations?
What makes it one of the best solutions?
A few things. Once prepared report might be easy shared, and open and read, then modified everywhere. A compatibility with diversified formats. And - what's probably the most convincing - the ability of preparing all styles reports and migrating data among them.
What does it mean in practice?
First of all, once made report might be consumed everywhere - report developer doesn't have to think about the format he saves his results in. Across Cognos, every user can read documents prepared in every format, therefore data transforming problems (and following it delays) stop existing. Cognos supports delivering information, not the documents themselves. Thereupon, the receiver of the report might read it anywhere he wants - independently if it's PDA, Excel, et cetera. It results in real concentration on the information included in the report, not on its form. About rest cares Cognos. What does it result in? For business, it is a significant reduction of business intelligence costs. Not only thinking about money. That's also very important save of a time - preparing one report instead of many in different formats, reduces the time that passes since asking a question till finding a proper answer - that results in more actual data. Furthermore, less people are involved in doing single task.
Second think applies to ad hoc reports. Surely, their making is facilitated by Cognos ad hoc reporting capability, but the best thing starts a while later. Manager finds the answer he was looking for and, then start thinking, what to do with the report he prepared. While he finds it useful for other people in organization, sharing the report is almost trouble-free. An author forwards his report to IT and ask them to turn it into a professional looking and readable for all one. It takes one minute. In opposite to other, much more diversified solutions, which rebuilding the report in, demands almost starting the whole work from the beginning. That once again points out how important a good consolidation and synchronization are.
Along compatibility with differentiated file formats, come diversified reporting styles. All supported by a one tool. With Cognos, you'll never have to fit your questions to program's abilities. Cognos lets you turn the report in a way that best fits your question's requirements.
Next, the complexity was strongly reduced. Thereupon, users more rarely have to ask IT for help. More and more customers may prepare the reports themselves, what results in time reduction and, also relieves IT departments. Then, what's connected, data presented in reports is much more timely. The waiting for the report has been maximally reduced, therefore decision making is more efficient than ever before. Moreover, general, but complete reports enable a total end to end view - creating a few separate reports is no longer necessary.
One more thing - let me summarize the information in a word. Business intelligence might be simplified into answering three questions. Two of them - how and why - might be supported by computer. Reporting - presenting processed information and data - applies to the first of them - how is a company doing?
There are a few (mentioned five, but certainly it's possible to find another) styles of reporting. Their choice depends on a customer requirements. The things that diversify reporting styles are their complexity, visibility, generality, accuracy, timeliness, and so on. The more users, the more differentiated expectations, therefore a solution able to agree all of them is a necessity. Ladies and gentlemen, please kindly welcome IBM Cognos 8.