Cognos Accelerates Enterprise Business Intelligence Standardization with New Global Customer Services Offerings
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New services provide customers with key resources, expertise to help achieve BI standardization and enterprise performance management objectives -
LAS VEGAS, COGNOS FORUM, June 26 / -- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced new Cognos Global Customer Services initiatives developed to address the growing demand from customers for enterprise-scale standardization and performance management deployments. Based on the proven Cognos Solutions Implementation Methodology, these new initiatives include a full spectrum of services, proven practices and expertise to make it easier for customers to maximize BI value, improve enterprise performance and drive user adoption.
According to a recent Gartner report: "The complexity of BI projects is increasing. New challenges are causing more organizations to seek providers with skills and proven methods that contribute to taking a more strategic approach to BI and that support an expanding use of BI tools and applications." *
"BI Standardization is critical to the success of the modern enterprise. Services play a key role in delivering this success, helping customers understand the best course of action to take, associated costs along the way, what to expect, and when," said David Pratt, vice president of global professional services at Cognos. "Our new customer success initiatives reflect our ongoing commitment to delivering the best BI product, coupled with the right people, right processes and right knowledge, all backed by leading services that deliver true business value while mitigating risk and minimizing time to ROI."
Building on its award-winning portfolio of global customer services, Cognos today announced:
Cognos Business Intelligence Competency Center Service
Many organizations are establishing Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICCs) in order to effectively bind their BI deployments to business objectives, priorities and stakeholder needs in a standard manner. The Cognos BICC Service provides a pragmatic implementation roadmap and accompanying service to help customers design, deploy and operate their own BICCs based on their unique business needs. Cognos consultants work directly with customers to either build a BICC from scratch or optimize an existing practice, helping organizations formulate a BICC vision and strategy, build awareness among key stakeholders, set program objectives and measures, establish an effective framework, and become self-sufficient through best practice knowledge transfer. For related information, please see http://cognos.com/news/releases/2006/0626_3.html
"Standardization on Cognos 8 BI coupled with a common, adaptable and repeatable framework in the form of a BICC, will both reduce the total cost of ownership and act as a positive catalyst in achieving long-term success in BI implementations," said Simon Gratton, director of business intelligence at TELUS Business Transformation.
Cognos Conversion Service
The new Cognos Conversion Service provides the tools and guidance to help organizations move their existing third-party BI applications and standardize on Cognos 8 BI. The Cognos Conversion Service includes the new Conversion Implementation Roadmap, which incorporates the experience, expertise, tools and proven practices from Niteo Partners, an NEC Company and long time Cognos Platinum Partner. The Cognos Conversion Service encompasses three critical stages:
o Conversion Estimate Services -- for scoping the conversion project
(available at no charge)
o Conversion Audit Services -- for defining a detailed conversion plan
o Conversion Implementation Services -- for quickly executing the
conversion process using a strategic, repeatable onshore-offshore
service that can be easily adapted to an organization's environment,
usage and business requirements. Customers can choose from two
conversion types -- 'Lift and Shift,' which rapidly moves existing
reports to the new system without changes in report structure and
process; and 'Compress and Optimize,' which reviews existing reports to
determine enhancements, consolidations or eliminations using new
features and technology available in Cognos 8 BI
"Customers understand the tremendous value associated with standardization but need a way to convert their existing BI reports from multiple platforms while protecting their investment in the business rules and logic in those systems," notes Matthew Pierce, executive vice president of North American operations at Niteo Partners. "Niteo's proven conversion solution is the foundation for the Cognos Conversion Services program. Our conversion tools, resources and expertise in successfully standardizing from multiple sources to Cognos are now available to all Cognos customers and partners."
Cognos Migration Service
The new Cognos Migration Service provides tools and expertise to help Cognos customers move successfully from Cognos Series 7 and Cognos ReportNet to Cognos 8 BI. Migration Audit Services provide a strong first step, offering a rapid audit of existing Cognos BI systems and architecture in order to scope out the proper migration process and determine the effort required. Migration Implementation Services follows suit, delivering the migrated environment and reporting infrastructure in Cognos 8 BI complete with end user training to facilitate adoption.
Cognos Proven Practices
The Cognos Proven Practices portal is now available to customers and partners, providing in-depth product and technology resources in high-demand categories such as development, infrastructure, modeling, performance, report design and security. Cognos Proven Practices represent critical knowledge gathered from customer experiences -- including proof of concepts, service engagements, beta testing, and customer support cases -- to help customers achieve success on their journey toward BI standardization. For more information on Cognos Proven Practices visit http://www.cognos.com/techtalkinsider.
"We are responding to our customers' and partners' need for broad knowledge sharing," said Dave Achtemichuk, vice president of customer success and support at Cognos. "The Cognos Proven Practices are a collection of product and technology guidelines and recommendations. They are a new and invaluable resource for Cognos customers and partners that go way beyond specific product documentation."
Cognos 8 BI Certification Program
Cognos Training is now offering customers a role-based Cognos 8 BI certification program tailored to helping authors, modelers and administrators master the skills required to implement Cognos 8 BI. The expanded certification program includes curriculum guidelines that outline which public training and e-learning courses are recommended in order to successfully complete proctored examinations administered by Thomson Prometric. With its unique role-based approach, the Cognos 8 BI certification program ensures everyone who is certified is equally competent, thereby driving increased productivity.
* Source: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Implementation
Services, North America, 2006, A. Soejarto, B. Hostmann, March 3, 2006.
ABOUT COGNOS:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? -- and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.
Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com/.
Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Media Contacts:
David DeRosa
Cognos, 613-738-1338 ext. 3317
david.derosa@cognos.com
Kristen Orfanos
Lois Paul & Partners, LLC, 781-782-5852
kristen_orfanos@lpp.com
Investor Relations:
John Lawlor
Cognos, 613-738-3503
john.lawlor@cognos.com
Source: Cognos
Web site: http://www.cognos.com/
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