IBM Cognos Analytics: An Introduction
I recently did a short course on IBM Cognos Analytics and I learned a healthy amount on the solution itself, but what was most exciting was seeing how data visualisation tools can be used to tell data management stories. IBM Cognos Analytics is a web-based coherent business intelligence suite that can be used for data analytics. It is software that leverages a disparate component that is used to structure the various information that is often required in an organisation.
The name ‘Cognos’ is derived from the Latin word ‘Cognosco’, which means ‘knowledge from personal experience’. This linguistic origin is at the forefront of what Cognos Analytics does as a data visualisation tool. It can be used to create dashboard stories, reports, exploration, and incident management, so that organisations can understand their data and make effective business decisions, all of which is based upon the premise of obtaining knowledge from the company’s data or experience. It can also be used to carry out certain data visualisation practices like data cleansing, data transformation, and also data profiling - all of which add to the value of the knowledge gained.
Some advantages of using Cognos are rapid results, which helps to limit the reporting time based on the swift integration. This helps to create valuable insight for customers to make improved decisions based on reports and dashboards. Cognos as a data visualisation tool has some benefits which are: understanding your data by analysing the information in real-time. Transforming your business from reactive to proactive. With Cognos analytics, you can use it to create a dashboard that helps you to obtain greater business insights. It also has the ability to do dynamic reporting – using drag and drop user interface for content authoring, and relational or dimensional data.
As a company, Butterfly Data is constantly seeking new ways of improving our service delivery. As a result, employees are constantly being asked to explore new applications and software that can help to improve our deliverables. My foray into Cognos has been an interesting part of that directive and has left me with a real drive to dive into the power of effective data visualisation.