Just a quick note. There is a new version of the iPad app for Cognos 10 available. As expected, the new version contains a few fixes and enhancements. The biggest improvement, however, is the ability to open up Active Reports directly from email attachments.
In case you have not noticed, you can also enter a default server address in the app settings.
Greetings from Ottawa, Canada! I arrived here last Sunday to work with our team on getting ready for BA Forum and Information on Demand 2011. The conference will kick off with our annual partner summit on Saturday, October 22nd. It will be a great show. We have some cool stuff to show you and there will be lot’s of great sessions. I have the honor to deliver a few demos at the Business Analytics keynote sessions. That’s what we are working on this week.
Before I head out to IoD 2011 and BAForum tomorrow morning, I wanted to share a few infos with you.
KEYNOTES
There are two Business Analytics Keynotes this year. Make sure not to miss them. Rob Ashe, Eric Yau and Depak Advani are scheduled to speak. Together with some colleagues, I will show some interesting demos. Of course, there will be a few surprises as well (sorry….can’t share the details…). The sessions are:
TRACKS AND SESSIONS
There are lot’s of exciting sessions this year. Please look at the agenda for the details. Here are my recommendations:
SOCIAL MEDIA
There are two social media lounges this year: Connect and Share. From what I understand, this will be a perfect place to hang out during breaks. There will be phone charging station, social media feeds and a lot more. The lounges will be a perfect area for a tweet-up or just to get some work done. I will definitely try to stop by during breaks.
To stay current with the social media stream check out the Social Media Aggregator. It allows you to review relevant tweets and blogs for the entire conference. When you post something, please make sure to use the proper tags: #baforum or #iod11.
That’s it for today! Hope to see you in Las Vegas at BAForum. Ping me via Twitter if you have any questions or want to meet for coffee. I will also try to blog every day.
Cheers,
Christoph
P.S.: Last but not least, here are a few Tweeters I recommend following:
A few weeks ago, I had my road bike serviced by a mechanic who was highly recommended. And so I dropped off my bike. Went through a few basic questions and I asked for an opinion on a number of things. To my disappointment, the guy was pretty quiet and did not provide too much input. One week later I picked up my bike and was presented with the bill. No explanations. Just the bill. So, I payed. I was a bit disappointed. But He definitely did a good job and the price was ok. But something was missing and I promised myself not to go back to the mechanic in the future. So what was wrong? – Pretty much everything except for the results.
SERVICES SHOULD BE EXPERIENCED
My former mechanic in San Francisco was different:
It’s easy to summarize this: The great mechanic involved me in the process and he made me feel good about it. And that’s what it’s all about: good service is an experience. It’s not only about the qualification of the person delivering the service: When I compare the two mechanics, both were highly qualified. The difference was the communication. It didn’t cost the guy a single cent. His total time investment was less than 3 minutes. That’s it. But it made a world of difference to me and he earned my trust.
BUSINESS ANALYTICS PROJECTS
If you are a project manager, solution specialist or a consultant, think about your role for a minute. You are in essence delivering a service to the business. The business is your customer. And just like me and my bike, business people are usually passionate and have a lot to loose and to gain. And they are usually a bit nervous about the implementation. Unfortunately, too many project members and consultants think it’s just about getting the work done and to deliver results. Based on my experience, I would argue that just being smart and that just doing a good job won’t get you anywhere. Instead, we should all try to fully engage with our customers on the business side. We should try to be the good mechanic. Think about your recent projects. Have you done one or more of the following activities:
YOUR NEXT PROJECT
Delivering a successful business analytics project requires all of us to deliver great customer service to the business. It’s not only about building a cool solution. The project won’t be a success until the business thinks it’s a success. And by delivering a great service experience during the implementation we can all set the foundation for success. Doing that will help alleviate concerns, increase the excitement and develop ownership. It has worked for me in the past and it is working for the great mechanic in San Francisco. The guy in Munich lost my business. Quality was fine, but I’d rather have fun while spending my hard earned dollars! What type of ‘mechanic’ are you?
Last week I decided to buy a new camera bag. Instead of heading out to one of the camera stores in Munich, I researched different styles and products on Google. The websites of most manufacturers were somewhat helpful. Once I had picked a few models, I starting drilling down by look at blogs, groups on Flickr and Twitter. And that was worth the effort – turned out that most people didn’t like the models I had initially picked. As a matter of fact, I ended up buying a bag that hadn’t caught my eye before. It got the best reviews. Long story short: Two blog entries along with a few comments in a Flickr group influenced my decision – not the manufacturer’s websites. Chances are that you have similar stories to tell.
Social Media are extremely influential. A Forrester report from 2009 stated that 78% of all consumers trust peer recommendations. Likewise, most consumers do not trust marketing messages any more. The implication for organizations is obvious: you have got to understand what customers are saying about you! But how do you best go about that? I remember sitting in my car ten years ago listening to a debate about the future of the internet. Somebody made the bold statement that companies would hire professional internet surfers in the future. These “analysts” were supposed to spend their days surfing the web and checking websites and forums for interesting things. Certainly an option. Hilarious.
Well, it doesn’t have to be manual. Earlier this year, IBM introduced a new solution called Cognos Consumer Insight and it allows organizations to analyze conversations in social media such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc.. To do that, the solution collects and processes data from the desired social media sites & categories. Text analytics are utilized to comb through the potentially massive amount of data and to identify sentiment and general trends. The output of all this can then be analyzed in the usual Cognos 10 environment.
The output of Cognos Consumer Insight is very powerful. The potential is huge:
There are several different ways to look at the data. Apart from traditional reporting, you can perform a sentiment analysis, view evolving topic flows, identify affinities or simply look at specific tweets, statements and such (see the examples below).
Understanding what people talk about and how they talk about your products and services is extremely important. IBM Cognos Consumer Insight helps you stay on top of this.
There is a lot more to discuss about this great solution. If you happen to attend BAForum and IoD, make sure to sign up for the relevant sessions about this topic. There is a highly interesting Social media & Customer Analytics track this year. Hope to see you there!
P.S.: Back to my camera bag: The discussion forums and blogs indicated that easy access to your camera is super important when selecting the right bag. A bunch of manufacturers had led me down a path of looking at maximum storage room. Their designs did not get any good reviews. Cognos Consumer Insight could help them improve their product design and messaging.
Mobile BI is hot. No wonder that the new IBM Cognos iPad app has been getting a lot attention. My initial review from a few days ago was quite popular (Thanks for spreading the word!). The same is true for the quick report about Cognos 10 on the iPhone. It’s been pretty hectic since then, but I finally had some time to sit down and play with the app a bit more over the past two days. In particular, I wanted to check out the online capabilities. One of the great things about the app is that you can use it offline and online – truly a mobile BI solution.
COGNOS iPAD APP ONLINE
Connecting to my Cognos 10 server was straight forward. I just entered the regular server URL, user ID and password. The app connected without a glitch. All my folders were immediately accessible and I was able to browse through the content using the regular iOS gestures. Instead of browsing you can also perform a search: Click on the magnifying glass, enter a search term and the app will return the relevant objects.
DASHBOARDS IN ACTION
The server I was working with is used to run the extremely popular IBM Business Analytics Experience workshop. I chose a bunch of reports and dashboards that were developed to run on a regular PC. The iPad app loaded them without hesitation and they looked just as beautiful if not better than on a regular laptop screen.
INTERACTION
Reviewing the charts and tables is a lot of fun on the iPad. What I enjoyed best though, is the ability to interact: put your finger on a certain data point in a chart and the app will provide the according value in a small bubble. If you want some additional info, just click on the little i icon in the bubble and you will get additional context.
DRILL DOWN/ UP
Drilling up and down is just as simple as well. Put your finger on a data point and select drill down/ up. It’s easy and intuitive. Much better than a mouse click.
SUMMARY
Getting connected to the Cognos server was easy. All I need was the standard URL, user name and password. It didn’t take any time at all. My regular desktop content worked well on the iPad just like on the iPhone. We did not have to do any kind of re-coding or re-formatting for the iPad (I ran 11 different dashboards). Navigation was intuitive and working with the mobile BI content is a lot of fun. There is something cool and magic about touching your data – a phenomenon that many of us have noticed – let’s call it the “iPad goggles”…
If you have not had a chance to see the app, make sure to download it from the iTunes app store.
WHAT IS VISUAL ANALYTICS – BY DR JOERN KOHLHAMMER
Massive sets of data are collected and stored in many areas today. As the volumes of data available to business people or scientists increase, it becomes harder and harder to use the data effectively. Keeping up to date with the flood of data using standard tools for data management and analysis is far from easy. The field of visual analytics tries to provide people with better and more effective ways to understand and analyze these massive data sets, while helping them to follow up on their findings immediately, in real-time. Visual analytics integrates the analytic capabilities of the computer and the abilities of the human. This means, the human is empowered to take control of the analytical process; he or she is not just the final stage of a reporting process. Visual analytics sheds light on unexpected and hidden insights, which may lead to innovation and increase profits. For example, many key performance indicators are simply calculated using statistical models. But the true relations between data, models and business objectives often remain unclear. If visualization is included as an integral part of the analysis process then comprehension of the models as well as of the data is increased. Errors in the basic assumptions of the models can be recognized early on and newly discovered dependencies in the data can lead to new and possibly better reporting indices. (more…)
Cognos 10 offers a huge library of charts. Several new types were added in the last release. There are now over 160 different charts available. Amongst the new additions, you will also find Stephen Few’s bullet charts. They nicely complement the existing sparklines that were already available in version 8.4. Cognos 10 also provides new and enhanced color palettes that help design beautiful reporting objects. Overall, Cognos 10 offers some really cool options for building effective dashboards.
A SAMPLE DASHBOARD
My colleague and friend Paul sat down last week to quickly create a sample dashboard in Cognos 10 using the new stuff. He took the new charts and also applied one of the palettes. Take a look – I love it! It’s simple but very effective. As a sales executive, I will immediately obtain an overview of my business.
ACTIVE REPORT
Bullet charts and sparklines are also available for Active Reports. You can therefore build awesome looking dashboards for online and offline use. Even better: they also work with the new iPad app.
If you happen to attend BAForum in Las Vegas in a few weeks from now, make sure to look for some the sessions that discuss Cognos 10 and dashboarding techniques in detail.
The recent release of the new IBM Cognos Mobile for iPad app has created many excited discussions. I will post a more extensive review in a few days from now. Today I realized that most people have stopped talking about the iPhone. It seems that the iPad is getting all the attention these days. But to be fair, most people probably carry their iPhones with them more often than the iPad. But the good news is that Cognos 10 also runs on the iPhone. There is no dedicated app, but Cognos 10 runs in Safari. While waiting in the airline lounge to board another flight, I logged onto one of my servers to test the new 10.1.1 functionality.
FIRST STEPS
Logging into Cognos 10 is easy. I plugged in the regular server address, entered my user name and password. You can see that I was on the normal 3G network.
After logging in, I was able to browse through my content. Everything was there that I expected and navigation follows the regular iPhone gestures: You swipe to scroll through your content and you point to access folders or reporting objects.
REPORTS AND DASHBOARDS
I selected a few of the reports and dashboards. Everything worked nicely – Business Insight dashboards as well as standard Report Studio content. The great thing about Cognos 10 is the principle of author once and consume anywhere: There is no re-coding required to make the content run on the iPhone. At this point I switched to the horizontal view as it was easier to review the dashboard below:
Of course, it is possible to zoom in and out using gestures. By pointing at data elements, you can bring up a small header that provides additional context (precise values, dimensions etc.). If available, you can also drill up/ down or through.
Response time on this dashboard was very decent given the 3G connection. The drill-down took less than 3-5 seconds.
PROMPTS AND MORE
Prompts work as well. It is also possible to build reports with location-awareness prompts that pull the data from the iPhone GPS coordinates. I was not able to test that – maybe in the near future. But the possibilities are awesome if you think about it. And there are some additional features such as the ability to set favorite reports, select a home screen dashboard etc..
SUMMARY
Cognos 10 on the iPhone works pretty well. Dashboards and reports do look nice on the small screen. It is easy to review numbers & trends on the go. This is ideal for mobile workers wanting to stay connected with their business no matter where they are. However, the iPad and the laptop are definitely better suited for getting your tough work done. The screen is just not big enough on the iPhone. But that’s no surprise. The iPhone is a phone and not a full-fledged PC after all.
If you want additional information about the updates for IBM Cognos Mobile in version 10.1.1 click here.
Just a quick post for today. It’s been a super busy week with stops in Barcelona, Munich and London. While sitting in the lounge in Munich, I was delighted to see that the IBM Cognos Mobile iPad app had been approved for the Apple iTunes store. A perfect opportunity to download it and test the offline capabilities at 33000ft cruising altitude. (I cannot wait to take the the app online this weekend!)
CLEAN AND SIMPLE
Once our plane had taken off, I pulled out my iPad and launched the app. European flights do not have WIFI, yet. But the app does support offline content. And so I was sitting there in seat 5D somewhere above Frankfurt and was able to test some of the dashboards and reports. Being able to work offline is a huge advantage, from my point of view. I have personally encountered so many situations where the wireless network was either poor or simply not accessible. But back to the Cognos app: The initial impression is excellent. The interface is nice and clean. It does not take any time at all to get up and running. Navigation is intuitive and all the usual finger movements (swiping, pointing etc.) work flawlessly.
GUESTPOST BY MARK JEFFRIES
In the IT business – we have a big advantage. Very cool solutions that truly help businesses solve problems. Nice!
However, that is not our challenge. The IT challenge is actually whether your target – be it client, colleague or boss – actually wants to buy YOU! The unspoken questions become – ‘what value do you bring’, why should I trust you? What will YOU do for me?
Businesses understand that with an economy in a fragile recovery, it is impossible to ruthlessly raise prices and to aggressively grab market share. Instead, it would appear that the game is to add value, offer the customer more and constantly justify their existence.
From an individual perspective, we need to take note. Taking a leaf out of the book of ‘big business’, for our own use as individuals, is worth a go.
WHAT ARE YOU WORTH??
Never forget that people buy people – and every time that you explain the benefit of your offering, the value of your products or the brilliance of your service – people are really choosing whether they buy YOU or not. Here are some ideas on how you can increase your own buyability.
