IBM Business Intelligence Software

Editor's Notes

• #2: (20 Seconds) Hello and welcome to this webinar introducing IBM Cognos Express. My name is xxxxxxx, and I am xxxxxxx   I am very pleased to be here today to talk to you about a new breakthrough solution called IBM Cognos Express, a product designed from the ground up to meet the needs of midsized organizations.
• #5: Volume and variety of information (structured and unstructured) is exploding, as the Planet becomes Smarter. Also, current economic times require corporations and governments to analyze new information faster and make timely decisions for achieving business goals! As the volume, variety and velocity of information and decision making increases, this places a larger burden on organizations to effectively and efficiently distribute the right information, at the right time, to the people, processes and applications that are reliant upon that information to make better business decisions. Full Script There are several factors driving the need for a new way of looking at information and the way we make decisions based on that information. When you think of the changes in our world today – the instrumentation, interconnectedness and intelligence of our environments – this produces a massive glut of new information, from new sources, with new needs to leverage it. This exacerbates some of the challenges that we have been dealing with for a while now, just on a whole new scale. Volume of Digital Data: The data explosion, of course, but also shifts in the nature of data. Once virtually all the information available to be "processed" was authored by someone. Now that kind of data is being overwhelmed by machine-generated data – spewing out of sensors, RFID, meters, microphones, surveillance systems, GPS systems and all manner of animate and inanimate objects. (Note: use statistics if you want) By 2010, the amount of digital information will grow to 988 Exabytes (equivalent to a stack of books from the sun to Pluto and back) Every day, 15 Petabytes of new information are being generated. This 8 times more than the information in all U.S. libraries The number of emails sent every day is estimated to be over 200 billion Variety of Information (diversity and heterogeneity): With this expansion of the sources of information comes large variance in the complexion of the available data -- very noisy, lots of errors -- and no time to cleanse it in a world of real-time decision making. (Note: use statistics if you want) 80% of new data growth is unstructured content, generated largely by email, with increasing contribution by documents, images, and video and audio 38% of email archiving decisions receive input from a C-level executive and 23% from legal/compliance professional The average car will have 100 million lines of code by 2010; the Airbus A380 alone contains over 1 billion lines of code Velocity of Decision Making: This is about optimizing the speed of insight generated as well as confidence that the decisions and actions taken will yield the best outcomes based on more proactive, planning around the management and use of information sources, and creating far more advanced predictive capabilities: (Note: use statistics if you want) Every week, the average information worker spends 14.5 hours reading & answering e-mail, 13.3 hours creating documents, 9.6 hours searching for information, 9.5 hours analyzing information For every 1,000 knowledge workers, $5.7 million is lost annually in time wasted reformatting information between applications. Not finding the right information costs an additional $5.3 million per year An Institute for Business Value Agile CFO Study in 2007 indicated that only 9% of senior finance executives believe they excel at gathering, interpreting & conveying information to senior management 42% of managers say they inadvertently use the wrong information at least once per week
• #6: Now let’s drill down a notch and look at the what’s keep midmarket companies up at night. In April of this year, we surveyed more than 1,850 midmarket executives from 15 countries on their top business and IT challenges. Not surprisingly, the most critical business issue facing those we surveyed is improving their efficiency and productivity. Close behind, however, are improving customer care and loyalty , improving business insight, and finally, working smarter through increased collaboration.
• #7: Goal: Describe the pitfalls of how most midsize companies work today Typically midsize companies are not lacking in data about their products or customers and their buying trends, however, they often struggle with yielding meaningful insights from that plethora of data and are not able to make fact-based decisions or derive insight from information at their disposal People are taking snapshots of data and putting into spreadsheets and applying their own custom formulas and calculations. How many times have you walked into a meeting with three people having 3 different sets of data on the same topic? You spend more time arguing about the data than analyzing it. So often decisions are made on “gut feel” - because those decisions are based on the information people have on hand, and if not accurate, timely or complete. And because the planning process is often a disconnected exercise conducted periodically, when key decisions are made it can take a long time to align the appropriate resources, both people and dollars.
• #8: Goal: Set up the need to do things differently, more interconnected Clearly we need to do things differently. It must be an interconnected system. First we need to better manage key data and get control over this proliferation of spreadsheets and data silos. We can then begin to provide meaningful information. And to dive deeper and uncover key insights and new opportunities. And finally, to take action by aligning the right resources to capitalize on these new opportunities. It’s this interconnected system that enables you to go from Data to Information. From Information to Insight. And from Insight to Action.
• #9: Goal: Reiterate the capabilities that are required for Info/Insight/Action To underscore the key capabilities that are required: You start by getting control of your data by leveraging the power and speed of an analytic server that features a modern in-memory architecture. You don’t have to start with an expensive and time consuming data warehouse. You then create an information-driven and accountable culture through Dashboards and Reports. This provides highly visual at-a-glance views of information to ensure executives and business managers can quickly focus on the areas of performance that need attention and action. They help monitor the business. For example, are sales trending up or down, am I maintaining my margin? You can then identify opportunities and issues through Analysis. This allows you to gain insight so that you can compare and contrast to reveal symptoms and causes behind trends (e.g. sales trend analysis) And finally, you align resources with decisions through planning, budgeting and forecasting.
• #10: Wendy's Serves Up Faster Sales Figures. Hamburger restaurant chain Wendy’s is using a business intelligence tool to analyse sales data in near real-time, enabling it to improve marketing decisions in a competitive market. Challenge: Providing reliable Information to manage the business. Company-wide trusted information has to be available right in time. Benefits: BI Tool that can provide restaurant operators with sales information in near real-time; Sales data ready in a day that they otherwise used to wait a week for; Wendys managers can esily extract a wealth of sales information relevant to their particular needs; The restaurant chains marketers are able to make robust decisions about future sales promotions; As IBM Cognos TM1 is rolled out further into the business, it will help with human resources, supply chain and budgeting decision- making. Key Business Insights: Wendy’s financial controller James Irvine says the hamburger chain set itself on the path to successful business intelligence tool rollout by taking a number of key preparatory steps: He was careful to choose an implementation partner: Cortell Group that could demonstrate a good understanding of Wendy’s business Cortell researched and came back with an industry related example of what they could do “ Irvine says. Fully canvassed end-user requirements before the rollout began “the success of any business intelligence rollout is really going to be the user so it was important for us to get the right people involved in a full scoping day; Being clear about the end goal was vital “Prior to the rollout we identified what our critical business objectives were and the phases we would do it in; With phase 1 completed Irvine says feedback fro users is that the IBM Cognos tool is providing sales information in a timely and flexible fashion that was previously unattainable.
• #11: Metcash Outgrows the spreadsheet and achieves an instant win with IBM Cognos software Grocery distribution in Australia is a competitive, tightly controlled market dominated by a very small number of players. It is a difficult market to break into yet over the past ten years one company – Metcash Limited – has managed to grow from its small independent status to become one of the nation’s leading marketing and distribution companies in the food and other fast moving consumer goods categories. At the same time it has become one of the best –performing stocks in Australia. The company’s strategy for growth has been based on the development of three “business pillars” – IGA Distribution, Campbells Cash and Carry and Australian Liquor Marketers. One year ago, the undeniable success of this focused approach led to the establishment of a fourth pillar with IGA Fresh. Business Challenge Background Throughout the early 2000’s, Metcash managed the financial aspects of its business using a combination of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning software. When budget planning time arrived the Finance Department typically prepared individual spreadsheet workbooks to send to each of its business units. As each unit completed its budget the workbooks were sent back to Finance for manual consolidation, eventually leading to a total budget figure for each business pillar. When the company was young the process worked well but expansion meant there were now between 400 and 500 business units, making it an unwieldy, time-consuming process. If a single budget item within a single business unit needed to be revised it would require a flow of changes to literally hundreds of spreadsheets. The inability to invoke security with spreadsheets and the inevitable mistakes that were introduced as figures were cut and pasted from one spreadsheet to another compounded the difficulties. Strategy Followed With no slowdown in growth expected a new approach was essential so Metcash management began the search for a better way to budget, forecast and analyse its financial data. What the company wanted was a solution that would enable online access to figures and reporting; something that allowed Corporate to drill down into figures via the PeopleSoft GL; and which offered real time calculation so that numbers would immediately roll through from individual business units to create a total company view. With Finance determined to own and manage the system, it was also imperative that the software be low maintenance and easy for staff to operate. After meeting with a number of software suppliers Metcash decided on IBM Cognos TM1 and Executive Viewer, a combination that offered financial performance management analytics with real-time Web-based access to data. Robert Laws, Systems Accounting Manager, Shared Services, Metcash, explains, “We sat down with other companies but IBM Cognos TM1 had the best performance. We wanted that speed plus they seemed to have the most knowledgeable people.” Business Benefits The change from manually prepared spreadsheet to the online environment has brought numerous benefits, not the least of which is greater visibility of data. Rather than taking days to prepare and then input data, everything is now immediate. Calculations and base data are available for all authorised managers to view. Budgets no longer have to be prepared in isolation and errors or omissions are quickly spotted and corrected. Changes flow through and show impact instantly.
• #12: Mater Health Services - Gains New Insight to Predict Hospital Staffing and Training Demands Mater Health Services (Mater) is one of the largest private health service providers in Australia. The organisation operates a network of seven hospitals which employ 7,500 staff and volunteers and provide exceptional care to some 500,000 people each year. Indeed, one in six people born in Queensland enter the world through Mater’s hospital facilities, delivering more than 10,500 babies every year. Demographic Dynamics In the past, Australian industries have attracted 160,000 net new entrants to the workforce annually. Recently this figure began to drop significantly and the Australian Healthcare industry now recognises that this is the beginning of a decline in the numbers joining its ranks and an significant increase in retiring nurses and midwives. Indeed, the industry faces a shortfall of more than 14,000* nurses nationally by 2010. The problem is accentuated by an aging population which has an increasing demand for health and aged care services. As Caroline Hudson, Mater’s Executive Director of People and Learning, says, ”These figures have certainly been a wake up call to the industry. At the same time, we’re working in an industry which has a long lead time in being able to place a healthcare worker. It can take several years to create a program with a tertiary education institution and then it can take several years to train individuals in their own clinical speciality.” Mater predicts that by 2012 it will start to see a gap in its ability to meet demand. As a result, workforce planning is high on the agenda and Mater set out during 2008 to find a solution which could help it to forecast and plan for gaps in the size and scale of its workforce and the critical periods over the next 20 years in which acute shortages may hit. Like many other health care providers at the time, Mater was using multiple decision-support tools with different sets of rules to measure attrition. These had no consistency in their presentation of data and were typically spreadsheet driven. As a result, there was uncertainty and conflict when determining if the data was accurate. The time had come for the organisation to implement a workforce planning solution which would provide the organisation with a single source of the truth, an ability to benchmark targets and provide Mater’s decision-makers with easily understood information to plan for job role requirements – from doctors, midwives, nurses and allied health professionals through to the organisation’s valued army of volunteers. Smart Decision Making The decision to partner with IBM Cognos for workforce planning followed an organisational review of several industry solutions. However, only IBM Cognos was able to provide the customisation, scalability and robust reporting, along with the essential implementation services, required for long-term scenario planning and workforce management. IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Performance software is a key component of IBM’s approach to information management, where industry-specific software and consulting services are geared to helping clients use information as a strategic asset across their businesses. Mater was already a user of IBM Cognos solutions, however, the pressing requirement presented a number of technical challenges, including the need to leverage existing Mater data, connect previously isolated data, and calculate new metrics. In addition, any workforce supply and demand tool needed to aggregate both numeric and text information. The response to this business imperative was a Workforce Planning solution with two key parts – Attrition Reporting and a Workforce Supply and Demand tool. The former, using IBM Cognos 8 BI, provides a picture of the size and composition of the Mater’s workforce. There are many hundreds of different roles at the Mater, from front-line nursing and medical staff, to associated therapies staff and medical services, accommodation and hotel staff, and finance and administration. Prior to the creation of Attrition Reporting, the Mater had no real visibility of how many staff it required for the future and accessible detail about who was leaving or joining the Mater. Once this information was obtained, the next task was to use this as a basis for the second part of the solution - forecasting into the future. For example, if the current rate of attrition in particular groups continued into the future, what programs & strategies did Mater need to put in place to minimise potential major issues?   Additionally, as Mater is not a static organisation, it needed to understand the additional human resource requirements that could arise? To solve this problem, Mater used IBM Cognos Planning and joined two data sources – Attrition Reporting & the existing Mater Finance Budgeting application. The result was a picture of demand gaps that require filling right down to the individual ward level as well as by job role. To assist with this technical complexity, Mater partnered with IBM Cognos Lab Services. The Attrition Reporting was created first, over four weeks. IBM Cognos Lab Services engaged Mater in design workshops & then built the application from scratch whilst also providing project management. The Workforce Supply & Demand application took eight weeks, including two weeks of prototyping the application with key Mater stakeholders. It took six weeks to build the application from scratch, connect it to other applications at the Mater & provide knowledge transfer. Intelligent Planning for Tomorrow’s Workforce With deployment complete, the power of the IBM Cognos workforce planning solution enables Mater to plan for the future of its workforce. “ We can now extract bottom-line data to spot trends which will then put us on the front foot to react quickly & adjust staffing as needed. Indeed, we have a 99.8 percent confidence in the data being robust. This will provide our organisation with intelligent, actionable information that drives consistent, timely care & sound business decisions that health plans need today,” says Hudson. In the future, Mater will be able to model data which can then be fed into the design of learning & development programs at tertiary institutions, enabling the industry to train the right people for the right job at the right time. This will result in the industry’s ability to attract qualified staff directly matching a particular skill in demand at a certain point in time. IBM Cognos will also help the organisation forecast more immediate skills requirements resulting in Mater’s ability to rapidly drive new learning programs for its current staff & cross train in new roles & functions. “ At Mater, our goal is to provide high quality services to our patients & be a centre of excellence in healthcare. The IBM Cognos software is a packaged analytic application that can provide interactive insight into workforce issues such as capacity, acquisition, development, retention, performance, & compensation with consolidated analytic reporting from multiple systems. “ We now have a strategic conversation at the board level & we have a whole of campus view of the business. We realised the value of working with a vendor which has a strong customer orientation which is nothing short of extraordinary. The decision to go with IBM Cognos Workforce Performance products & services was strategic for us especially since its acquisition by IBM, which we knew would provide us with peace of mind in terms of ongoing development of the toolset itself. IBM Cognos provided valuable design advice, adding value to the tool that we had not included in the original design specifications,” says Hudson. Any organisation with a large homogenous workforce could benefit from this granular view & manage it on a monthly or an annual view in order to safeguard their organisation’s long-term future,” says Hudson. Interconnected IBM Cognos integrates Mater’s disparate systems, including Finance Budgeting & Forecasting (FinOps), Attrition Reporting (HR) & Workforce Planning, providing greater insight & accuracy for better decisions for workforce planning for the next 20 years. Instrumented The system leverages the work of others across the organisation, eliminating the need to manually input data more than once, ie, data from Finance Operations. Attrition reporting is calculated via Mater’s payroll system & Workforce Planning information is obtained from staff recruitments plans across the ecosystem. Intelligent The new system provides information about staff vacancies, by department, for both current needs & future requirements. Future plans may include the capability to measure requirements for number of beds & patients required by Mater Health Services. Business Benefits - Better able to predict future demand for nurses, doctors and their entire health care workforce, improving the provision of future patient care - Confidence in attrition date is up from 70 per cent to 99.8 per cent. - Visibility of data for important workforce decisions, including scenario planning - User feedback has been extremely positive Solution Components IBM Cognos 8 Workforce Planning & Performance IBM Cognos Lab Services
• #13: SUGGESTED TIME – 30-45 seconds Goal: introduce IBM Cognos Express Today I am pleased to introduce you to IBM Cognos Express. IBM Cognos Express is the first and only solution to deliver the essential reporting, analysis and planning capabilities that has been purpose built and priced for midsize companies. We’ve taken the best of IBM Cognos’ proven products and technology, focused on streamlining, simplifying and integrating into a breakthrough solution. Introduce the new product portfolio itself Don’t spend too much time detailing modules, functionality, value proposition etc…all that is to come on next slides. Quick elevator message here -- stress the “only”, “all in one” “integrated” “purpose built for MM” “quick/hours to deploy” messages here…then move on This is a real breakthrough solution for midsize companies Cognos Express is the first and only offering in the market that delivers… Integrated BI and Planning capabilities – reporting, analysis, dashboards, scorecards, planning Purpose-built to meet the unique requirements of midsize companies – who typically have limited IT staff and BI expertise Prepackaged – requiring no assembly, you’ll be up and running in under 1 hour Modular solution and provides complete growth path both within the express family or up to the congos enterprise product family Empowers all users with self-service capabilities Easy to install, use and buy! no other vendor comes close to delivering this – not Business Objects, not Oracle, not Microsoft or any of the point products like QlikTech
• #14: SUGGESTED TIME – 2-3 minutes KEY SLIDE….if any slide deserves maximum time, its this one Goal: Describe how it overcomes the barriers Cognos Express was designed with 3 core attributes: Easy to install, Easy to use and Easy to buy, and they are attributes designed to address the key inhibitors that have prevented midsize companies adopt BI and planning, lets review each one We just spent the first few minutes of the briefing describing the market need/oppty….now we need to clearly discuss how Express meets those needs Easy to Install – this is where you can verbally deep dive on critical things like “flexible, plug n play architecture”, “hours to deploy”, “centralized administration”, “in-memory analytics server” etc. “ IBM Cognos Express is preconfigured requiring no assembly………. It includes everything you need out of the box with an embedded OLAP, security, content store, web server and data integration …. There is a central web based console for the Installation , configuration and deployment……. Its simple intuitive push button interface ensures that minimal resource is needed and requires minimal skills…… because everythings included there are no hidden costs requiring additional software and it installs easily into existing infrastructure and this really addresses the key challenge of a limited infrastructure and resource” Easy to Use – deep dive on self-service, minimal IT involvement “ Delivering self service to enable business users to be self sufficient is key in midsize companies where resource constraints is a major inhibitor , and IBM Cognos Express provides interfaces that ensure novice to advanced users can get the business information they need………. Another key aspect is giving the power and ownership to the business so they can build the business views they need to analyse and optimize the business, so Cognos Express provides the right interface for the right user and also delivers data in a business context they understand but also a simple capability to build their own business views reducing burden on IT……….” Easy to Buy – quote only the price point example provided in the media FAQ. Touch briefly on IGF as well, but no more than that “ Lastly With resource and budget constraints the pricing and packaging has to enable an midsize company to get started quickly and deliver immediate business value…….. With Cognos Express you can buy what you need and when you need it delivering a quick time to business value…… and with a low entry price point organizations can match their projects and needs to match their budget constraints… this really is a low risk option for a company whilst allowing them to start small , start anywhere but with room to grow “ (PLUS: available as a time-limited trial download version) Do not worry that this slide does have detailed information on each Easy point….the temptation is to backfill more slides that illustrate the central admin, in-memory server etc. etc. The reporter will have this info via the embargoed draft press release and is expecting to take copious notes from the briefing. Verbal details is more than enough to satisfy a good briefing.
• #16: In summary IBM Cognos Express provides midsize companies with an affordable approach to implementing BI and Planning with Low up-front costs and streamlined implementation and integration into your existing infrastructure. Its been architected to grow in a straightforward manner as business needs continue to expand. Incremental growth is the name of the game, and so IBM Cognos Express Supports ongoing growth in a seamless, organic manner . Finally midsize companies can eliminate the data silos and inconsistencies throughout the organization and extract maximum value from their data by transforming it into actual information about how the business is performing , they can report and analyze information in a business context and then use the ensuing knowledge to immediately act by adjusting performance going forward. So with that I am pleased to introduce you to IBM Cognos Express. It is the first and only solution to deliver the essential reporting, analysis and planning capabilities that has been purpose built and priced for midsize companies… Its designed to be easy to install, easy to use and easy to buy
• #17: Closing slide to be included in all external presentations.