IBM Cognos Express: what else can you show to the CFO?

In small companies, monitoring and accounting takes place without any special difficulties. Turnovers are small, the staff a little, the accountant is necessary only one, and it is simple to keep all tasks in the head. In extreme cases, write in the diary. In large companies, there are automated control systems and specially hired employees, whose duties are to systematize and provide the necessary information. But medium-sized businesses have a hard time. Expensive decisions and additional rates for it are ruinous, and the needs for business analytics are huge. The competition at this level is very tense, and the information means a lot. IBM Global CIO Study conducted a study and found out that 83% of managers of this scale consider business analytics to be the most important means in competition.

In what it translates into practice, we all know. The budget is limited, there are no people, it's expensive, and the burden falls on the shoulders of IT people. As a result, IT resources are overwhelmed, trying to cope with information overload, flows of unstructured data are different all the time, the quality of their presentation suffers, the forces are taken away from other tasks - well, in general, the familiar picture.

IBM decided: to help manage corporate finances, make plans, budgets and generate forecasts should not IT-specialists (they have other worries), but programs. And the participants in the process themselves must enter information for analysis. This is how the IBM Cognos Express product appeared, which will be launched on September 29
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For organizations that have installed IBM Cognos Express, you only need to configure the business analysis and planning functions once and then only develop them as needed. IBM Cognos Express is able to integrate into your organization’s existing infrastructure in a matter of hours. It is important that the employment of IT-personnel is reduced to a minimum. The web-based management central console fully controls installation, deployment, and management.


Because IBM Cognos Express is built on a self-service environment, you can easily create your own information or control panels, reports, analysis, and multidimensional planning. And, for example, the managers of the trading network will be able to create their own daily sales reports in stores. And, therefore, they themselves predict sales, correlate them with the general plans and manage inventory. As we often see, instead, such reports are required from IT specialists, despite the fact that while they are being prepared, they are often out of date.

Here are some examples of how IBM Cognos Express can help you report and analyze, automate routine activities, help with assessment and planning.


Small retailers spend a lot of money on warehouse rent in order to ensure equal richness of assortment in all retail outlets. However, in order to optimally distribute products according to the level of demand, it may take a long time. Automated commodity marketing analytics will help you better control inventory costs.

A mid-level bank, in order to optimize its credit policy, must expend a huge amount of resources, often making the work itself unprofitable. IBM Cognos Express quickly identifies key trends, deviations, and inconsistencies in credit practice.

The manufacturer of goods produces plans, budgets and forecasts, focusing on increasing its customer base. IBM Cognos Express helps you quickly, on the fly, adjust this strategy and tactics, keeping these developments relevant throughout the planning period.

Like many IBM products, IBM Cognos Express is built on an open platform. It contains three software products, and you can buy them together or separately.

IBM Cognos Express Reporter provides access to any type of data for preparing business, financial, operational and production reports, as well as for creating ad hoc queries to databases using drag and drop.

IBM Cognos Express Advisor performs predictive analysis taking into account surprises for both short-term and long-term forecasts. Key economic indicators and characteristics are shared on dashboards.


IBM Cognos Express Xcelerato transforms spreadsheets using a resident analytics module for further multidimensional analysis, planning, budgeting and forecasting.

IBM Cognos Expres s is part of the IBM's General Business Express Advantage marketing program, which includes both software and hardware solutions.

Use the free trial version for 30 days (after a short registration).