Your SpotOn the IBM Cognos Edge

Hi all,

Quick note to highlight a webinar that SpotOn's UK-based partner, Assimil8, is jointly conducting with Esri-UK: Geospatial Business Intelligence.  

This looks to be a "can't miss" if you're on the east side of the pond - or an early riser in North America.  

LIVE Webinar: Geospatial Business Intelligence

Wednesday 1^st  December 2010  11am - 12am (GMT)

Gain Insights and Reduce Information Management Cost

CRM, ERP, BI systems and more are now no longer the preserve of large corporations; they are part of the standard toolkit for any SME organisation. In order to gain the advantage over competitors, the modern business needs to ensure that they are getting the maximum possible return that they have made in these tools. 

Utilising BI and Geospatial analysis in isolation is not allowing the business to see the complete business picture, there are tremendous business insights that result from integrating the power of advanced spatial analytics with IBM Cognos BI.

Join us on 1^st  December as we discuss how the integration of GIS and BI applications are broadening and deepening the use of geographic information throughout an organisation and the value that can be gained from linking BI and GI

Agenda

Welcome and Overview  - Annie Hawkins, ESRI (UK) will act as your host for this event.

Keynotes: The GI/BI Value Chain - Paul Dyer of ESRI (UK) will take you through the business GI value change and give examples of organisations who have gained from using intelligent geography.

Karl Mullins of Assimil8 will then talk through the leveraging of GI and BI as a value proposition.

LIVE Demo: ESRI and IBM Cognos using Spot-On Vantage

Q&A Session

Your chance to comment on what you have seen and put questions to our speakers.

Register – Click here to register via email

Contact Us - For further information please contact:- mailto: k.hurd@Assimil8.com

Does the name Stephen Few ring a bell for you?

It should, if you are involved in business intelligence and/or data visualization. Few is an influential author on the subject of visual business intelligence – what he calls “data sense-making”.

He, like us at SpotOn, believes that the way a report is designed and its overall look play big roles in the report's ultimate success. It’s not good enough to simply offer up data to an end user. Reports must be both effectively designed and visually appealing. Effective design increases the likelihood that users will actually obtain the information they need, which will likewise increase the likelihood that the report will be used repeatedly to support sound business decisions.

After all, that is the value of Business Intelligence, right?

Over the years as BI vendors have showcased their latest and greatest new offerings, it’s been more about glitz and sizzle, which are misconstrued as visual appeal, than it is about actual report content. But think of it this way: when your boss is asking for the latest monthly or quarterly cost estimates, and you’re having trouble getting those numbers, just how irritating is a glitzy, animated, "chromed" report going to be if it's not getting you what you need?

Few is critical of the BI industry, claiming that it is has Hit the Wall. He has also been clear about the fundamental differences between effective and ineffective dashboard design. We agree with him when he says BI should be more “human-centric” as opposed to “technology-centric”.

What do you think?

Perfect storms need the right kind of converging systems to develop. They usually also take time to come to a full head.

How many out there know how long business intelligence was top-of-mind for CIOs? According to Gartner, it was more than five years. Between 2005 and 2009, BI was ranked four times as first, and once as second on the minds and in the budgets of CIOs. In 2010, BI yielded top ranking to virtualization and cloud computing, but still clocked in as important at 5th in the top 10.

That’s quite a run.

In terms of technology evolution, it’s a very long time. The technology landscape has not stood still to wait for the BI market to settle out. So many key things have happened in that time frame that the focus of BI has evolved, and BI overall has largely matured as a technology. It’s clearly still key, and its enduring importance and level of maturity make it system 1 of the converging systems that make up this perfect storm.

Looking back, though, some other pretty amazing things were happening just as BI was starting to keep CIOs awake at night.

Just prior to this “BI era”, a small company called Keyhole Inc. was building a little app that has since become Google Earth. Viewed as one of the “coolest” Web applications of its day, Google Earth has done many things, like enticing some retailers to paint their logos on the roof so you and I can see them in Google Earth. But the most important thing Google Earth did was bring to the forefront mapping visualizations with data. Maps are used by everyone today, for everything from mapping a running route to planning a vacation to simply getting to a destination. 

How many people did you know in 2005 who owned a personal GPS device? How many people do you know now who don’t have one?

Businesses are likewise now using GIS to gain competitive advantage, to spatially analyze their key data.

And there we have converging system two of our perfect storm: GIS is mainstream.

The only missing ingredient in our set of converging systems is something that – oddly enough – is an essential ingredient in any storm.

It’s a cloud. Enter software as a service, with cloud-based delivery of GIS services, and we have the third and last of our converging systems.

With BI well along the road to maturity, the omnipresence of GIS, and hosted map services readily available, we’re experiencing the perfect storm in which to extend the world of BI data into the world of GIS. This is true for BI groups who don’t yet have in-place GIS resources, and for groups who do have them, but have not yet aligned their own internal resources to integrate and exploit them together.

How do you get started?

If you already have your IBM Cognos BI system in play, you can start with the SpotOn Vantage Maps Starter Kit for IBM Cognos. This game-changing new offering allows anyone with IBM Cognos BI to extend the value of their BI applications with geo-spatial analytics, with an optimized offering that combines award-winning SpotOn Vantage software with hosted ESRI map services. It’s by far the easiest and most cost-effective way to get maps integrated into your IBM Cognos BI reports.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of this geospatial business intelligence perfect storm, join us for a Webinar on Tuesday November 23, at 11 AM Eastern Standard Time.

If you have IBM Cognos BI and want maps, it'll be time well spent.

As you'll know if you read Chris's last post, there was a ton of interest in SpotOn Vantage, and especially in the SpotOn Map Starter Kit, at the IBM Business Analytics Forum in Las Vegas last month.

But there was interest in a lot more than just that. A lot of people visited us there and asked about how things were going with respect to out latest chart offering - SpotOn Vantage Gantt Charts.

In tandem with that interest, and in response to a very recent inquiry we received against our Gantt Chart posting, take a look at this demonstration of SpotOn Vantage Gantt Chart capabilities. Which I just happened to be in the process of building.

In the way of introductions, by the way, my name is Dave Kerr. I'm someone who is pretty new to SpotOn, but definitely not new to IBM Cognos. I'm also someone who is jazzed about SpotOn Vantage capabilities in a lot of areas, and who will be doing everything he can to spread that excitement in the weeks and months to come.

But enough about me -- back to Gantt. These flexible, highly customizable charts can integrate with your IBM Cognos reports -- with zero coding required -- and tie directly to your organization's financial data directly in the context of any task or sub-task in any project.

Check out the demo here.

Back in early summer 2009, I pondered on whether we had seen the end of an era with the final, stand-alone, Cognos Forum.  Not only was that tight-nit Cognos community not lost, but rather the 2010 IOD event was painted with a "Cognos" flash and sizzle that I had not seen at this event in the previous two years.  And I’m not even talking about the fireworks!

We witnessed a product launch in IBM Cognos 10 that had the Mandalay Convention Center - and Twitter-sphere - booming and buzzing.  The main stage Cognos 10 demos looked great (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)!  Some progressive firm should launch a practice around Cognos Report Design Excellence... 

From a SpotOn perspective, I’ve gone on record in saying that this was our best event ever.  Three words: “Vantage Map Starter”! 

We unveiled this new offering during our Monday morning presentation, and had a constant crush of people at our booth looking for more information.  In a nutshell, the Vantage Map Starter package is simple, quick, but game-changing way to incorporate spatial analytics and presentation (i.e. interactive maps) into their Cognos reports. 

There appears to be a critical mass to Cognos developers that have hit the wall with either the in-the-box mapping capabilities, or attempts at integrating Google Maps.   

Does this appeal to your organization?