IBM Business Analytics

Budgeting, forecasting and analytics for financial performance management

High-performance enterprise planning software for budgeting, forecasting and analysis

IBM Cognos® TM1 is enterprise planning software that provides a complete, dynamic environment for developing timely, reliable and personalised forecasts and budgets.

Rapidly analyse data and model business requirements for your entire organisation and use the results to budget and forecast with confidence for better business outcomes. More than budgeting and forecasting software, Cognos TM1 is a complete enterprise planning solution.

A multidimensional, 64-bit, in-memory OLAP engine provides exceptionally fast performance for analysing complex and sophisticated models, large data sets and even streamed data.
A full range of enterprise planning software requirements is supported—from high-performance, on-demand profitability analysis, financial analytics and flexible modeling to enterprise-wide contribution from all business units.
Personal scenarios created with advanced personalisation enable an unlimited number of ad-hoc alternatives so individuals, teams, divisions and whole companies can respond faster to changing conditions.
Best practices such as driver-based planning and rolling forecasting can become part of your enterprise planning process.
Model design and data access adapt to your business process and present business information in familiar formats.
Managed contribution makes it possible to assemble and deploy planning solutions for your enterprise and collect input from systems and staff from all divisions and locations, quickly consistently and automatically.
Integrated scorecarding and reporting— the complete picture from goal setting and planning, to measuring progress and reporting—is possible with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.
Total control over planning, budgeting and forecasting processes is provided to Finance and lines of business.
A choice of interfaces—Microsoft® Excel®, Cognos TM1 Web and the Cognos TM1 Contributor client—allows you to work with your preferred look and feel.

Cognos® Business Intelligence delivers the full range of BI capabilities -

query and reporting, analysis, dashboards, scorecards and more to support how people think and work.

With the ability to interact, search and assemble all perspectives of your business, Cognos Business Intelligence provides a limitless BI workspace. It expands traditional BI capabilities with planning, scenario modeling, collaboration, real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and more.

Analytics that everyone can use in a BI workspace that sharpens individual skills to answer key business questions.
Collective intelligence with built-in collaboration and social networking to connect people and insights to gain alignment.
Actionable insight everywhere in mobile, real-time and business processes to instantly respond at the point of impact.

Purpose built for mid-size companies

IBM Cognos® Express is the first and only integrated business intelligence (BI) and planning solution purpose-built to meet the needs of midsize companies.

It delivers the essential reporting, analysis, dashboard, scorecard, planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilities that midsize companies need at a price they can afford.

Everything is included in a pre-configured solution that is easy to install, easy to use and easy to buy.

IBM Cognos FSR automates external and internal reporting processes

This “Last Mile” of Financial Statement production remains highly inefficient and time consuming. It exposes sensitive information to security risks and is prone to error. Generally, it lacks the controls, process flow and audit-ability required within an information sensitive corporate environment.

Manual processes and issues dominate “The Last Mile” such as;

extensive use of MS-Word and MS-Excel, shared via e-mail
data accuracy issues
collaboration is difficult
no internal controls
no audit trail
high degree of risk
manual process is repeated each reporting period

In fact, according to Heather Ridout, CEO, Australian Industry Group, the majority of Australian companies spend up to 2% of their sales revenue in managing Government compliance activities.

There is also the mandate of XBRL submissions via the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) initiative involving a range of agencies and stakeholders in Australia. Each agency and stakeholder wants a ‘Different Cut” of the numbers and narrative, hence creating more challenges that require an adequate solution to these demands.

Many organisations have found the solution to these demands upon implementing IBM Cognos FSR capabilities. FSR provides an integrated external financial reporting process in which financial controls and reporting tasks are linked directly to the company’s financial statements. It creates a system of record for both the creation of external financial reports and disclosures, as well as financial compliance. The organisations are now able to:

reduce compliance costs
improve efficiency of the associated finance teams and auditors
enable everyone to focus their attention on exceptions, issues, and key risks.

The market research firm, Nucleus, found that by implementing IBM Cognos FSR, organisations can achieve benefits that go beyond regulatory compliance given their new ability to automate the gathering of financial data and processing of numerous last-minute accounting changes. They found that the application enables accountants, report builders and their managers to be more productive.

In a nutshell, IBM Cognos FSR transforms the way finance/accounting/legal departments manage and deliver critically important financial and management reports. IBM Cognos FSR:

ensures timely and accurate delivery of content sensitive documents to external and internal stakeholders
facilitates external, regulatory and internal document creation, from the collection of data and addition of insightful business commentary, through to XBRL tagging, formal approval and auditability of final reports
eliminates the risks inherent in spreadsheet based processes and activities – adding integration, controls, automation and audit trail to ensure data integrity and enhance governance in daily finance and accounting processes
helps CFOs reduce risk and improve efficiency in their most critical reporting processes.

Uncover unexpected patterns for predictive analysis

SPSS Predictive Analytics Software is the world’s leading statistical software for business, government, research and academic organisations.

By applying predictive analytics solutions to data you already have, your organisation can uncover unexpected patterns and associations and develop models to guide front-line interactions. IBM SPSS is the world's market leader in statistical software.