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Cortell invites you to IBM Business Analytics Forum, the premier conference for the business analytics community in Asia Pacific

Join us in Melbourne to experience the most comprehensive learning opportunity for IBM Cognos, SPSS, Open Pages and Clarity software users.

With more than 600 attendees and over 50 informative breakout sessions you'll learn deployment best practices, discover valuable tips & techniques and experience first-hand how organisations in every industry are using IBM Business Analytics to make smarter business decisions.

Join your fellow professionals from IT, the office of finance, and lines of business and see how the latest technology can support smarter decision-making and drive better business outcomes.  

Top Reasons To Attend:

1. See, understand and experience the latest products: From keynote presentations to breakout sessions to product hands-on labs and demos, get in-depth training on capabilities and features of IBM Cognos, SPSS, Clarity and Open Pages solutions. 
2. Enhance your skills and expertise: Learn from the experts who design, build and support the products. 
3. Gain real-world insights from other customers and Business Partners. Learn how to save time, reduce costs, and respond to change more quickly. 
4. Get face-to-face access to IBM Business Analytics experts and thought leaders: Gain from the unprecedented experience and expertise that IBM has in working with clients worldwide across all industries. 
5. Build your network and community: Meet with like-minded peers and colleagues; expand your business network across industries, regions and disciplines; and stay connected through IBM Business Analytics communities.

Standard Fee: $1,950 per person

Cortell Discount Fee: $1,600 per person (save $350 if you register before 25/01/2012). Take advantage of the discount Cortell customers must use the code CORTAU when registering as a full delegate. For more details ... Click Here

To register: please go through the IBM website and click on register now ... Click Here

To see the Agenda: ... Click Here

Six reasons why performance management systems so often fail to meet user expectations

By now, you’ve heard a lot about the promise of performance management (PM). And if you’ve started implementing it, you may not be thrilled with the results.

According to noted PM expert Jeremy Hope, that almost certainly has little to do with the inherent value of PM and a lot to do with the impact made by the old systems and processes you haven’t eliminated.

In "Transforming Performance Management," Hope explains the six reasons why performance management systems so often fail to meet user expectations:

• Systems are too complex
• Information is too slow
• Systems are inflexible
• Forecast quality is poor
• Decision support capabilities are inadequate
• Systems lead to dysfunctional behaviour

Download and read this revealing paper today to gain a vision for overcoming these barriers to success, and why it’s the office of finance that can and should lead the transformation.

Why Watson and SPSS Are IBM’s Big Data Yin and Yang

08/02/2012

IBM Releases Cognos TM1 v 10 Today ... Five Ways IBM Cognos TM1 v10 Changes Everything

IBM has just released the latest version of IBM's Business Analytics enterprise planning, forecasting and analytics solution that:

• Enables reliable, on-demand analysis, plans, forecasts and reports, and provides a holistic view of performance, including profitability. 
• Offers a choice of interfaces, including Microsoft Excel, to encourage high participation, and accommodate a broad range of work styles, business-specific personal analysis and options for collaboration. 
• Provides a managed, governed planning, analysis, and reporting process that spans personal, work group and enterprise requirements and is owned by Finance and line-of- business users. 
• Provides a personal analytics desktop that combines analysis, planning, reporting and personal dashboarding in a single interface
• Features an innovative, guided modeling environment that eases development and deployment of planning, analysis and forecasting solutions 
• Integrates with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, to establish a single performance management platform that consolidates data from multiple sources and applications,and provides dynamic planning, analysis and performance reporting

With this version of IBM Cognos TM1, you can:

• Treat contributors as Golden --> through a revolutionary user experience for planning and analysis. 
• Speed ideas into action--> with new Modeling & Solution Design 
• Deliver scalable high performing systems --> with improved deployment and server performance 
• Work together better and faster--> with additions to Collaboration and Workflow 
• Support user-driven design and innovation --> which means greater Analytic Agility applied to planning, reporting, forecasting.

So What are the 5 Ways ...

1. Cognos Insight --The contributor’s experience in planning/analysis/forecasting is paramount.

Cognos Insight is a personal analytic desktop (rich client) that combines analysis, planning, reporting and personal dashboarding in a single interface. For data, if provides drag-and-drop import, creation of data from scratch, and data enrichment without complex scripting. For analysis, users can create custom “applications,” dashboards and “what-if” scenarios to optimize outcomes For the interface, users have complete control over the look and feel of their “canvas.” For teaming, users can easily publish their findings in various ways.

Cogons Insight blends analysis and planning on the user’s desktop. Enables and engenders greater discovery, trending, -- and investment in your enterprise’s or division’s performance. With it, plan contributors can work in the centralized (connected) mode or in the distributed mode. Supports planning as a distributed process for HIGH participation -- through Cognos Insight. Also supports option for centralized planning where Cognos Insight is in a connected mode to the server.

Specifically, it encourages greater planning participation with these features.

For Analysis:

• Prototype situations, plans 
• Work with existing or pull in new data 
• Perform what-if scenarios, associative analysis, write-back
• Customise Views and Explore Points 
• Add Tabs within the canvas – for a report, a slice of data illustrating a new situation 

Build Plans (applications, in essence):

• Create a new version – or even “mini” plan/new approach to an existing plan 
• Use Shortcuts, Multiple Views, charts to help illustrate the analysis 
• Create or add to dashboards 
• Add Instructions – directions for other planners about examining/using the plan or finding

Sharing discoveries, plans:

• Promote findings in a tailored dashboard 
• Easily publish discoveries, reports to TM1 and Cognos BI 
• Share new planning “mini” application on Web for teams to take action 

Expand the plan:

• Move plan to Performance Modeler for enhancement, contribution (by the user or by another business analyst) 

-- No dead-end street for individual analysis and plans.

With TM1 10.1, users can now work in interfaces best suited to the business and their experience:

• the Excel-based TM1 thin client -- create Excel-based Websheets which are slices of spreadsheets made available to others through TM1 Web; take advantage of Excel functionality. (NOTE: TM1 customers can still use Architect in conjunction with Performance Modeler – don’t have to switch all at once.) 
• the new Cognos Insight desktop, which provides individual, personalized analytics, plan creation, and reporting which can also be used as a client to Managed Contribution (to a plan developed and deployed through workflow)
• Managed Contribution – this is the Contributor client, a thin client, which is used to provide input to plans in a governed process. 

 NOTE: Websheets are now supported with workflow -- can be embedded in a contributor application (however, not Cognos Insight) These allow application builders to build views that perform better particularly for reviewers – in the responsibility and approval applications (see section “Work Together Better and Faster”)

2. Faster, easier modeling

Customers will appreciate the ease of modeling which translates to more business analysts with the ability to model. For example, the guided processes include import, design and deploy. It’s now easier to design a cube, for example you can view it being built.

Here’s what one of the Beta customers said about the performance modeler capability in TM1 10.1…

Cognos Insight:

• “ Provides an excellent prototyping tool for our Business Analysts for analyzing and modeling against our Teradata warehouse that can be promoted to our enterprise Planning Systems” 
• “Will be a HUGE help as a contribution client for sales forecasting in reducing our reliance on excel for offline/disconnected analysis and will allow us to increase the frequency of our outlook updates 
• “Will allow us to move more modeling out to the business users (as we had done in the past with Cognos Planning Analyst)” 

Performance Modeler:

•  “Will level set our development practices, allowing our less senior TM1 developers to ramp up quickly and allow our Senior TM1 developers to focus on the most complex development”. 
• “Will allow more people to develop TM1 solutions as well as speed up the development process” 

Impact on our overall Planning & Analysis Strategy:

• “We see TM1 as our System of record globally for Planning” 
• “The release of TM1 10.1 will increase and ease our transition from Cognos Planning to TM1 in an organized and systematic way”.

There are multiple enhancements to the Modeling process – that includes a new interface with guided modeling steps:

1. Define Dimensions 
   • Aid Format precedence and Calculation precedence 
   • Dimension Calculations with simple syntax 
   • Calc expression editor with syntax checking Rules and Feeders created automatically
2. Build Cubes 
   • Graphical gestures 
   • Initial dimension order determined from Dimension Types 
   • Drag/drop gestures to re-structure cubes 
   • To speed prototyping when customer requirements are not firm 
3. Define Rules 
   • Rules & feeders are generated automatically for dimension calculations and links 
4. Link Data 
   • Easy way to specify data references and movements 
   • Link validation to support novice users 
   • Link is manifested as cube rules in the target cube and feeders in the source cube 
   • Supports lookup and accumulation on picklist items 
   • Links can be converted to on-demand processes for manual or scheduled execution (versus a dynamic execution of a rule) 

Much smarter for the application transfer process:

• Ease the transfer of applications across environments – Dev > Test > Prod 
• Externalise application and model object definitions for transfer across air-gapped environments 
• Changes can be transferred to the target environment without bringing the server down 
• Production data is retained Transfer in from BV Auto-documentation 

The 3-pane application provides:

• Content pane 
• Working area 
• Properties pane 
• Dockable editors 
• Drag and Drop is widespread 
• Improved Editors for TI and Rules

An application can be defined as centralized (with contributors working from the server) or distributed.

The guided steps for application design are:

1. Solution Navigation 
2. Create Views 
3. Define Approval Hierarchy 
4. Define Client and Mode 
5. Define User rights 
6. Deploy Application

3. Collaboration and Workflow "Work Together Better and Faster"

• Managed Planning Processes and Workflow across all “clients” 
• Application Types (e.g. Continuous, Hierarchical)

Within Performance Modeler, plans can be established as different application types, depending upon several factors. When building your planning application to roll it out to teams, you control the mode which provides most effective, efficient planning.

Application Types:

• Central -- used for top-down plans, drivers from the corporate level such as administrators or highly-involved analysts, such as a merit increase metric, pricing, cost assumptions. When you open the application, you see a collection of cubeviews which you may optionally take ownership if you need exclusive write access to data. (In this application type, Cognos Insight is set to centralized mode, not distributed.) 
• Approval – Classic “planning” workflow; with an approval hierarchy and submit and reject activity built in; developed for input from many planners: for activities such as salary plans and annual plans. 
• Responsibility planning – best suited when a plan is always in use, such as a rolling forecasting plan with frequent changes; suitable for high number of users. There is no formal workflow with submit/reject attached to the plan. Users check the nodes/cubes to determine if dated, in reserve, etc.

In addition to adding notes/comments at the cell level in plans, users can also attach commentary to their workflow submissions.

4. Analytics Server - Deliver Scalable, High Performing Systems

Today’s TM1 10.1 Server is highly adapted for quality, scale, and enterprise performance:

• Built on the high-performance stable 9.5.2 Server Engine 
• High performance for complex analysis – with complex models, complex data sets
• Improved performance for remote users. 

TM1 Engine details behind these server improvements:

• Non-blocking dynamic subsets (do not impede scaling)
• Automated cube dependency creation
• Individual TI Commits in Chores
• Smarter Contributor Ownership processing
• On Startup TI triggers.

Parallel Interaction:

• A new TM1 object-locking approach that increases user throughput by lessening situations that result in write transactions that are “blocked” by concurrent read and write transactions.

A true web application that allows customers to monitor multiple TM1 Servers from one location. It offers:

• Health check icons to provide high level status updates of Tm1 server. 
  • Ability to sort & filter thread activity for faster analysis of TM1 server operations. 
  • Ability to schedule thread activity logging for enterprise diagnostic needs.  
  • New log format – allows for faster analysis & diagnosis of thread activity (especially when used in conjunction with Cognos Insight)

5. Support User-Driven Design and Innovation

“Cognos Insight provides an excellent prototyping tool for our business analysts. It will allow us to move more modeling out to the business users.” -- Jack Purvis, Senior Manager, BI/PM, DIRECTV

The combination of new TM1 capabilities plus Cognos Insight, the desktop workspace speeds up user innovation and design ... contributors are golden.

• With Cognos Insight, users are empowered to freely explore new plan models. 
• They can pull the data of their choice onto their desktop
  • from managed or personal sources without the assistance of IT
  • and build plan prototypes with personalized dimensions and hierarchies, and run what-if scenarios on the plan data.  
• They can dive deep into data to examine the profitability of their business, analyze hierarchies such as product families down to the SKU level or customer family sets, and view on-demand the effect of a costing change. The quick, easy development and experimentation with the plans is aided by intuitive gestures for exploration, instant re-calculations, and rich visualization.  
• To share planning ideas, users can collaborate with their own work group or multiple groups across the enterprise by  
  • Promoting their findings in a tailored dashboard in Cognos Business Insight for broad distribution  
  • Publishing the material to be read as a report in Cognos Business Intelligence 
  • Moving the plan as an application to the Web for either limited or widely distributed access 
  • Contributors can blend in deeper analysis such as predictive or profitability and share those expanded insights.  
• Analysts can further develop the plan, link it to the larger enterprise plan and deploy it for contribution in a governed process.  

IBM have an online event to showcase TM1 v 10.1 on February 14, 2012 at 10:00 AM Eastern US Time (02:00 Eastern Daylight Savings time in Australia). See this link for more information on the TM1 v10 launch.