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Басня Эзопа: сотрудничество IBM Cognos TM1 и IBM Cognos BI

22 ноября 2011
Басня Эзопа: сотрудничество IBM Cognos TM1 и IBM Cognos BI
Какое отношение имеет творчество Эзопа к решениям компании IBM? Узнайте, прочитав интересный и познавательный блог признанного специалиста в области бизнес аналитики, Тима О'Брайана. (Блог опубликован на английском языке).

One summer’s day, a rooster scoured the barnyard looking for food. As he scratched the straw on the ground he uncovered a jewel. The rooster suspected the jewel might be valuable because of the way it glittered in the sun.

“The object is probably worth a lot”, the rooster thought to himself, “but I’d trade a bushel of these shiny things for a single kernel of corn.”

The primary moral, of course, is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. …But, there’s something else to be learned from Aesop’s fable. What would have happened if the rooster had seen the bigger picture beyond his simple need for a little sustenance? He certainly would have known that the jewel could fetch much more than, “a single kernel of corn.” Because he lacked access to basic facilitators from which to discuss this discovery not much was to be gained from it. Imagine if he had collaborative access to his peers, including perhaps more wise and worldly roosters and hens with greater influence and relationships with other rooster groups, large villages, or other rooster- or hen-run businesses?  If so, he might have been able to draw greater value out of this discovery.  Workgroups could have been quickly setup to weigh options and determine how best to use this newfound resource.  One might learn through this group involvement that the ‘jewel’ should be invested for a later date when times are not as prosperous?  Maybe it could be used to purchase new equipment to update the existing company’s plant & equipment or analytics technology?  Maybe it could be used in smaller bits to payoff the dreaded fox community to keep them at bay from invading the sanctity of their henhouse?

Because the enabled collaboration and feedback mechanism didn’t exist the Rooster was willing to settle for the hear-and-now need.  Only he benefitted from this, not the other roosters and hens or the local community.  Unfortunately, it only solved an isolated need and wasn’t effectively exploited.

This scenario is obviously entirely made up but there’s a great degree of truth in it, especially how it can impact a business enterprise.  Look, ‘jewels’ exist in every organization.  They don’t always make themselves known.  Basically, good ideas don’t only come from the top.  Or, “there isn’t a monopoly on ideas coming from only the executive suite.”  They come from all over the business and can have high- or low-impacting repercussions: good and bad, that is.  It’s what happens with these ideas after they’re learned that matters.  A collaborative platform for wide participation in enterprise planning, budgeting and forecasting is the enabler that can take those jewels and turn them into something far more valuable that can benefit the entire organization. The key is capturing this information so that it can be acted on.  Missed opportunities happen in business all the time.  The individual contributors, managers, directors, and even vice presidents not to mention the C-level executives all have insights and performance-impacting contributions that can benefit the organization.  But unbeknownst to the executive team, these ideas and insights into the business get lost unless there’s a channel in place for that feedback to be captured or heard.

We know the workforce is filled with employees’ great ideas; McDonald’s Big Mac Sandwich, 3M’s Post-It Notes, Sony’s Walkman, and Dunkin’ Donuts’ Munchkins are just some big-bang examples. All over the organization there’s cost savings and process efficiencies (streamlining order-to-cash), growth opportunities (expanding into new markets and product lines), and a risk awareness (unforeseen commodity/raw material price changes) that front-line employees, middle management, and even back-office workers have visibility into that necessitate a feedback loop so they are captured and acted upon.

IBM Cognos® TM1 and its planning, budgeting, and forecasting capabilities not to mention analytics power can promptly facilitate the ideas exchange process through managed contributions and enterprise-scale input and high-powered analytics with enabled comments facilitates best practices and the enterprise wide collaboration necessary to drive, monitor, and understand the business better.

IBM Cognos TM1 has:

  • A multidimensional, 64-bit, in-memory OLAP engine provides exceptionally fast performance for analyzing 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 personalization 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.

IBM Cognos® Collaboration has:

  • Built-in collaborative and social networking capabilities to fuel the exchange of ideas and knowledge that naturally occurs in decision-making processes today.
  • Helps groups streamline and improve decision-making by providing capabilities for forming communities, capturing annotations and opinions, and sharing insights with others around the information itself.
  • Establish decision networks and expand the reach and impact of information.
  • Provides transparency and accountability to ensure alignment and consensus.
  • Communicate and coordinate tasks to engage the right people at the right time.

Source: ibm-business-analytics.com