Advanced visualization capabilities in IBM Cognos BI: Why? What? How to?

Why Visualization Matters in Analytics World?

The world produces more than 2.5 exabytes of data every day. Visualization is one key approach to gaining insight from this mountain of data. It enables you to see the trends and patterns (along with gaps and outliers) in the data that are not as easily identified in rows and columns of numbers.

Visualization can also provide access to huge data sets, such as weather, web traffic, sales and voting records. Data sets of this size have the potential to be overwhelming and inaccessible; a good visualization provides a way to explore, understand and communicate the data, along with actions the data indicate should be taken. For example, there are visualizations that show past prices for airline tickets and prices for future travel dates. From this sort of visualization, you can see whether ticket prices are trending upwards or downwards and you have guidance when considering tickets for different possible travel dates. A list of ticket prices wouldn’t be nearly as compelling or useful as showing the price variations with graphs.

The most successful visualizations have a few things in common. They have a clear purpose; they include only relevant, focused content; and they present the content in a manner that reveals and highlights the interesting relationships in the data.

Extensible visualization capabilities in IBM Cognos BI

New, extensible visualization capabilities built into IBM Cognos Business Intelligence V10.2.1.1 solutions unleash report authors and business users from a static library of charts. No longer are users locked into only the in-product visualization options. Now you can easily augment your reports—both general and active reports—with a growing collection of visualizations to meet your data and insight requirements.

 

With the new IBM Cognos Visualization Customizer, visualizations can be edited, including changing fonts, colors, or even icons to meet the most specific requirements.

Through the new Visualization Marketplace on IBM Analytics Zone, report authors can choose from over 30 visualization options, ranging from radar charts to heat maps and area charts. New visualization options will be regularly added to the Marketplace. You’ll always find just the right visualization just a simple download away.

 

Step-by-step process to extend Cognos BI visualization features -  

First of all please make sure you have Cognos BI 10.2.1.1 server installed. If you have 10.2.1 then download and install 10.2.1.1 fixpack from IBM support site

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24036695

Now download all visualizations (vis.sample.all_10_2_1_1 .zip) along with documentations from AnalyticsZone site using below link. To do so you must be a member. If you are not then register yourself, its easy :).

https://www.analyticszone.com/homepage/web/displayMarketplacePage.action#catalog/viz_assets_allvis

The next step is to import these visualizations into Cognos library before we use them thru report studio.

1) Unzip vis.sample.all_10_2_1_1 .zip into a folder. You’ll get 30 zip files for 30 visualizations.

2) Open “IBM Cognos Administration” in browser and go to “Library” tab.

3) In left side panel you can see “Visualizations” item. On right side, click on “Import Visualizations” button as shown in below snapshot.

4) It’ll open a window where you can import all 30 or some visualization files one-by-one.

 

5) On successful import you can see all imported files. 

 

6) Now open Report Studio with any package. From toolbar you should drag “Visualization” tool in report area. Here you can see all 30 visualizations and select any one of your choice. Align data items and run the report. You can also use them in your active reports.

 

Reference:

1)      Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpJMPay9Kg#t=12

2)      Download Visualizations - https://www.analyticszone.com/homepage/web/displayMarketplacePage.action#catalog/viz_assets_allvis

3)      Visualization Community - https://www.analyticszone.com/communities/service/html/communityview?communityUuid=03a2ed30-3407-4d0d-a7f6-340bc1d53f05

4)      White paper - Using visualization to understand big data https://www.analyticszone.com/blogs/03a2ed30-3407-4d0d-a7f6-340bc1d53f05/entry/whitepaper_using_visualization_to_understand_big_data?lang=en_us

Smarter Analytics

What is Smarter Analytics?

Organizations that embrace analytics are outperforming their competition—and the gap is widening. They are extracting insights not only from enterprise data, but also from big data that is continuously flowing in from a variety of new sources. These insights help them make better, faster decisions and automate processes. Analytics is changing the nature of how businesses and governments work. Organizations that don’t integrate analytics into every aspect of their operations are getting left behind.
Smarter Analytics is IBM’s approach to analytics. With Smarter Analytics, you can build a solid foundation of strategic analytics products and services to take advantage of all of your data sources, including structured and unstructured data. And you can get the support you need to manage change and stay one step ahead of your competition.

Smarter Analytics can help you transform your organization and achieve these business outcomes:

• Grow your customer base and retain your most profitable customers.
• Continuously improve operational efficiency.
• Prevent fraud and manage risk and compliance efforts.
• Transform and automate financial processes.

Need for Analytics –

According to recent surveys from Accenture, TDWI and Palladium, the results of the existing approach to Performance Management are poor.

Users are not well enough informed – they do not have access to the right information, and don’t trust it.

Users are not well enough engaged – There are still many decision makers in an organization not leveraging BI and performance management solutions. 

Users are not well enough aligned -- Very few people in an organization understand the corporate strategy.

Due to above reasons -

1. Decision makers are often using ‘gut feel’ and anecdotal evidence to make critical decisions
   
   
2. Data is difficult to access; often it needs to be compiled from multiple spreadsheets, databases, emails etc.   Data is there but often very difficult to access.
3. As we all know, business cycles move fast, especially in today’s rapidly changing and global economy.

IBM portfolio -

The IBM Business Analytics portfolio has a range of solutions built to uncover insights for specific industries such financial services, public sector, distribution, industrial and communications. As well as deliver insights for cross industry solutions such financial performance, customer relationship, human capital, advanced case management, supply chain and asset optimization. These solutions are built based on our experience working with clients in each of these areas.

By using this Business Analytic solutions -

• Operations teams could Impove the production capacity and align them with the demand coming from the sales forecasting
• Product Development teams could reduce portfolio gaps based on market information and and customer feedback
• Finance teams could drive Growth and Profit through Resource Allocation
• Sales teams could close deals faster and improve customer profitability
• Customer Service teams could reduce churn and improve customer loyalty
• Marketing teams could improve the competitive positioning and drive greater demand

These solutions leverage a range of rich Business Analytics capabilities from 5 core areas. These categories are –

1) Business intelligence  (http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SWQ20)

Harness the data explosion, meet your organization’s needs for flexible business intelligence deployment options and satisfy user expectations with powerfully simple analytics you can’t outgrow.

With IBM Cognos business intelligence and performance management software(http://www.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/), you have the integrated dashboards, scorecards, reporting, analysis, and planning and budgeting capabilities you need to gain and act on fact-based insights..

2) Financial performance and strategy management  http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SWQ30

Guide management strategy in the most profitable directions with timely, reliable insights, scenario modeling and transparent and timely reporting.

.

(http://www.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/products/tm1/)

IBM Cognos® TM1® capabilities span personal, functional, and enterprise requirements for planning, analysis and reporting to help Finance drive timely decision-making.

3) Predictive and advanced analytics http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SWQ50

Discover subtle patterns and associations and develop and deploy predictive models to optimize decision-making.

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With IBM SPSS predictive analytics software (http://www.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/), you can use statistical analysis, data and text mining, predictive modeling and decision optimization to anticipate change and take action to improve outcomes.

4) Governance, risk and compliance

http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SWQ40

Gain deep insight into all aspects of risk management, including governance, risk and compliance, with an integrated solution that adapts to your organization’s unique risk profile and methodologies.

.

OpenPages GRC software (http://www.ibm.com/software/analytics/openpages/) allows your organization to manage enterprise operational risk and compliance initiatives using a single, integrated solution.

5) Analytic applications (http://www.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/analytic-applications/)

http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SWQ10 Provide line-of-business managers with actionable insights through packaged analysis and reporting solutions.

And these solutions and capabilities have been designed to leverage a foundation of trusted information built upon rich data management capabilities and optimized systems from IBM.