® The e-business imperative What impact will it have on your business? e-Business: The rules have changed Cognos in the News There’s no time like now! Cognos Query 6.0 gives instant answers to Web users Healthcare Industry Spotlight Top health organizations improve customer service and cut costs with Cognos Raise your Cognos awareness. Ask a guru. Hunter Douglas: Made in the shade All together now DecisionStream 6.5 unites Web, ERP, and transaction data into BI ready data marts Leading dot.com companies love Cognos Cognos links with customer through ESP One stop shopping for online service, support, and education We’ve gone platinum! The ultimate level of Cognos service The Platinum Service Guarantee Cognos e-Applications Coordinating business disciplines with pre-built BI marts Cognos & Millennia Vision at DWI Anaheim COGNews on the Web! 4 3 2 1 5 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 With businesses surging forward at top speed — 24 x 7 — the Internet is rewriting the rules for managing relationships with customers, partners, and suppliers. Today, competitors are only a click away. Infor- mation — how you access it, analyze it, and share it — is now the pre-eminent factor in business success. To help our readers get a better perspec- tive on the rapid changes taking place in e-business and to begin to assess its impact, COGNews recently sat down with Mychelle Mollot, Cognos’ director of product marketing for e-business solutions. COGNews: There are a lot of different buzz- words and concepts out there. But let’s start simply. What’s the defi- nition of e-business? Mychelle Mollot: The truth is, if you talk to 10 people, you might end up with 10 slightly different answers. Some view it as a synonym for e-commerce or for a dot- com company. However, from our perspec- tive — which is consistent with what most analysts say — e-business is using the Internet to transform business processes and relationships. COGNews: Sounds like almost any company is an e-business. Mychelle: Well, in many ways that’s true. You can be a traditional, bricks-and-mortar company, a start-up dot-com, or a hybrid “clicks-and-mortar” company that’s inte- grating both business models. What mat- ters is that the Internet is becoming an increasingly important element of busi- ness strategy to improve processes and information flows. COGNews: What are the e-business challenges? Mychelle: Broadly speaking, companies face three major chal- lenges in implementing effective e-business strategies. First, they need to accel- erate top-line revenue growth — profitable revenue — by getting and keeping customers. Most companies lose half of their customers every five years. In e-business, where competitors are a click away — that churn will likely increase. But if you find out which customers are most profitable, you could focus extra efforts on retaining those high-margin accounts. THE COGNOS CUSTOMER NEWSLETTER SUMMER ’00 continued on page 2 e business imperative THE What IMPACT will it have on your business? INSIDE
Transcript
®
The e-business imperativeWhat impact will it have on your business?
e-Business: The rules have changed
Cognos in the News
There’s no time like now!Cognos Query 6.0 gives instant answers to Web users
Healthcare Industry SpotlightTop health organizations improve customer serviceand cut costs with Cognos
Raise your Cognos awareness. Ask a guru.
Hunter Douglas: Made in the shade
All together nowDecisionStream 6.5 unites Web, ERP, and transaction data into BI ready data marts
Leading dot.com companies love Cognos
Cognos links with customer through ESPOne stop shopping for online service, support, and education
We’ve gone platinum!The ultimate level of Cognos service
The Platinum Service Guarantee
Cognos e-ApplicationsCoordinating business disciplines with pre-built BI marts
Cognos & Millennia Vision at DWI Anaheim
COGNews on the Web!
4
321
578
1011
1213
141516
With businesses surging forward at top
speed — 24 x 7 — the Internet is rewriting
the rules for managing relationships with
customers, partners, and suppliers. Today,
competitors are only a click away. Infor-
mation — how you access it, analyze it,
and share it — is now the pre-eminent
factor in business success.
To help our readers get a better perspec-
tive on the rapid changes taking place in
e-business and to begin to assess its
impact, COGNews recently
sat down with Mychelle
Mollot, Cognos’ director
of product marketing for
e-business solutions.
COGNews: There are
a lot of different buzz-
words and concepts
out there. But let’s start
simply. What’s the defi-
nition of e-business?
Mychelle Mollot: The truth is, if you talk
to 10 people, you might end up with 10
slightly different answers. Some view it as
a synonym for e-commerce or for a dot-
com company. However, from our perspec-
tive — which is consistent with what most
analysts say — e-business is using the
Internet to transform business processes
and relationships.
COGNews: Sounds like almost any
company is an e-business.
Mychelle: Well, in many ways that’s true.
You can be a traditional, bricks-and-mortar
company, a start-up dot-com, or a hybrid
“clicks-and-mortar” company that’s inte-
grating both business models. What mat-
ters is that the Internet is becoming an
increasingly important element of busi-
ness strategy to improve processes and
information flows.
COGNews: What are the
e-business challenges?
Mychelle: Broadly
speaking, companies
face three major chal-
lenges in implementing
effective e-business
strategies.
First, they need to accel-
erate top-line revenue
growth — profitable revenue — by getting
and keeping customers. Most companies
lose half of their customers every five years.
In e-business, where competitors are a click
away — that churn will likely increase. But
if you find out which customers are most
profitable, you could focus extra efforts on
retaining those high-margin accounts.
T H E C O G N O S C U S T O M E R N E W S L E T T E R S U M M E R ’ 0 0
continued on page 2
ebusinessimperative
THE
What IMPACTwill it have on your business?
IN
SI
DE
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continued on page 3
e-Business: The rules have changed
Hot off the presses — e-Business: The rules have changed. Cognos and businesspartner Millennia Vision Corporation have created a booklet outlining six initiativesto demonstrate how Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence can make your com-pany an e-business success story.
In a world where getting there first can have lasting results, Millennia VisionCorporation and Cognos can help you break speed barriers to getting your business up and running in e-time.
e-Business: The rules have changed demonstrates how to take advantage of proven methods using Cognos e-business solutions to bring fast resultsto an organization.
Order your free copy today at www.cognos.com/booklet
eSecond, companies need to streamline
their operations. Information-based rela-
tionships are missing. They could answer
the key questions, like what suppliers are
on-time and on-budget? What are the
product-return trends? How do they com-
pare to industry averages? These kinds
of questions mean better operational
effectiveness.
Finally, how can you sustain competitive
advantage? It used to be that a competi-
tive advantage would last one or two years
— sometimes more. That’s no longer true
in e-business. Low barriers, more markets,
a proliferation of channels — today com-
panies need to constantly react to change.
COGNews: How does Cognos fit into the
e-business paradigm?
Mychelle: Cognos offers a whole range of
products and services that help e-business
strategies succeed. It’s been said that infor-
mation is the currency of the e-business
economy so think of Cognos’ role as mak-
ing companies information rich. In fact,
because of the importance of information
to e-business, Cognos is becoming the cor-
nerstone to many companies’ e-business
strategies. Specifically, Cognos offers
software and services solutions that help
companies do three things: see your
business, unite your business, and share
your business.
COGNews: Can you walk us through those
one at a time?
Mychelle: OK. When we talk about seeing
your business, we mean that Cognos
lets you transform your data — maybe it’s
e-commerce data, or HR information, or
data from your ERP systems — into mean-
ingful information that everyone — not
just analysts and executives — can see
and use to drive the business forward.
COGNews: Can you give us an example?
Mychelle: Sure. Think how powerful it
would be to see answers about which
products you should be cross-selling
together on your e-commerce site. Or
which Web banners are delivering the most
click-through purchases. Or maybe you
want to develop a tighter profile of the
ideal, profitable customer.
COGNews: What do you mean about unit-
ing the business?
Mychelle: Well, the untold secret of many
e-businesses is that they generate huge
amounts of data — but in islands or
stovepipes that aren’t integrated with
corporate data stores. For example, try
to return a product purchased through a
company’s Website in their retail store.
For the most part you can’t do it —
because the data about you and your pur-
chases is stored in different stovepipes.
Companies need to unify those disparate
data stores into unified, rational views to
give them a complete, accurate picture of
their entire enterprise.
Then you can answer the tougher questions
about cross-process synergies, channel can-
nibalization, and cross-media promotions.
COGNews: You also mentioned “sharing
the business.” What do you mean here?
Mychelle: Relationships — whether they
be with customers, partners, or suppliers
— are more important than ever. And in
e-business, they’re driven less by transac-
tions and more by information that enables
them to make better decisions. That means
securely exposing your information 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year so that suppliers can
check your inventory levels and customers
can access their accounts and track their
shipments, and see order histories. The
result is a more effective supply and demand
chain and a better offering to help get and
keep customers.
COGNews: So, how does Cognos help
companies address these challenges?
Mychelle: Cognos’ core competency is EBI
(enterprise business intelligence) and EBI
eThe business imperativecontinued from page 1
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 9:56 AM Page 2
i n t h eNewsCOGNOS3
is central to e-business success because
it’s all about unifying, analyzing, and shar-
ing information. Those are capabilities
we’ve delivered to thousands of users
around the world for years. Better relation-
ships and better insights translate into
better decisions.
We believe that Cognos is uniquely posi-
tioned in this area because of three major
differentiators. We have unmatched breadth
and depth in EBI. We can start with data
mart delivery and continue all the way
through querying, reporting, analysis, and
visualization.
We’ve proven our ability to deliver these
results at “e-speed.” That means we can
implement solutions and help companies
adapt them quickly. For example, we have
e-applications, best practices, worldwide
services, and our new e-business initiatives.
And, from a technical perspective, we are
very much built for e-business. We have a
zero-footprint HTML client, simple inter-
faces, a proven scalable architecture, and
a foundation based on industry standards
like XML and PDF.
COGNews: Can you give us a little more
detail about the e-business initiatives you
mentioned?
Mychelle: We’ve authored a new paper that
identifies how customers can use Cognos
EBI to move e-business from the tactical
to the strategic. It outlines six key initiatives
that drive e-business: e-customer analysis,
e-customer relationships, e-supply chain
management, e-sales analysis, e-marketing
analysis, and Website management.
COGNews: Thanks for your time Mychelle.
Mychelle: My pleasure. E-business is all
about information — and, really, that’s
what Cognos is all about — delivering the
appropriate information, to the right peo-
ple, in the right way, at the right time. ■
COGNOS WINS PRESTIGIOUS GLOBAL SERVICE AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ‘ROUND-THE-CLOCK,WEB-BASED CUSTOMER SUPPORTCognos has been awarded Supportgate.com’s WebStar Service Award for delivering superioronline Website services to its customers. The award was presented at the annual SoftwareSupport Professionals Association (SSPA) San Diego Summit, where professionals and industryexperts of the information technology (IT) world met to discuss support services operationalissues. The WebStar Service Awards recognize companies who provide superior customer service to their online customers.
For more information, visit http://www.cognos.com/news/rel_306.html
ABC TECHNOLOGIES’ BETTERMANAGEMENT.COM PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PORTALENDORSED BY COGNOSABC Technologies, Inc. (ABC Tech), the market leader in Activity-Based Costing/Management(ABC/M) software, and Cognos are collaborating to create The Business Intelligence (BI)Authority, the on-line Authority for Business Intelligence, at www.BIAuthority.com. The BIAuthority is the third Authority Website under the umbrella of BetterManagement.com, the leading Performance Management portal. BetterManagement.com offers in-depth, on-lineAuthority Websites for selected management concepts aimed at improving an organization’sperformance.
Each Authority Website in BetterManagement.com will provide visitors with access to concept-specific content, contacts, and products. These resources will range from basic education, totraining, to access to experts, and offerings of software and implementation services. Similarto the other vertical hubs of BetterManagement.com, The BI Authority will offer content such aswhite papers, industry case studies, and Web seminars. Members of the BI community will stayinformed through the management email report and The BI Authority Minute. The BI AuthorityMinute will be brief audio files from industry experts delivering tips and sharing knowledge onbusiness intelligence. The BI Authority will launch this summer.
For more information, visit http://www.abctech.com/library/press/release_3_29_00.htm
COGNOS INTRODUCES BI LIFECYCLE™ TO EDUCATE PARTNERS AND CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDECognos is now offering the Cognos BI Lifecycle, a unique, new technical course that teaches BI consultants, analysts, and project leaders to plan, build, and deploy cost-effective, flexible,and scalable enterprise BI solutions.
This course has been designed to reflect the entire BI application development lifecycle —from analyzing user requirements to data mart design to deployment. The BI Lifecycle isdesigned for technical project leaders and developers to acquire a fundamental overview ofdata modeling, data warehousing, and scorecarding — techniques needed to build successful,integrated BI applications. It is intended to help them ask the right questions of the end-usercommunity, and translate those requirements into a valuable BI application. The BI Lifecyclealso emulates real-world situations through role-plays and hands-on workshops.
For more information, visit http://www.cognos.com/news/rel_264.html
COGNOS TO DELIVER LINUX-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR E-BUSINESS APPLICATIONSCognos will port its software to the Linux operating system. Specific plans for adaptation andrelease of Linux versions of Cognos solutions will be finalized in the coming months. Cognosrecognizes that Linux — because of its flexibility and availability — is part of the computinginfrastructure customers are considering when building enterprise-scale, Internet-based, e-business applications.
Companies are looking to development environments such as Windows, UNIX, and now Linux to handle Web server components of their distributed e-business applications. Cognos helpscustomers by providing integrated enterprise business intelligence solutions across all of theire-business applications, operating systems, and data sources.
For more information, visit http://www.cognos.com/news/rel_281.html
Check out the listing of the most recent Cognos press releases athttp://www.cognos.com/news/ and stay informed.
The business imperativecontinued from page 2e
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4
The most effective e-business strategies
are those that enable enterprises to share
information among all stakeholders in the
supply-and-demand chain. That means
providing employees, partners, suppliers,
and even customers with tools to query
and analyze data quickly and easily.
Responding to the need for shared, inter-
enterprise information, Cognos recently
released its newest version of Cognos
Query, the ad hoc query and reporting solu-
tion that provides dynamic, interactive
data navigation through real-time data
from a basic HTML browser.
Cognos Query 6.0 is a key component of
the Cognos Platform for Enterprise BI,
leveraging the unified Upfront BI portal,
the common metadata created with
Architect, and the single log-in shared
security of Access Manager. The Platform
allows organizations to create, view, and
share unified views of traditional and
e-business processes.
Zero footprint means easy adoption
Users access Cognos Query 6.0 from their
Upfront portal “in-box” using only a simple
HTML browser. According to Anastasia
Valentine, product manager for Cognos
Query, that zero-footprint design is a key
advantage. “We’re delivering the complete
power and functionality of Cognos Query
through a standard HTML browser,” she
said. “That means there’s no installation,
no plug-ins, no Java, no configuration, no
maintenance, and no upgrades on each
user’s desktop. It’s the simplest and least-
expensive solution for IT. And for users,
the HTML interface is a known commodity,
virtually eliminating the need for usability
training.”
Beyond the cost-effective simplicity, how-
ever, Valentine noted that Cognos Query
offers power, sophistication, and flexibility.
“The power to explore and navigate
through data from the browser is one of
Cognos Query’s hallmarks. “Users can
access real-time data by going right to
the transaction sources,” she said, “and
a single query can span multiple data
sources, helping users get a true picture
of business activities and results.”
Cognos Query 6.0 includes the following
new features: a vast array of new calcula-
tions; simplified sorting, filtering, and
grouping; calculated columns; and a com-
prehensive expression editor for advanced
calculations and filters. “Cognos Query is
the only Web-based query tool that offers
calculated columns that extend the data
a step further through sums, percentages,
year-over-year changes, and similar derived
information,” said Valentine.
Another major new feature is the new Query
Design Wizard. “All the user needs to do is
select columns and layout options, create
the calculations, and filter or group the
data,” said Valentine. “Modifying queries is
just as easy in query design mode where
you can access general and advanced
query functionality.”
The query and reporting lifecycle
Cognos Query presents its results in
dynamic, hotspot-driven displays that can
contain additional linked queries. That
means a user can run a query and click
on a result to drill through to additional
queries with related information and details.
Cognos Query is a key component of the
“Query and Reporting Lifecycle,” that inte-
grates Impromptu®, Impromptu Web
Reports, and Cognos Query in a cycle of
improving information flows.
For example, using Impromptu, an advanced
user can create a complete report, with
sophisticated graphics, formatting, and
prompts. Then, she publishes that report
“to the masses” who access the managed
report through Impromptu Web Reports.
Report consumers can run that report and
click through to get additional details
through Cognos Query. If a particular query
is popular, the user can export the query
definition and use it to create a regular
managed report in Impromptu, where she
can use a corporate template, graphics,
and other facilities to transform the ad hoc
query into a presentation-class report.
“Cognos Query is the right solution for
users who want to get fast answers on the
spot,” said Valentine. “It’s the ideal exten-
sion of business intelligence to bring users
down to real-time, granular details.” ■
NOW!THERE ‘S NO TIME LIKE
COGNOS QUERY 6.0 GIVES INSTANT ANSWERS TO WEB USERS
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5
Cognos helps Sutter Health save over $17 million in three years
Dave Peterson of Sutter Health used to have
a tough time getting the attention of his
CEO. That was before the CEO realized that
Mr. Peterson had found a way to help save
his company over $5 million a year using a
business intelligence solution from Cognos.
As System Procurement Contract Database
Manager with the seventh largest health-
care provider in the United States, Mr.
Peterson’s team is responsible for produc-
ing, analyzing, and distributing savings and
compliance reports for the entire company.
Three years ago, producing these reports
meant laboring through a hodge-podge of
PC-based databases that were
expensive to build and maintain,
provided only static views of
particular data, and required extensive
engineering to change or add new compo-
nents. “We simply were not getting the
value out of that system for the amount
of time, money, and effort we were putting
into it,” said Peterson. Seeking a solution
that could deliver better results easier and
faster, Sutter Health turned to Cognos.
The results that Sutter Health has achieved
with the Cognos BI solution speak for
themselves. In just three years, Dave and
his team have generated savings of more
than $17 million dollars for the company.
Data audits and analyses that used to take
weeks to complete, now take only minutes.
Today, key business
managers and directors
across the company are
leveraging Cognos’ mul-
tidimensional analysis
to view and understand
compliance data. “The
Cognos solution pro-
vides me with a map of
our business that simply didn’t
exist before,” said Tim Twomey,
Regional Materials Manager for
the Central Area, covering greater
Sacramento. “I am now able to
see compliance
data from a high
level, identify
possible prob-
lem areas, and
then drill down
to find the
supplier or products we need to focus on
to make improvements.”
In addition, the System Procurement divi-
sion uses the Cognos solution to produce
and distribute standard reports on a
monthly basis to managers and executives
at all levels of the organization. “Our ulti-
mate goal is to empower every manager
in our organization to make smarter busi-
ness decisions,” said Peterson. “Cognos
enables us to meet that goal by driving out
consistent and coordinated information
across the company. It is easy to use and
easy to deploy. We chose Cognos because
they are the leader in the business intelli-
gence industry and because they have
demonstrated to us a real commitment
to customer success and innovation in
their solution.”
About Sutter Health
One of the nation’s leading non-profit
systems of community-based healthcare
services, Sutter Health serves more than
three million people throughout Northern
California, from the Oregon border to the
San Joaquin Valley, and from the Pacific
coast to the Sierra foothills. Sutter Health
has care centers in more than 100 Northern
California communities; 26 acute care hos-
pitals; region-wide home health, hospice,
and occupational health networks; and
long-term care centers. Sutter Health has
relationships with approximately 5,000
physicians, and its hospitals and care
centers employ more than 35,000 people.
improveH E A L T H C A R E I N D U S T R Y S P O T L I G H T
and cut costs with Cognos
continued on page 6
customer service
Top health organizations
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 9:58 AM Page 5
6
New HCIA-Sachs service harnesses Cognos e-business solution, generates a quarter- million dollars in two months
It’s no secret that information is the
lifeblood of our healthcare system. In this
Web-based society, effectively collecting,
managing, and distributing that information
securely has never been more
important. So, when leading
healthcare and pharmaceutical
companies went looking for
a way to access information
more quickly and insightfully,
HCIA-Sachs delivered the goods
— using Cognos’ Enterprise
Business Intelligence (BI)
solution for e-business.
HCIA-Sachs, the world’s lead-
ing health data management
company, maintains the indus-
try’s largest healthcare data
warehouse and collects data
from a variety of industry
sources that include hospitals,
managed care and insurance
companies, federal and state
governments, clinics, physi-
cians’ offices, and patients
themselves. With this data,
HCIA-Sachs creates and dis-
tributes information assets
that help their customers manage costs,
improve patient care, and develop new
treatments. One year ago, the company
realized that their old paper and CD-ROM-
based distribution systems were too slow
and inflexible to meet the rapidly evolving
needs of its customer-base. “We needed
to find a new approach to quickly deliver
information to our customers and empower
them with the ability to understand and
work with the data they want, whenever
and wherever they want it,” said Dan
Malloy, HCIA-Sachs’ vice president for
managed care.
After evaluating the products and solutions
of several vendors, HCIA-Sachs selected
Cognos as the standard for all of its inter-
nal and external business intelligence
applications. “The Cognos solution is easy
to use, easy to maintain, and capable of
handling massive quantities of vital scien-
tific and medical data,” said Tim Shipley,
HCIA-Sachs’ assistant vice
president of technology
through a portal on the HCIA-Sachs
Website. One application enables sub-
scribing customers to track and analyze
North American patient diagnoses. Users
can access their data through Cognos
reports and drill through to OLAP cubes
for in-depth analysis of data over factors
like time, location, and illness. “We think
this is just the tip of the ice-
berg for HCIA-Sachs and
Cognos. We continue to look
for new services we can develop
with the Cognos solution to
deliver greater information,
insight, and value to our cus-
tomers,” said Mr. Malloy.
About HCIA-Sachs
HCIA-Sachs collects, manages, and distrib-
utes comparative healthcare information.
Its customers deliver, purchase, and manu-
facture healthcare products and services.
By combining industry-leading databases,
methodologies, and analytic services,
HCIA-Sachs creates information assets
that help customers manage healthcare
costs and improve patient care.
Canadian Blood Services selectsCognos e-business solution tohelp increase donations
Canadian Blood Services
(CBS), a national, not-for-
profit organization responsi-
ble for managing the blood
supply in all Canadian
provinces and territories out-
side of Quebec, has selected
Cognos’ Enterprise Reporting
Solution for e-business to
help the agency track and
analyze donor information across Canada.
The Web-based Cognos solution will ini-
tially be used to bolster CBS donor recruit-
ing and retention programs. This purchase
is the first phase of an eventual enterprise-
wide rollout of the solution over the com-
ing year to many of the nearly 3,700 people
employed by CBS.
continued on page 7
Top health organizations continued from page 5
and development. “But
in the end, it was our
customers that deliv-
ered the strongest
endorsement for
Cognos enterprise BI. For one service in
which we use the Cognos solution, we sold
over a quarter of a million dollars worth of
subscriptions in just two months.”
Using the Cognos enterprise business
intelligence solution for e-business, HCIA-
Sachs has developed a series of Web-
based applications with which their cus-
tomers can access health-related data
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 9:59 AM Page 6
7
“In Canada today, approximately 3 percent
of our citizens donate blood to support a
population of over 30 million. Managing
and increasing our donor-base is vital to
the success of our organization and the
health and well-being of Canadians,” said
Ken Anderson, chief information officer
and vice-president of information services
at Canadian Blood Services. “The Cognos
solution brings together data from many
different offices across the country and
delivers it to the desktops of our employ-
ees with the real-time speed of the Web.
The solution provides our staff with the
vision and insight they need to leverage
maximum benefit from our donor informa-
tion holdings.”
A year ago, CBS had no effective and effi-
cient way of analyzing historical donor data
for the entire country. It was extremely dif-
ficult to identify which regular donors had
stopped donating, where frequent donors
lived, or from what demographic group
they came. “Tracking down a lapsed donor
was like looking for a needle in a haystack,”
said Mr. Anderson. “Information has no
value unless it is shared. Our ultimate goal
is to deploy the Cognos solution across our
enterprise so that everyone from the CEO
to the marketing analyst has the informa-
tion and insight they need to make better
decisions and do their jobs more effectively.”
CBS collected all of the donor data from
offices across the country and placed it
into a data warehouse. The Web-based
Cognos solution will serve as a primary
portal to access the data warehouse and
will provide employees with a range of
reporting and analysis tools to meet their
different information needs. For example,
the visualization component enables users
to view color-coded maps of Canada or
specific regions of the country in order to
determine which areas hold the strongest
and weakest donor populations. From
there, they can drill through to Cognos’
multidimensional analysis or reporting
tools to expose details within the donor-
base that may reveal opportunities to
strengthen the Canadian blood supply.
About Canadian Blood Services
Canadian Blood Services is a national,
not-for-profit charitable organization whose
sole mission is to manage the blood sup-
ply in all provinces and territories outside
Quebec. CBS operates 14 blood centers,
two plasma collection centers, and numer-
ous blood donor clinics. ■
Enterprise 2000 is a unique opportunity to push the envelope of yourknowledge and expertise with Cognos products. Not only can you con-sult with the sharpest IT minds in the Business Intelligence industry andget their perspective on what it takes to thrive in the Internet economy —you can also guide which topics they cover!
Influence the Gurus (And you could win your Enterprise 2000 registration fee!)
What do you want to learn at Enterprise 2000 this fall? Send us your sug-gestions and help Ben Plummer and his team of Cognos experts shapewhat’s covered in their presentations — and in the new “Ask a Guru”panel discussion. You’ll also qualify to win your Enterprise 2000 registra-tion fee! For details, visit www.cognos.com/enterprise2000/guru.
See entry form for applicable rules. To receive an entry form by fax or mail, call 1-877-778-7757. Contest void where prohibited by law.
“Nothing is more important to Cognos than helping customers be successful with our products. In this spirit,I invite you to visit the Enterprise 2000 Website to tell me what you want to learn in Anaheim this fall.”
Ben Plummer, Vice President, Cognos Customer Operations
Raise your Cognos awareness. Ask a guru.
enterprise2000
Cognos User Conference, October 2-5, Anaheim, California
Top health organizations continued from page 6
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 9:59 AM Page 7
8
However, according to Gordon Khan, chief
financial officer for Hunter Douglas’s North
American operation, that growth has not
been without its associated management
challenges.
“Our success was making the budgeting
process more difficult as we grew,” he noted.
“When I joined the company, I made it a
top priority to streamline the process so
we could spend our time analyzing — not
preparing — the information.”
Previously, Hunter Douglas primarily used
Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel spread-
sheets along with Microsoft Access to
prepare its budgets and business plans.
Three times yearly, each division — there
are 20 across North America — would
submit a hard-copy report for consolida-
tion. Corporate staffers and consultants
would then spend days re-keying the
information into spreadsheets and consol-
idating the information for the meetings.
Not surprisingly, the process was time-
consuming, costly, and error-prone. “It was
taking us about three weeks to manually
consolidate this information and prepare
the required reports,” said Khan. “By the
time we were reviewing the reports, the
information was 45 days old. And, during
this manual process, we had to deal with
different report configurations, errors,
inaccuracies — even different versions of
the spreadsheet software. If we wanted to
see more detail about a variance at the
consolidated level, you had to go back to
the spreadsheets or look at printouts.”
Khan also noted that having outside con-
sultants help manage the process posed
other problems as well. “The consulting
fees alone were running $200,000 a year,”
continued on page 9
H U N T E R D O U G L A S
SHADE
Get Accuracy and Speed with Cognos Finance
Paperless Budgeting?
Spreadsheet Break?
Cognos Finance is Your Link
to Unbreakable Budgets
COGNOS FINANCE
With 136 companies, 57 manufacturing
plants, and 79 assembly plants, Hunter
Douglas is a $1.4 billion leader in window
coverings and architectural products that it
markets in 80 countries around the world.
From the first flexible aluminum blind and
the first honeycomb shade, to the revolu-
tionary Silhouette and Vignette window
shadings, combining the best features of
blinds, shades, and draperies, Hunter
Douglas continues to lead the way with
innovative design, style, and technology.
In North America, the company has seen
tremendous growth — both through
acquisitions and new products, such as
the new Luminette Privacy Sheers. Through
its 6 manufacturing locations and addi-
tional 10 co-owned fabrication centers,
the company has more than $700 million
in annual US sales.
Window treatments leader turns to Cognos Finance for faster consolidations, greater insights
H U N T E R D O U G L A S : Made in the Shadecontinued from page 8
Today, 30 users can contributebudget input at their own locationsusing a single common template.
Flexible Budgets?Flexible Budgets?
Respond to the Market in a Snap
Forecasting?
Take Away
the Guesswork
built by financial professionals for financial professionals
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:00 AM Page 9
10
For many enterprises, BI challenges lie not
in application design but in creating a
scalable reporting data platform designed
to meet the needs of business users.
Armed with a streamlined data foundation,
enterprise business intelligence applica-
tions become easier to implement and
maintain. More importantly, they are more
valuable in the insights that they reveal.
The goal of Cognos DecisionStream is to
bring the highly successful concept of
coordinated dimensional data marts that
are BI ready to a wide range of corporate
BI solutions. This means access to “enter-
prise data assets” such as operational data
sources, database applications (e.g., ERP),
flat files, and Web data.
In late August, Cognos will release the
newest version of DecisionStream to help
companies rapidly implement a consistent
foundation for their enterprise reporting
and analysis. Version 6.5 of DecisionStream
will include the following improvements:
an enhanced data-transformation engine,
new build management and sequencing
functions, and automated dimension
management.
“We take raw data and create subject-area
data marts,” said Carol Buiter, Cognos prod-
uct marketing manager for DecisionStream.
“What sets DecisionStream apart is how it
uses a single, shared dimensional frame-
work and common business rules. That
makes it easier to build an entire series of
subject-specific marts and share informa-
tion for cross-functional views.”
Because of its ability to understand and
create sharable dimensions, DecisionStream
adds value beyond ETL tools, which
are typically used for more tra-
ditional replication applications.
DecisionStream builds dimen-
sional data marts designed to
integrate with Cognos BI tools.
Building data marts with dimen-
sions is recognized by Ralph
Kimball, a leading thinker in
the data warehouse space, as
an efficient and effective way
to roll out a data mart strategy.
The DecisionStream dimensional
framework ensures information
is consistent across multiple
data marts and delivers an effi-
cient methodology for deploying
an enterprise-wide solution.
With DecisionStream, users can
identify and analyze trends and
key performance indicators (KPIs)
in PowerPlay OLAP data first,
then drill through to Impromptu for trans-
action-level details. DecisionStream creates
default Impromptu catalogs and key reports
from relational data for easy access by
business users. Additionally, it builds
default PowerPlay models from the dimen-
sional framework and coordinates PowerPlay
Transformer jobs to create and refresh
PowerCubes.
New features In Version 6.5
DecisionStream 6.5 has new features
that provide:
• Enhanced transformation flexibility —
The new release includes additional
functions, a more powerful scripting
language, support for external functions,
and the ability to create internal user-
defined functions that can be reused
across different builds.
• Build management and sequencing —
Version 6.5 includes a new visual drag-
and-drop workbench that lets adminis-
trators create packages of builds, SQL,
conditions, and processing instructions
to coordinate tasks related to managing
a data mart. Any package may be called
from the command line or integrated into
an application or scheduling architecture.
• Automated dimension management —
Cognos has added several features to
manage dimension tables, including
automatic history preservation for slowly
changing dimensions, automatic surro-
gate-key management, and automatic
dimension record time stamping.
“These new features are really designed
to both simplify data mart creation and
continued on page 11
All together nowDecisionStream™ 6.5 unites Web, ERP, and transaction data into BI ready data marts
All together nowDecisionStream™ 6.5 unites Web, ERP, and transaction data into BI ready data marts
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:00 AM Page 10
updates to the desktops of senior execu-
tives, managers, and analysts. The visually
rich, easy-to-read scorecards depict a sum-
mary view of high-impact, actionable infor-
mation on company performance. Perform-
ance is measured against pre-determined
metrics at daily, weekly, and monthly inter-
vals. Metrics tracked include orders and
revenue by product and by assorted cus-
tomer segments such as geography and
club membership; advertising channel
performance; and Website metrics such
as visits, pages viewed, and visits-to-order
conversion rates.
The Cognos solution tracks hourly orders
and sales statistics, with information
accessible over the Web. Based on the
information, wine.com’s marketing depart-
ment can create customer profiles, such as
customer responses to promotions, buying
patterns, and types of wines purchased.
WeddingNetwork.com, the most compre-
hensive online wedding resource and gift
registry, will deploy Cognos’ EBI solution
as a key component of its e-business
infrastructure.
WeddingNetwork.com employees, from
administrators to senior executives, will
access information via an intranet and per-
form multidimensional analysis of the data.
Web site activity and transactional data
monitored will include merchan-
dising trends;
product sales by
retail partner, volume, revenue,
and profit; and groom, bride, and guest
preferences, including buying behavior,
wedding planning, store registration, and
gift selection patterns.
In coming months, WeddingNetwork.com
will deploy the Cognos solution via an
extranet to its retail partners. The extranet
will allow retail partners to access informa-
tion in a secure manner on bride, groom,
and guest Website activity, such as regis-
tration preferences and products purchases.
Retail partners will use the information
to specifically customize production and
inventory of their products to the prefer-
ences of WeddingNetwork.com customers,
resulting in tremendous efficiencies in
their production processes.
Cognos and its partner Redwood City, CA-
based Millennia Vision, announced an
agreement with Alibris, a leading supplier
of hard-to-find, rare, and out-of-print books
on the Web. Alibris will use Cognos’
Web-based business analy-
sis and reporting
continued on page 13
WeddingNetwork.commarries e-business and internal
processes with Cognos
Alibristo build e-business infrastructure
based on Cognos Business Intelligence
also to extend the power of the resulting
BI applications that they will drive,”
explained Steve Judges, product manager
for DecisionStream. “We’ve added a series
of usability enhancements as well. All
catalog objects are now in one tree, for
instance. We’ve improved the wizards that
are in the product and added more con-
text-sensitive menus.”
“With DecisionStream 6.5, it’s now even
easier to deploy entire BI solutions —
from coordinated subject-oriented data
marts through the deployment of business
models and reports — with consistency
from end to end.” ■
11
Leading companies love Cognos
Leading companies love Cognos
Several leading dot.com companies have recently chosen Cognos’ Web-basedtechnology as a cornerstone of their e-business infrastructure.
Wine.com, the leading global wine por-
tal, has deployed a business intelli-
gence for e-business solution devel-
oped by business partners Cognos
and Agog Software. Wine.com uses
Agog Software’s e-business score-
cards and Cognos’ Web-based
analysis and reporting solution as
a key component of its e-business
infrastructure. Agog Software is
a specialty supplier of e-business
scorecard systems to dot-com
e-businesses.
Agog Software and Cognos pro-
vide wine.com a complete, uni-
fied view and understanding of internal
and e-business processes. Agog Software’s
e-Business Scorecard delivers regular
Wine.comtoasts successful deployment
of Cognos solution for e-business
All together nowcontinued from page 10
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:00 AM Page 11
“The Enterprise
Services Portal
moves Cognos
customers ahead
at Internet speed,”
said Rob Ashe,
Cognos senior vice
president, Customer
Service and Support.
“Enterprise Business
Intelligence customers rely
on us to serve their organiza-
tions as completely as possible.
This new initiative responds to their
need for creative, innovative services that
they can access 24x7. Customers are now
purchasing thousands of seats at a time,
and expecting to get them productive
quickly. The Cognos Enterprise Services
Portal helps them do exactly that.”
Online training
“We have to be able to deliver training to
larger numbers of users simultaneously,”
said Ashe. Our new browser-based training
and virtual classrooms are an ideal solu-
tion. Now customers can get training
whenever and wherever convenient.”
Using Web conferencing technology for the
instructor-led forums, a telephone, and
Web software, users can listen to Cognos
presenters and simultaneously view pre-
sentations and demonstrations on screen.
With the virtual classrooms they can also
perform workshop exercises — just as if
they were in the same physical classroom.
Courses will typically run 3 to 3.5 hours
and cost approximately US$240.
Technically specialized instructor-led
forums will also be offered. These one-
hour sessions are led by Cognos technical
experts, consultants, and developers and
focus on in-depth technical topics.
continued on page 13
We’ve gone platinum!The ultimate level of Cognos serviceWe’ve gone platinum!The ultimate level of Cognos service
Cognos Platinum Service is the most complete, fully integrated set of enter-prise BI deployment and support services in the industry. Leverage the talentand expertise of a dedicated Enterprise Account Manager who works with our highest-level support specialists and senior product developers to makeyou successful in the shortest possible time. As a Platinum Service customer,you qualify for emergency onsite calls, Alliance support, access to Cognosadvanced beta programs, BIU (Business Intelligence University) education,technical bulletins, and product upgrades. Get complete details at www.cognos.com/enterpriseservices. Or call us at 1-877-629-2577. ■
Cognos links with customersthrough E S P
One-stopshopping
for online service, support,
& education
ognos recently unveiled the first
phase of its new Enterprise
Services Portal (ESP), the one-stop site for
comprehensive BI service, support, and
education. Cognos ESP will be imple-
mented in stages throughout calendar year
2000. Once complete, the Cognos portal
will be a customizable, personalized portal
that delivers customer services in a fast,
intuitive manner. With Cognos ESP, Cognos
BI customers will quickly receive the pre-
cise level of customer service, support, and
education they choose — at the right time
and place for them.
Phase one of ESP deployment, delivered
in May, allows customers to access com-
prehensive information sources online,
including documentation, release notes,
and technical support knowledge bases.
Phase one also features Cognos’ new
e-training services, including computer-
based training (CBT) and a series of
instructor-led Web forums. Web-based
virtual classrooms will be offered in
summer 2000.
12
C
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:01 AM Page 12
Later in the year, the Cognos ESP will expand
to include similar interactive features for
support, service, and consulting, creating
greater flexibility and efficiency for both
Cognos and customers.
“As enterprise Business Intelligence con-
tinues to grow in strategic importance,
we’re responding to a corresponding
increase in customer urgency,” said Ashe.
“Now, when our customers ask a ques-
tion, they need an immediate answer.
The Cognos ESP answers that requirement
with on-demand instant information.”
“As our customers move forward at Inter-
net speed, we’ll be right there — offering
the services they’ve requested — with the
award-winning quality they’ve come to
expect from us.” ■
Cognos links continued from page 12
Cognos Enterprise Services introduces Cognos
Platinum Service: the most complete, personal-
ized, and fully integrated set of Business
Intelligence deployment services available.
With Platinum Service, your organization is
equipped with the consulting, training, and
support services needed to quickly realize the
full value of your strategic Cognos investment.
Platinum Service guarantees dedicated, regular
onsite service from your Enterprise Account
Manager, access to Cognos’ highest-level
Business Intelligence development experts,
Alliance Support, onsite emergency services,
and tuition at BI University™ — Cognos’ unique
executive MBA-style course. Get fast results,
maximum business impact, and the knowledge
you need for success.
(Note: Currently, Platinum Service is only available inNorth America.)
Cognos, the Cognos logo, and BI University are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Cognos Incorporated.
Maximize the value of your Cognos investment.See Cognos at www.cognos.com/platinumor call (877) 629-2577.
The Platinum ServiceGuarantee Your Enterprise
Account Manager
13
solution as the foundation of its
e-business infrastructure.
Millennia Vision will implement and serv-
ice the Cognos solution for Alibris. The
Cognos solution will empower Alibris’
employees to access, analyze, and report
on corporate information in real-time
over an intranet. The Cognos solution will
interface with Microsoft’s SQL Server 7,
running in a Windows NT environment.
Alibris employees company-wide will use
Cognos for the following:
• Marketing will measure and analyze the
effectiveness of campaigns, and develop
programs targeted at specific customers
based on their purchases to improve
retention and increase revenue. Alibris
can track a prospect from the initial click
on a banner ad to shipment of the book
purchased, and evaluate the ad’s drawing
power and customer buying patterns.
• Production will monitor supplier activity
such as sales, inventory, and on-time
deliveries to develop supplier perform-
ance rankings, optimize efficiencies, and
reduce costs.
• Customer service will track order infor-
mation such as promised versus actual
shipping date to ensure complete cus-
tomer satisfaction.
• Finance will analyze financial results
for different business units, measure
revenue and profitability of product
lines and partners, and reconcile data
from miscellaneous
internal systems. ■
Leading dot.comcontinued from page 11
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:01 AM Page 13
continued on page 15
14
More and more Cognos customers are
leveraging their enterprise business intel-
ligence solutions to transform business
processes, build new relationships with
customers and suppliers, and leverage
information to make better business
decisions faster than ever before.
But before you can achieve these goals,
you need to make sure you have a consoli-
dated, unified information source. That
often means combining various production
sources into one or more data marts. To
help customers build and deploy these
marts more quickly, Cognos now offers a
new series of e-Applications.
These pre-defined data marts, reports, and
analyses deliver cross-functional business
intelligence by pulling data from many
sources in a fraction of the time it takes to
build from scratch.
“Now, companies can deploy an end-to-end
BI solution from a single vendor, quickly
and easily,” said Cindy Courtemanche,
Cognos marketing manager, e-Applications.
“This delivers an immediate return on
investment and improves the quality and
reliability of their BI solution. We remove the
sometimes-complex, time-consuming
aspects of data modeling and custom
programming. As a result, companies can
perform in-depth analysis by functional
area and — perhaps more importantly —
cross-functionally as well.”
Ready for deployment in production businessenvironments
Cognos e-Applications are pre-packaged,
business-driven reporting and analysis
solutions or data marts. They supply every-
thing needed to implement a reporting
solution that can be deployed over the
Web, leveraging traditional ERP data and
e-commerce data for a coordinated view
of the business.
• Production-Ready — Without custom
programming, customers can easily
adapt each mart to reflect unique infor-
mation needs, incorporate changes as
the business changes, and simplify
administration and maintenance with a
specially designed Operational Framework.
That saves months of upfront time asso-
ciated with building a data mart. The
Operational Framework is a robust sys-
tem designed to make life easier for the
IT professional. It ensures the solution
delivers consistent and repeatable busi-
ness results (data) for better decision-
making and increased efficiencies (less
time is spent trying to troubleshoot
inconsistent results).
• Business-Ready — These production-
ready e-Applications contain pre-defined
components for rapid implementation.
Pre-defined data models, transforma-
tions, and captured business KPIs for each
mart are based on extensive consultations
with customers, functional area, and
industry experts. These business-function
solutions can be integrated, via common
dimensions, to provide a cross-function
view of the business. They can also be
combined to increase the scope of analy-
ses into areas such as CRM analysis and
others. In addition, Cognos e-Applications
include key business reports that analy-
sis users need to make more coordinated
business decisions in every area of your
business.
• e-Ready — Cognos e-Applications extract
data from both traditional operational
sources (such as ERP) and e-business
sources (such as e-commerce servers).
The data, information, and reports they
create can be shared throughout the
enterprise at all levels of the company
and beyond to customers, suppliers,
and business partners on the Internet,
an extranet, and intranet.
e-Applications are currently available for
Sales Analysis, Financial Analysis, and
Inventory Analysis. These applications con-
tain value-added reports and analyses —
created with PowerPlay and Impromptu —
that include management and analysis
techniques such as KPIs. The e-Applications
contain the following main components:
• Business KPIs and sample reports
• Modular extraction, transformation, and
loading (ETL) jobs for source-to-target
mappings
• Pre-defined data mart schema including
logic to capture only new and changed
data
Cognos ApplicationsCoordinating business disciplines with pre-built BI marts
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:02 AM Page 14
• Pre-configured relational data models
and OLAP data models for multidimen-
sional analysis and reporting
• Production Assistant for administrative
control over the ETL process including
job performance logging, job sequencing,
and error handling to manage extractions.
• Logic for history preservation supporting
slowly changing dimensions
• A customization guide to tailor the
reporting application to the ERP
implementation
• Configuration wizard that simplifies
installation and configuration of
e-Applications
• Ability to incorporate both ERP and
non-ERP data, such as competitive
information and business-to-business
data into the data mart
• Customized scheduling options for
access to timely and current information
from the data source ■
Cognos e-Applicationscontinued from page 14
Pictured from left to right: Paul Nelson, Account Manager, CognosNewport Beach; Rodney Suiste, Account Manager, Cognos NewportBeach; Jonathan Davis, Account Manager, Cognos Newport Beach;Ralph Blore, Managing Director of Business Intelligence, MillenniaVision Corporation; and Gord Watts, Senior Manager, e-BusinessSolutions, Cognos.
One of the highlights of the Data Warehousing Institute’s Fifth
Annual Implementation Conference in Anaheim, CA was the
Cognos Suite that featured the Cognos Enterprise Business
Intelligence for e-Business message. Ralph Blore, Managing
Director of Business Intelligence for Millennia Vision (a Cognos
partner) was a featured speaker. Mr. Blore shared his experi-
ences implementing the Cognos EBI for e-Business Solution at
customer sites and discussed the proven e-business initiatives
that ensured the success of their projects.
Cognos & Millennia Vision at DWI Anaheim
15
You’re open for business 24 hours aday, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Aren’t you?
SeeB
usin
essS
eeRe
sults
SeeC
ogno
s
Cognos, the Cognos logo, and SeeBusiness are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated.
The Internet economy means you’re open for business to anyone, anywhere, anytime.You need to conduct more business in less time. Whether your focus is manufacturing,insurance, or logistics, you need to know who your customers are, what they want, andwhen they’ll need it. And you need to know now.
You need Cognos to help you see what’s driving your business. We enable you to makeinformation easily accessible to your extended enterprise—partners, customers, and supply chain — so that everyone can make better, more coordinated decisions at e-speed.
4638-COGNewsSummer00.qxd 6/19/00 10:02 AM Page 15
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