California Garden opts to deploy Cognos 8 over BusinessObjects XI

GFI, part of the Kuwait Food Company group, processes 400,000 cans of food a day, most of them beans, and have a factory in Jebel Ali in Dubai. It is using its BI system initially to provide senior management with query, reporting, analysis and dashboarding tools, but plans to give users access to the BI tools across the organization to improve performance. They also plan to add budgeting and planning and scorecarding modules by the end of the year, once initial deployments are bedded down.

Previously GFI used the Business Objects XI business intelligence solution, which also provides query reporting analysis tools, but IT manager Alaa El Taher says user licence differences made Cognos a more attractive option. Moreover, the BI technical expertise and continued professional support from BSG played a major role in our decision to move to Cognos.

"The Cognos dashboarding tool is very useful for us because the management doesn't just want to see numbers, they want complete visibility into the business with graphs and charts - it helps them to make quicker decisions. In the beginning, IT developed the reports for the users, but now we are giving this tool to the people who need direct access to the information. They can design reports to meet their own needs. This is one of the strong features of Cognos." El Taher added.

Over the last six months El Taher has been able to evaluate the effectiveness of dashboarding. "It's giving us a good indication of how we or our suppliers are performing and where there might be problems. You can analyze results immediately; for example, best-selling items and which one gives the most profit. You can then make a decision based on this information very quickly. With a normal report you cannot make this sort of quick analysis. The fact that the Cognos solution provides web access to information is also a major benefit. This is particularly useful for traveling executives and for those working in other offices outside Dubai", he says.

"Cognos 8 BI puts the power of knowledge into the hands of any business user, enabling smarter and more informed business decisions," said Prem Menghani, Business Development Manager at BSG. "Leading organizations like GFI recognize the value of having all enterprise information readily available to businesses in a simple, flexible environment.

"BSG is very pleased to continue its partnership with GFI, which has demonstrated a leadership role in implementing strategic business intelligence in order to successfully meet its corporate performance management goals," said Nasser Tufail, Managing Director at BSG. "GFI is yet another customer to select Cognos for its breadth of functionality, speed of deployment, and zero-footprint performance."