Cognos extends focus on customer service with new professional services initiative

The new professional services initiatives further address the growing demand for large-scale Cognos standardisation and performance management deployments among enterprise customers.

"Services are a key component to delivering customer success, especially in the area of BI standardisation and enterprise-level BI. Customers want to know the best course of action to take, associated costs along the way, what to expect and when,"

said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East and Africa. "Our mandate is to address these needs and aggressively expand our professional services focus to help customers and partners deploy Cognos solutions quickly, efficiently, and with measurable return on their investment."

Building on existing innovative customer service offerings, Cognos continues to increase its investment in professional services to better support enterprise customers with their deployments and help drive customer success. Enterprise customers have diverse needs ranging from targeted departmental implementations to enterprise-wide solutions. As a result, Cognos is significantly growing its delivery ability by increasing domain product and implementation expertise and client engagement management skills in key geographies including.

Cognos has designed a five-phased implementation process for Cognos software that includes an implementation roadmap for each product family. The implementation roadmaps guide customers and partners with structured steps, tools, role definitions, tips and techniques. This proven methodology, along with supporting tools and proven practices, ensures consistent and collaborative implementations by Cognos Professional Services, partners and customers worldwide.

The Cognos Solutions Implementation Methodology was created in conjunction with Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.

"Business Intelligence is an essential component of the Information Management agenda. And while companies recognize that they need to invest in technology solutions, they also realize that, without an effective delivery approach, benefits can be elusive," said Royce Bell, CEO of Accenture Information Management Services. "Our goal in working with Cognos to develop its Solutions Implementation Methodology was to help enable the multiple players within the Cognos ecosystem - customers, technology partners, and services providers - benefit from tested delivery methods."