Cognos expands innovation center mandate to include business intelligence competency

The first initiative of this new focus area is helping companies launch BI Competency Centers (BICCs), where IT and business users align business objectives, technology, departmental priorities, and stakeholder needs to drive increased usage of strategic BI. Gartner projects that 50 percent of large enterprises will have established a primary business intelligence platform for most reporting and analysis capabilities by 2012.

According to Gartner, the "standardization of these business intelligence platforms and technologies requires business intelligence competency centers that lead the evaluation, balancing and prioritization of business and user requirements."*

"Through the Cognos Innovation Center's BI Competency community, customers will have access to resources designed to help them improve the value derived from business intelligence across the organization. By building on our market-leading position in BI and exceptional track record, the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management is ideally positioned to augment its offerings with expertise in business intelligence technologies and best practices,"

said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East and Africa.

"With this expansion, customers will have immediate access to the proven practices necessary for accelerating BI success in the enterprise."

Cognos has combined its BI reporting capabilities with its enterprise planning, and financial management and control applications to create Performance Blueprints that accelerate customer solutions to typical performance management challenges across departments and across industries.