IBM Cognos Express: What more can you show the CFO?

In small companies, control and accounting takes place without much difficulty. Turnovers are small, there are few personnel, only one accountant is needed, and all tasks are easy to keep in mind. As a last resort, write in a diary. Large companies have automated management systems and specially hired employees whose responsibilities are to systematize and provide the necessary information. But medium-sized businesses have a hard time. Expensive solutions and extra bids are ruinous for him, and the business intelligence needs are huge. The competition at this level is very intense, and information means a lot. The IBM Global CIO Study conducted a study and found that 83% of executives of this scale consider business intelligence to be the most important means of competition.

What it translates into practice, we all know. The budget is limited, there are no people, the software is expensive, and all the burden falls on the shoulders of IT people. As a result, IT resources are overextended, trying to cope with information overload, the flows of unstructured data are always different, the quality of their presentation suffers, the forces on them are taken away from other tasks - well, in general, a familiar picture.

At IBM, it was decided: to help manage corporate finances, make plans, budgets, and formulate forecasts should not IT specialists (they have other worries), but programs. And the participants in the process themselves must bring in information for analysis. This is how the IBM Cognos Express product came out, which goes on the market on September 29th.

For organizations that have installed IBM Cognos Express, you only need to configure the business analysis and planning functions once, and then only develop them as needed. IBM Cognos Express can integrate into your organization’s existing infrastructure in a matter of hours. It is important that the employment of IT staff is minimized. The web-based management center console provides complete control over installation, deployment, and management.


Because IBM Cognos Express is built on a self-service environment, you can easily create your own dashboards or dashboards, reports, analysis procedures, and multi-dimensional planning. And, for example, distribution chain managers will be able to create their own daily reports on sales in stores. And, therefore, they themselves predict the sales volumes, correlate them with the general plans and manage inventory. As we often observe, instead such reports require IT specialists, although while they are being prepared, they are often out of date.

Here are some examples of how IBM Cognos Express can help you report and analyze, automate routine tasks, and help you evaluate and plan.


Small retailers only spend a lot on warehouse rents to ensure that the assortment is equally saturated at all retail outlets. However, it may take a long time to optimally distribute goods according to the level of demand. Automated sales analytics will help you more effectively control inventory costs.

An average level bank to optimize its credit policy must spend a huge amount of resources, often making the work itself unprofitable. IBM Cognos Express quickly identifies key trends, deviations, and inconsistencies in lending practices.

The manufacturer of goods develops plans, budgets and forecasts, focusing on increasing its customer base. IBM Cognos Express helps to quickly, on the fly, adjust this strategy and tactics, leaving these developments relevant throughout the entire planning period.

Like many IBM products, IBM Cognos Express is built on an open platform. It contains three software products, and you can purchase them together or separately.

IBM Cognos Express Reporter provides access to any type of data for the preparation of business, financial, operational and production reports, as well as for creating ad hoc database queries using drag and drop.

IBM Cognos Express AdvisorCarries out intellectual analysis taking into account surprises for both short-term and long-term forecasts. Key economic indicators and characteristics are shared on dashboards.


IBM Cognos Express Xcelerato r transforms spreadsheets using a resident analytic module - for further multi-aspect analysis, planning, budgeting and forecasting.

IBM Cognos Expres s is part of the Express Advantage marketing program at IBM General Business, which includes both software and hardware solutions.

Use the free trial version for 30 days (after a short registration).