Cognos Analytics

Independent study found that IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson had a 77% ROI over 3 years

Today, it’s about making data-driven business decisions that drive competitive advantage. Every business user needs data and analytics. Without accurate and insightful information about your business, it’s very difficult to make the kinds of decisions you need to run your business well.  With the volume of data growing, organizations struggle to easily digest and translate data into meaningful action.

More likely than not, organizations are using legacy data analysis solutions, such as spreadsheets and basic data visualization tools. Therefore, tasks that should be easy, such as creating self-service reports, often take business analysts too long to analyze and provide little insights to accurately identify trends, forecasts, and key metrics.

Understanding the impact of Cognos Analytics with Watson

For organizations considering which business intelligence (BI) solution to implement for their business, IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Cognos Analytics with Watson. Forrester interviewed five unique customers across five industries: media, marketing, and communications, insurance, aerospace, mining, and healthcare, to understand the business benefits, costs, and risks associated with investing in Cognos Analytics with Watson.

After conducting the interviews, Forrester found that prior to using Cognos Analytics with Watson, organizations experienced numerous challenges including poor data governance procedures and often cumbersome, manual production of reports and metrics, with limited self-service reporting, drill-down reporting, and no row-level security. These challenges resulted in decentralized data procedures and insufficient data analytics capabilities.

After investing in Cognos Analytics with Watson, organizations saw increased benefits in data governance, self-service reporting, and data democratization due to automation. After hearing these benefits, Forrester created a cost model accounting for the three-year, risk adjusted present value (PV) of the quantified benefits seen for a composite organization deploying Cognos Analytics with Watson. These quantifiable benefits include:

• Increased operational efficiency due to improved data visibility by $1.1M
• Cost savings of $669.8K by retiring legacy business intelligence (BI) applications
• Increased operational efficiency due to data democratization by $140.3K, including 25% of time saved for data analysis
• Potential 77% return on investment (ROI) over three years
• Net present value of $846K over three years

Understanding the value

While Forrester identified many quantifiable business benefits due to organizations investment in Cognos Analytics with Watson, there were two other key benefits outlined that also provided value but couldn’t be quantified in this study, including:

• End-user satisfaction with user interface (UI): Interviewees said they are comfortable and
  happy with the product’s ease of use and the appearance of the tool’s reports and dashboards.
• Trustworthy data due to automation: Replacement of manual reporting processes
  eliminates human error in analyzing data. Complete and reliable data is critical for accurate trend analysis and predictions.

Why Cognos Analytics with Watson?

IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is an AI-powered business intelligence, analytics and reporting solution that provides sophisticated data exploration capabilities, dashboarding, professional report authoring, and automated data preparation. Delivered on a single integrated and highly secure platform, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson acts as your trusted co-pilot for business with the aim of making you smarter, faster, and more confident in your data-driven business decisions.  IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson delivers: 

• A full range of analytical capabilities in a single environment: Through Cognos Analytics, organizations receive a single solution that allows users to explore data and derive actionable insights in a single, unified, and secure environment for faster data preparation, data exploration, self-service analytics, and robust enterprise reporting. 
• Data governance: Cognos Analytics provides a securable, trusted data analytics environment that is integrated with IBM’s data fabric architecture to easily discover and access trusted, quality data for analytics and reporting purposes.
• AI-based data exploration: Through Cognos Analytics, data discovery becomes incredibly efficient as it is coupled with AI and ML which will help identify hidden data trends with the ability to apply these insights in near real-time and with greater accuracy. 
• Scalability and collaboration: Through Cognos Analytics, organizations can break down data and analysis silos and share dashboards and reports with anyone in the organization by integrating with their existing platforms and tools. 
• Operationalized analytics: Cognos Analytics allows organizations to reduce the time taken from insights to actions by giving leaders access to explainable data insights that improve transparency when making decisions.

Check out the entire Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study to learn more about the quantifiable business benefits your organization can achieve by deploying Cognos Analytics with Watson.