Cognos Analytics

Sample Retail Calendar for relative time analysis

When we released relative time filters for Gregorian and Fiscal calendars, our customers loved it and found them very valuable. They are straightforward to set up and are very powerful for analysis. However, our retail customers who have their financial reporting based on a 4-5-4 retail calendar couldn’t make use of it. A 4-5-4 calendar gives them the benefit of comparing data over similar periods, taking into account the weekends, the different seasons and certain events where retail sales generally spike, for example, on Thanksgiving or Black Friday. Here is an example of how the 4 week - 5 week - 4 week periods are divided to ensure the comparison is accurate year over year as well.

In 11.1.7, when creating data modules for relative date analysis, you can now use the sample 4-5-4 retail calendar. The sample calendar is based on the National Retail Federation (NRF) 4-5-4 Calendar. You can also generate your own custom retail calendar if you’d like. 

As retailers tend to compare their KPIs over the period of a week, we also added five additional filters based on weeks, namely:

• Current Week

• Prior week

• WTD (week to date)

• Prior WTD

• Same week last Year

These five filters were added to all three calendars; the Gregorian, the Fiscal and the 4-5-4 retail calendar. Users now have a total of 23 relative time filters to choose from.

Framework Manager vs Data Modules gaps 

The majority of the features users had in Framework Manager (FM) are already available in Data Modules today. As more and more users are transitioning from Framework Manager to Data Modules, questions might arise as to what are the current gaps? 

That’s what we wanted to address by documenting all the significant Framework Manager features not supported by data modules. This list can be used to make your decision process more informed and easier. If there is a feature in Framework Manager that you absolutely need, then having the model in Framework Manager is perfectly fine as it is a supported tool. However, if you are starting a new project and the feature gaps are not significant for you, we would recommend starting with Data Modules. That is where we will be adding all the latest and greatest features. 

You can always refer to this list at a later point as well because we will be updating it as we address the gaps. 

The Data Modules best practices guide is the next document we hope to make public soon. We will post another blog highlighting it once it gets published so stay tuned!

These are just some of the many valuable features in 11.1.7. It’s a fantastic release to be on, so get your hands on it soon so you can benefit from all the latest and greatest features.