This article is based upon an interview with Monique Dozier, Assistant Vice President of Advancement at MSU.
In 1989, Howard Dresner, a leading analyst for Gartner, coined the term “business intelligence.” In 1994, this thought leader, strategy advisor, and former Gartner Research Fellow, made the following powerful prediction: Read more
Join us at noon eastern daylight time (EDT) on June 25, and learn how Symmons Industries outperforms with analytics-driven reporting.
In the never-ending pursuit of keeping or gaining a competitive edge, your ability to extract greater value from information can make all the difference. Yet traditional reporting approaches can limit users’ visibility into key metrics and performance indicators that are needed for optimizing decisions. And this poor visibility affects the already overworked IT department, which has to find ways to meet users’ needs.
Join us for the IBM TechTalk event on June 25 to see how IBM client Symmons Industries was able to meet order demands in real time and make its lean manufacturing processes outperform using an IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10 solution—and how IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10 software can help you bypass traditional reporting challenges.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how comprehensive business intelligence (BI) reporting and dashboarding capabilities can deliver immense business value by giving your users the information they need to support better decisions.
Register now for the June 25 TechTalk web seminar.
Date: June 25, 2012
Time: Noon EDT
As the velocity of business increases, business users are less willing to wait for the IT department to create custom reports and analytics. In order for customer analytics to be truly effective, they must be made available to all customer-facing personnel and attain the status of supporting fact-based decision-making used by the entire enterprise. At the same time, BI teams would like to offload report and analytics creation duties to users and focus on morevalue-added activities. 
A new crop of self-service BI and analytics tools promises to empower users while liberating the BI team from ad hoc reporting tasks. To work, these tools must be easier to use than previous generations of BI tools, and give the BI team a measure of control over the semantic representation and use of back-end systems and oversight of the creation of standardized reports and dashboards for decision-making. Read more
Do you need a business analytics platform yesterday? Is your IT team overloaded? Do you want your business analytics environment built on best practices and managed by the best in the in the business? If so, allow Ironside to host and manage your business analytics environment. We will manage everything from the OS, to the database, to the IBM Cognos application based on your needs through our Managed Platform and Application Services.
Our Managed Platform Services (MPS) provide enterprise-level, secure, scalable provisioning of IT services to fit your requirements. Our MPS offering is hosted in a SAS 70/SSAE16 compliant data center, using industry leading technology. Our clients work with our dedicated managed services team to customize our offerings to fit your needs. In addition, we offer recommendations along the way to determine the optimal environment based on expected usage patterns.
Just some of the services we offer include:
All platform services utilize industry best practices to provide the most stable, scalable, and secure environment available.
Our Managed Application Services (MAS) leverage our expertise in business intelligence and the IBM Cognos platform to provide best-of-breed support for your solution. Some of the services we provide using Ironside’s best practices include:
The Ironside MAS allows access to Ironside’s expert IBM Cognos architects, many of whom have over 10 years of experience implementing IBM Cognos solutions in some of the country’s largest companies.
Please contact us today for further information on how we can craft a solution that reduces your total cost of ownership and administration, while providing greater capability, performance, and flexibility.
Back in October when IBM Cognos 10 was first released, I initially touted Business Insight Advanced (BIA) as the single-most important enhancement over IBM Cognos 8. After a few months of hands-on usage, I am sticking to my initial assessment. Here are five key features that I’ve identified as having the greatest potential for a positive impact on practical business intelligence within most organizations. Read more
Business Intelligence tools have been one of the most prolific software investments for many organizations in the last decade; from Fortune 100 companies to small 100 person organizations. Providing historical, current, and predictive views of business operations, BI tools offer limitless possibilities within your organization. From analysts identifying and analyzing opportunities and trends to helping business decisions makers such as CEOs and CFOs to quickly review and understand business issues, a well designed BI application can provide significant ROI to your corporation. Read more
Investing in a robust enterprise business intelligence platform like IBM Cognos can be a gateway to improving your organization’s performance in a multitude of ways. One such area of improvement which cannot be dismissed or overlooked is to respond to the call for greater corporate social responsibility. We now live an age where achieving success is no longer measured in simple dollars and cents alone, but also by how large and indelible a mark we leave upon our surroundings in the process. We have already begun to realize the directly proportional relationship between the sustainability of our success and that our own environment.
Read more
Most companies that invest in Business Intelligence technologies do so with high expectations of better decisions, more efficient processes and decreased cost. Others expect increased insight into spending, competition, and customer behavior or employee performance. The simple fact is that many BI implementations do not deliver on their expected value. Read more
The relationship between the report developer and report consumer often times have very little definition, with neither side having a concise picture of the best alignment of roles and responsibilities. The report developer has a clear understanding of the capability of the tools whereas the consumer may not. Conversely the consumer has a unique understanding of the business while the developer may not. When this disconnect is not addressed, the value of your BI tool may not truly be realized. Read more
In a time of financial instability, corporate investments must be thought out very carefully. That said, some investments can offer benefits almost immediately after implementation. There is one that can help you increase operational efficiency, harmonize departmental reporting, and provide immediate and up-to-date insight on your business at the click of your mouse. This investment gives you access to view the many different perspectives of your organization’s most crucial asset: its data. Read more
Ironside is a data, analytics, and AI consulting and technology implementation company. We work with clients to understand their business objectives and day-to-day challenges, then employ our deep expertise in data strategy, architecture and engineering, integration, business intelligence, AI, and generative AI. We create technical solutions and practical approaches designed to drive smarter, data-driven decisions across a company and help it move further and faster toward its business goals.