IBM – COGNOS

Business intelligence (BI) is a process that allows the companies in using intelligence oriented processes for improving the decision making process of firms. IBM Cognos DSS has been used by many companies for integrating reporting, modeling, analyzing, building dashboards, management events and constructing metrics so that the organizations can understand the data and make intelligent business decisions timely (Druidics, 2020). By using Cognos analytics, the companies can be empowered for creating personalized dashboards. Cognos also offers the businesses IT infrastructure to be based on scalable solution that is also made available on premises or on the cloud. Through the dashboards and metric structuring on IBM Cognos, the companies can quickly identify and act on the data insights without intervention of IT. After installation and security setup, the company can upload files and apply the visualization in dashboard (IBM, 2002). Reports can be created to be used for business users and analysts after the data modelers are uploaded on the system. IBM Cognos can improve decision making, shorten reporting time, reduces maintenance cost, helps in zero-footprint environment, provide high performance data access, support multiple export formats (XML, PDF, XLSX, HTML, CSV) and have ability to connect with all activities regardless of environment  (IBM, 2002).

RICOH – UK

Ricoh UK is a private limited company operating in hardware industry (office electronics – sub industry) that manufactures office machinery and equipment except for peripheral equipment and computers (Bloomberg, 2020). It offers spans scanners, copiers, printers, network utility software, facsimile machines, office consumables and document management software. The company was incorporated on 24^th October, 1983 with its headquarters in Middlesex, UK (BCF, 2020). The company has been following the Lean Thinking approach for ensuring that its manufacturing processes are always set against the perfect performance (IBM, 2009). However, due to lengthy manual planning processes, the company’s finance department was having difficulties. The plant production time was manually set by the sales team while the finance team had to control the costs for achieving high-performance. As a result, the finance department at Ricoh UK had the responsibility of making rolling forecasts and then making monthly reporting. Due to manual work flows, the team relied on lengthy spreadsheets that led to slow production process with inaccuracies (IBM, 2009). Since spreadsheet are not considered to be accurate and efficient planning tool, hence it is said to waste finance department’s time as well as efforts while feeding the whole production team with misleading results. As a result, Ricoh invested in IBM Cognos enterprise planning solution (IBM, 2009).

HOW COGNOS HELPED IN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AT RICOH

IBM Cognos at Ricoh helped in reducing the production planning cycle by upto 77% after three weeks of its application (IBM, 2009). This DSS aided Ricoh in lifting resource burden from the finance department. The application of IBM Cognos in Ricoh allowed the sales department in getting monthly actual results against the production plans that could then be published in single click within seven working days of the analysis at each month’s end. IBM Cognos connected the plant production team, sales team and the finance team by creating realistic rolling budgets (IBM, 2009). The top management was also able to keep a track of company’s performance in a much better way.

The data warehouse at Ricoh UK was powered by the IBM Cognos for integrating the key information regarding performance indicators including financial, sales, after-sales and the supply chain services across the European subsidiaries of Ricoh (IBM, 2010). With such empowered data warehouse system, Ricoh is now able to compare the performance of the subsidiaries set in different countries across common KPIs and then report on the improvement possibilities  (IBM, 2010).

REFERENCES

BCF. (2020). Ricoh UK Products. Retrieved April 14, 2020, from https://www.coatings.org.uk/directory/ricoh-uk-products_100055.aspx?DirectorySearchPageId=1

Bloomberg. (2020). Ricoh UK Ltd. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/1070434Z:LN

Druidics. (2020). Optimize and improve decision-making: Business intelligence. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.druidics.com/en/business-intelligence/

IBM. (2002). Advantages of Cognos 10.2.2. Retrieved April 14, 2020, from https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SS73R8_9.5.0/com.ibm.help.wms.reports.doc/WMS_Advantages_of_Cognos_8_BI_84.html

IBM. (2009). Better decision making: How smart companies win with IBM Cognos performance management. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/sw-library/cognos/pdfs/whitepapers/wp_smart_companies_win_with_cpm.pdf

IBM. (2010). Ricoh Europe targets better performance information across its European sales subsidiaries. Retrieved April 12, 2020, from ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/uk/itsolutions/information-management/information-transformation/information-integration-platform/ricoh-europe-targets-better-performance.pdf

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