Data is the lifeblood of successful organizations. Beyond the traditional data roles—data engineers, analysts, architects—decision-makers across an organization need flexible, self-service access to data-driven insights accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI). From marketing to HR, finance to supply chain and more, decision-makers can use these insights to improve decision-making and productivity enterprise-wide. 

But most businesses are behind. Essential data is not being captured or analyzed—an IDC report estimates that up to 68% of business data goes unleveraged—and estimates that only 15% of employees in an organization use business intelligence (BI) software. Companies with a modern data architecture and robust BI adoption not only gain immediate competitive advantage, they are positioned to move even further ahead by adopting real-time decisioning practices and predictive analytics, the next steps in digital transformation. 

Providing trusted, self-service BI access to a broader range of stakeholders is predicated on three important factors. First, the underlying data must be sound and unbiased, and managed according to clear governance standards that ensure it is secure, private, accurate and usable. Second, any AI models that inform decision-making and forecasting must be explainable and transparent. Lastly, the BI system must connect to a wide variety of data systems across business functions and be usable by those who are not professional data analysts. 

Introducing IBM Cognos Analytics 12 

IBM® Cognos® Analytics accelerates data-driven decisions with AI-powered insights for everyone in your organization. The latest version extends its range of analytics capabilities in a single, secure environment integrated with IBM’s data fabric architecture. Performance has been greatly improved, with minimal data upload and cache times, and improved sorting, filtering and data selection within dashboards. 

Cognos Analytics now guides users to more confident and accurate solutions through better explainability and transparency. The application is built on pillars of data governance and security while enabling scalability, collaboration and operationalized analytics. Sophisticated data exploration capabilities, powered by AI and machine learning (ML), help users identify hidden data trends and provide transparent views of how insights and forecasts are generated.  

With Cognos Analytics, organizations can overcome siloed data by sharing dashboards and reports that draw from existing data sources (such as SAP BW, Microsoft SQL Server and XML) and connect with existing platforms and tools. Cognos Analytics also integrates with Microsoft Teams, allowing users to embed customized dashboards that provide timely insights and improve productivity across a wide variety of business functions.  

In version 12, usability has been improved through a new, intuitive guided user interface. Users can ask questions in natural language (such as “show Q4 2022 revenue by product line”) and get answers as charts or as natural language narrative insights. Users can share answers with colleagues via Slack or email or use them as the basis for new interactive dashboards. An assistant is available throughout the application to answer questions, help users share insights and automatically generate dashboards. A wizard-type flow on the home page makes self-service features more accessible to more users. New bullet charts help users compare performance metrics to other measures. 

IBM Cognos Analytics helps organizations democratize data for self-service analytics and business insights. It provides key decision-makers with powerful business intelligence tools that leverage AI and reduce reliance on data specialists, freeing those experts for higher-value work that can accelerate the organization’s digital transformation.