Cognos has upgraded its Cognos Metric Manager (CMM)
scorecarding product, adding more seamless integration with other
Cognos applications, enhanced scalability, and a higher degree of
personalisation for users.
In the previous version, users could only look at the actual
number and the target number and examine the variance between them.
Now they can bring in third-party data via the web from websites or
other applications and load those into CMM.
Cognos has users in the hotel industry who wanted to view data
such as the occupancy rates and average room rates of competitors
to compare with their own. Now those users can bring that
information into a report, and can take advantage of between one
and eight fields, as opposed to a standard of three in the previous
version,said Cognos product marketing manager Mike Smith.
Right now, metrics are indicated in one of three ways: in red if
the metric is below tolerance level; yellow if the metric sits in
the performance level, and green if the metric exceeds the
tolerance level.
A tolerance level is a range of acceptable values for a given
metric.
In version 2.0, these indicators have been expanded to include a
half-red and a half-green indicator so users can know in more
detail how metrics are performing.
Users can also indicate if they want to be notified via e-mail
if a metric changes.
Cognos has improved CMM so that it integrates more seamlessly
with its analytic applications, such as PowerPlay, its Enterprise
Planning Series, and Enterprise BI Series 7 Version 2.
The product also supports more application servers including
IBM’s WebSphere, BEA Systems' WebLogic, and Sun Microsystems’ ONE
platforms. It also supports Microsoft Windows operating systems and
Unix.
Rebecca Reid writes for ITWorld Canada