Cognos Performance 2007 Kicks Off in Palo Alto

Performance 2007, Cognos' annual global event, launched in Palo Alto, California, on September 7th, with more 150 IT, BI, and finance professionals gathering to learn about Cognos Performance Management solutions. Held at The Four Seasons Hotel, the day-long event featured a keynote address — Enabling the High Performance Enterprise — delivered by Cognos President and CEO, Rob Ashe, nine breakout sessions presented by both Cognos product experts and customers, and a solutions showcase with hands-on demonstrations provided by Cognos partner Niteo.

Learning More about Cognos 8 BI

Polled after the event, the majority of attendees said that they had come to Performance 2007 to learn more about Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. Through a series of forty-minute breakout sessions, including "Keys to Successful Migrations from Series 7 to Cognos 8" and "Complete Reporting and Analysis Coverage with Cognos 8 BI", attendees discovered firsthand the benefits of accessing the complete range of BI capabilities – including, reporting, analysis, scorecarding, dashboards, business event management, and data integration – within a single product and architecture.

Other Cognos-presented breakout sessions highlighted what IT professionals need to know about planning, best practices in Framework Manager, and other critical performance management topics.

Cognos Customers Share Insights and Key Learnings

Customer presentations are always among the most popular at Performance events and this year's Palo Alto event was no exception.

Sweet Success at Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream

Dreyer's was facing a major challenge in the fragmentation of data throughout their organization. Planning was difficult because it was hard to understand performance data, and in addition, the financial measures were updated only on a monthly basis. The time lag meant that information was not very actionable. In a session entitled, "From Data Fragmentation to a Daily Refresh Cycle," GAPP Director, Ajay Raikar, described how the implementation of a Cognos Now! daily refresh cycle, helped Dreyer's turn around their performance management program and create a true KPI culture in the organization.

Embarking on a New BI Strategy at The Permanente Medical Group

How do we get input from over 2,000 leaders into the annual budget process? That was one of the questions facing The Permanente Medical Group. The organization wanted to automate the delivery of 80 per cent of the information needed by its leaders and managers, create meaningful scorecards and dashboards for all departments, and streamline retrospective reporting to support forecasting, consulting, and modeling. In a session entitled, "Automating Data Delivery with Cognos 8 BI and Cognos 8 Planning," David Burnash, Director of Financial Systems Strategy, described how The Permanente Medical Group leveraged Cognos to create the appropriate infrastructure for information delivery automation, modeling support, and consistent capture and categorization of information.

Removing BI information Barriers Within CRC Health Group

It's critical to the performance of your organization to remove barriers between users and the important information they need to make good business decisions. In the session, "Improving Performance Management Around the Clock," CEO, Jeetu Lakhotia, and VP/CTO, Jay Raimondi, shared how Cognos Go! Mobile has become a vital element of CRC's mobile solution strategy, creating a competitive advantage by delivering vital clinical and business information to decision makers wherever they are, and around the clock.

Meeting with Peers and Experts

While comprehensive content is the primary driver for most attendees, Performance 2007 also offers great opportunities to talk one-on-one with the Cognos product team and a chance to swap strategies with colleagues. "It was great to meet people like me and to learn best practice approaches to migration from the experts," commented one IT Manager.