IBM Cognos as an Operational Reporting tool

[EarthDog]

Hi All!

We are consolidating our ERP solution. Current status is:

-4 ERP Instances (4 countries)
-1 Cognos Instance. Serves as Corporate BI based on an SQL Server Data warehouse (built with SSIS).

Operational reporting right now is supported by internal ERP reports and Standalone Crystal Reports.

Based on our current know-how i am evaluating 3 options for the new era's operational reporting.

1) A second instance of Cognos only for operational reporting (report studio and query studio and minimal olap).

2) Go with Crystal Reports Server solution through BO.

3) Implement  SSRS with Sharepoint portal.

From business perspective it is obvious that using solution #1 would be the corerct thing to do as i would consolidate my external-ERP tools.

I also have witnessed that SSRS is not so sophisticated.

What do you guys think?

[MFGF]

Hi All!

We are consolidating our ERP solution. Current status is:

-4 ERP Instances (4 countries)
-1 Cognos Instance. Serves as Corporate BI based on an SQL Server Data warehouse (built with SSIS).

Operational reporting right now is supported by internal ERP reports and Standalone Crystal Reports.

Based on our current know-how i am evaluating 3 options for the new era's operational reporting.

1) A second instance of Cognos only for operational reporting (report studio and query studio and minimal olap).

2) Go with Crystal Reports Server solution through BO.

3) Implement  SSRS with Sharepoint portal.

From business perspective it is obvious that using solution #1 would be the corerct thing to do as i would consolidate my external-ERP tools.

I also have witnessed that SSRS is not so sophisticated.

What do you guys think?

Many businesses today are looking to simplify their license costs and required skillsets by standardising on a single reporting platform, so your option 1 looks like a good move in this direction. There is no good reason I can think of why you shouldn't use Cognos as an operational reporting solution as well as for your analysis/MI solution. You could probably make any of the three options work, but options 2 and 3 require skillsets in other reporting tools to be maintained. SSRS reporting is much more technically involved than Cognos reporting, so would likely be more work to set up and maintain. Crystal is getting rather old and dated by this point. personally I'd recommend option 1, but you'd expect me to say that, wouldn't you? :)

MF.

[EarthDog]

Thanks!

I was mostly interested to know if there is something to hold me back from using cognos for operational reporting only.

Except the cost of course :))

[MFGF]

Thanks!

I was mostly interested to know if there is something to hold me back from using cognos for operational reporting only.

Except the cost of course :))

Cost is, of course, something you need to factor in. Also the impact of running queries against your operational data sources, but you will face this impact no matter what reporting tool you use.

Occasionally there is a requirement to update the operational system after reports are successfully produced - eg invoice prints, where you might want to update the "Invoice Created" date. With an embedded reporting solution, this is often taken care of for you, but using something like SSRS/Crystal/Cognos, you will need to create your own mechanism to facilitate this. With Cognos you can use Event Studio agents to take care of this - they can call stored procedures to update things.

Cheers!

MF.

[EarthDog]

I hear you , but invoices and generally official reports like invoices, warehouse and gl trial balances are handled only by the erp...that is a rule...

Integrity reports , general statistics and other reports alike aregonna be handled by the cognos operational server...

As for the load on the OLTP DB i plan to monitor index advisor very close..Also building a good framework manager model from the start will protect me some how from bad written reports...

Thats how i have it in my mind anyway...

[Lynn]

If you have any opportunity to create an ODS and point your reporting layer to that instead of the live system then it will be a way to insulate your ERP from impact. I find many users don't necessarily need up to the minute information so reporting off a prior end-of-day snapshot will suffice. In that scenario you may further have the opportunity to create views to simplify your FM model and improve the generated SQL significantly.

Also, if you have 4 separate ERP instances then I suspect any consolidated reporting across these systems may be done locally on the Cognos server. This is an area of performance concern that you might consider as you build your model and test reporting scenarios. A separate ODS might be an opportunity to integrate on the database side rather than leaving that load on Cognos.

Just some random thoughts to consider :)

good luck!

[EarthDog]

If you have any opportunity to create an ODS and point your reporting layer to that instead of the live system then it will be a way to insulate your ERP from impact. I find many users don't necessarily need up to the minute information so reporting off a prior end-of-day snapshot will suffice. In that scenario you may further have the opportunity to create views to simplify your FM model and improve the generated SQL significantly.

Also, if you have 4 separate ERP instances then I suspect any consolidated reporting across these systems may be done locally on the Cognos server. This is an area of performance concern that you might consider as you build your model and test reporting scenarios. A separate ODS might be an opportunity to integrate on the database side rather than leaving that load on Cognos.

Just some random thoughts to consider :)

good luck!

The ODS is a nice idea but my problem is that we use the ERP database also in an unorthodox way..We implement some SQL queries directly to the db so i will be facing problems in keeping the ODS well synced ..Simply i would not know what changed and when in some cases...But there is a strong point in this one.

Do you have any product or any other helpful info in order to create the ODS?

Your guess is correct . Apart from being a corporate BI , Cognos serves also as a consolidator for specific use cases. But that is gonna change as we are progressing for a ERP consolidation....

[bdbits]

I know people do it, but we do not have good experiences running Cognos against live transactional systems. Your mileage may vary of course.

Here we have gradually evolved to a model like:
{source data} ---> {relational ODS} ---> { dimensional datamarts - DMR, cubes, etc}

In narrow use cases where time was important, we have implemented CDC (change data capture) technologies to move data in near-real-time to the ODS or DMR databases. And we do not mind pointing Cognos and other tools at the ODS where it makes sense. It is not cheap and has its own problems, but CDC or mirroring technologies would let you continue with your direct SQL queries.