Locked Down Cognos Environment vs. Open

[billsklar]

I'm looking for some feedback so I will be brief....

Which is better:

1) An open Cognos environment where IT manages the FM models but the users are free to build, save and schedule reports as they see fit....

or

2) A closed Cognos environment where IT controls all aspects and the users must submit report creation requests to IT.

Your thoughts and reasons would be greatly appreciated.

[Lynn]

#1 is the whole point of BI !!! The reasons must be covered in just about every scrap of every vendor's marketing material. Data is valuable, business needs to react quickly, it's not just about reporting -- it's about exploration and analysis, blah, blah, blah.

Having said that, there are some caveats I would include:

• You should have a very experienced modeler so you end up with reporting packages that are well designed, intuitive to business users, and will generate predictable (and correct) SQL.
• If you connect directly against operational sources you might consider how hard you want to allow users to bang on it live. You don't want to interfere with operations. Other strategies (such as cubes or reports run during off hours) might be considered in situations like this.
• Users should be trained!!
• There should be excellent documentation available so users understand the data to ensure that what they report really means what they think it really means.
• Even in the best user self-service environments, there may still be a need for "formal" reporting by professional authors who are very often IT people. We're not all evil despite the rumors users may have heard.
• Some control/review/coordination of users' activities can be sensible. You want to help them avoid doing the same thing 5 times in 6 different ways; avoid scheduling things already scheduled that they can just be added to disribution on; etc.

[RobsWalker68]

Hi,

I think it would be better called "Managed environment" instead of an Open environment" but definitely wouldn't go for closed as that is a guaranteed fail for a Cognos environment IMHO and increases the chances of another vendor offering something to the business community and taking over.

I was a BI Manager in an IT Department for a number of years some time back and I liked to keep Cognos development "in house", but that was a mistake and I made life much harder for myself than it needed to be so now I advocate the opposite.

It is much better to go for what Cognos used to advocate as the Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) and have Cognos skills out in the functional departments that use it.  If that happens then you can look forward to a career gainfully employed running a Cognos system  ;D.   I guess in now speak in Cognos 10 it's called "Self Service", but that's the trend IBM are taking the product.
 
Either way its better to have business users creating content than IT developers doing it. Lets face it "most" IT department developers wouldn't know, for example, the difference between a Balance Sheet and a P&L Statement if their life depended on it so why have them develop it.  They will only be a choke point to development, the Finance department would never trust the figures they didn't "Own" and go away and create some Excel monstrosity with pages of Vlookups that the business then love!  The IT Director is then asked why are we spending all this money on annual support in these times of austerity when we can develop for nothing in Excel and get the results we want.  That's the risk of not having the business on side owning their own Cognos reports.

The model that seems to work best in my opinion:

1. Have the IT/IS department install and maintain the Cognos infrastructure i.e. the hardware and Cognos software.

2. Be the guarantors of the provision and accuracy of data such as the Data Warehouse.  This may possibly include data sources such as Transformer cubes although this tends to be handled by business users unless they are lacking in the skills and  is a bit of a grey area.

3. Maintain the security of the Cognos system, although again a grey area.  Some companies have IT handle the allocation of users/groups to Cognos capabilities and the business function handles the actual package/folder security.  Others have IT do it all.  Depends what floats your boat at your organisation.

4. Possibly develop the Framework.  I've most probably seen this done 50/50 between IT and functional departments.

5. Provide training to the business community but then have the business community departments train to their own teams.

6. Provide information on what is upcoming and be a visionary for how to use the tools and latest developments.

Outside of that I would let the business users get on with it and take the ownership and credit for the reports they create as that is really the only way for Cognos to establish itself in an organisation.

Rgds

Rob

[RobsWalker68]

Just to add as a point 7 I would have IT  handle the scheduling of reports etc so you can manage the resources on the system.