COGNOS POWERPLAY 6.0: Empowering Your Organization

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Cognos’
PowerPlay allows users to view data in multi-dimensional formats. Thus,
it
gives decision-makers the power to explore various perspectives in the data,
often resulting in the exposure of hitherto-missed insights lying within the
data. It enables users to create applications that read source data and
manipulate it into a multi-dimensional presentation called a ‘cube’. Each
cube is in essence a datamart which provides the information that users need to
analyze their operations. By structuring source data to reflect the way an
organization operates and what its users need, an application can be created,
which provides timely and meaningful information.

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Some possibilities with
PowerPlay are:

  • Comparing
    first-quarter sales over the past five years across locations.

  • Analyzing
    proportion of the total business by product over the years.

  • Viewing
    seasonal trends in business revenues over the past years.

  • Ranking
    products, customers, sales person’s performance over the past years and
    observing upward or downward movement of ranking.

  • Analyzing
    planned and actual business performance, and observing the variance over the
    past years.Every PowerPlay report consists
    of a cube, in its native .MDC format. Various dimensions within the report are
    presented in the dimension line. Each element in the dimension line is named a
    ‘dimension folder’. It is possible to explore each of the dimension folders
    contained within reports.

    With PowerPlay, it is possible to
    quickly move from one level of detail to another, exploring various aspects and
    perspectives of the data.

    Data can be sliced and diced to
    show revenue for each location over the past few months, or inventory levels for
    each branch of the organization at the end of the quarter. It is also possible
    to introduce data filters. For example, total revenue from all product lines may
    be modified to reflect revenue only from the north region for all product lines.

    Adding nested columns or rows is
    yet another way to generate fresh insights from within the data. It is possible
    to add nested dimensions easily by dragging a dimension folder to the row and
    vice-versa.

    With PowerPlay, the user may also
    change the measure used in the report. For example, information can be examined
    using, say, revenue measure and then, look at the same information using profit
    margin as the measure. The process is completely intuitive, with the need to
    remember complex formulae or even click through half a dozen icons, being
    obviated.

    Pricing:

    PowerPlay Transformation Server (Admin): Rs60,000

    PowerPlay Transformation
    Server (End-user): Rs46,900

    Contact Details:

    Anandan G

    Deputy General Manager,

    BI Solutions, IIS Infotech

    D-1/3, Okhla Industrial Area,

    Phase-II

     New Delhi - 110 020

    Tel:(011)692 9502-05, 6316214 

    Fax:(011)682 4694

    email: anandan.g@iis.stpn.soft.net
     

    A small, but fairly comprehensive
    set of built-in graph formats complement drab-looking tables. All the popular
    graph formats–from line diagram, vertical bar charts, histograms to pie
    charts, are present.

    PowerPlay should be a useful addition to the
    business arsenal of multi-product, multi-location organizations seeking to hone
    business strategies based on past trends. PowerPlay’s uniqueness lies in its
    ability to do simple, pre-set operations with a minimum number of mouse clicks.
    However, pre-set options also restrict the analyses and hence, insights
    contained in the data could be lost too.

    Surendran Nambiath