Intentia aligns with Cognos to bring BI to the midmarket
Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2005 7:00:00 AM
Business intelligence (BI) isn't just for the Fortune 500. At least that seems to be what Cognos, a supplier of BI software, is saying as it continues to build alliances that call for embedding its technology in ERP systems catering to small and medium-size manufacturers.
The latest such agreement involves Intentia, which announced its intent to use Cognos technology to make it easier for Intentia's customers to monitor their overall business performance. Cognos already has partnerships with several midmarket ERP vendors, including Cincom, Made2Manage, MAPICS, and QAD.
The linking of Cognos and Intentia technology will take place in stages, says Henrik Billgren, Intentia's president of R&D. It will start by connecting Cognos' ReportNet application with a data-warehousing package at the core of what Intentia calls its enterprise performance management (EPM) solution.
"We've had business intelligence offerings for quite some time," Billgren says, "but this first phase with Cognos offers ReportNet as an off-the-shelf reporting tool to use with Intentia's data warehouse. Overall, the alliance will give our EPM customers new and improved ways to add value to their businesses by using the latest business intelligence solutions."
Billgren says the link with Cognos ReportNet will allow Intentia users to easily extract and display information from any Intentia application. Eventually, Intentia will add links to solutions called Cognos Metrics Manager and Enterprise Planning, to let users monitor key performance indicators and improve their ability to plan business strategies for meeting performance targets.
The announcement resonates with manufacturers such as Cummins, Columbus, Ind., which wants to make better use of the Cognos and Intentia solutions already deployed.
"Cummins operates across multiple sites using numerous business systems, so we have a growing need to consolidate data into a single data warehouse used for both local and enterprise reporting," says Helen Edney, a project manager with Cummins Engine, Wellingborough, U.K. "Using Cognos and Intentia's solutions will enable key people within our organization to see one source of data for key performance indicators at a glance."
