“The technology today is no longer something meant for top management executives, a notion that many companies wrongly supported. Its value in the enterprise is driven by the line of business managers and increasingly, industry verticalisation and specialisation,” says Ged Simmons, Sales Director, General Business UK and MEA for Cognos.

To serve this need, the company has established what it calls “Innovation Centres” that work on defining frameworks and reference process and technology designs for using BI across functionalities and help define a value roadmap for organisations. Interestingly, the blueprints have been worked out in a verticalised fashion and tuned to serve the specific needs of industry sectors.

“BI is becoming increasingly ubiquitous because organisations today have a real chance to take control of their information and derive business value from it. The Innovation Centres can help these companies look at key operations that matter to them and build the content in with the technology to give faster ROI,” offers Simmons.

Focus broadly will be on three main industry sectors – pharma & life sciences, retail & hospitality and financial services.

“In the Middle East financial services segment, issues like customer segmentation and product profitability are very important aspects that will help banks raise their game in the market. So the blueprints will enable these sectors to look at the data they have and re-orient it to deliver value for the business,” he adds.

This methodology also looks at ensuring that companies can set both hard and soft KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their business. “Blueprints can also be used as a way to measure branch profitability, a scenario that banks today require. We are currently working with Riyadh Bank in Saudi Arabia to implement this to monitor business value through branch operations,” Simmons notes.