IBM has announced new software designed to help enterprises break down data and analytics silos so they can make data-driven decisions quickly and navigate unpredictable disruptions. IBM Business Analytics Enterprise is a suite of business intelligence planning, budgeting, reporting, forecasting, and dashboard capabilities that provides users with a robust view of data sources across their entire business. Along with IBM Planning Analytics with Watson and IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, this suite also includes a new IBM Analytics Content Hub that helps streamline how users discover and access analytics and planning tools from multiple vendors in a single, personalized dashboard view.
According to an August 2022 Forrester report, advanced insights-driven organizations are 1.6x more likely to report using data, analytics, and insights to create experiences, products, and services that differentiate them within the market when compared to beginners1. However, companies are currently facing a highly dynamic operating environment where they must navigate unpredictable events such as supply chain disruptions, labor and skills shortages, evolving regulations, and more. The complexity of storing data across disparate silos can make this more challenging as teams collaborate across different analytics and business intelligence tools. To become data-driven, businesses can differentiate themselves by creating an enterprise-wide strategy that enables them to bring together their tools and put insights into the hands of decision makers.
Building on IBM’s existing portfolio of business intelligence solutions, IBM Business Analytics Enterprise includes a new IBM Analytics Content Hub. It is designed to allow users to view planning and analytics dashboards from multiple vendors, including tools like IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, and other common business intelligence tools into a single view that combines elements from each in a dashboard tailored to their unique needs. Additionally, it features algorithms that can recommend role-based content to help users surface new stories, reports, and dashboards from across the organization to aid in decision-making. As more users click through materials within the IBM Analytics Content Hub, the solution analyzes usage patterns to recommend content that aligns with their specific interests.
With today’s news, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson, an AI-powered business intelligence solution, now also includes new integration capabilities and enhanced forecasting that allows users to consider multiple factors and seasons in their trend predictions. Additionally, IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, an AI-powered solution that helps streamline financial and operational planning, is expected to be available as-a-Service on AWS later this year.
IBM Business Analytics Enterprise is designed to help break down silos so that the right teams can get the right data at the right time. For instance, an organization’s sales, HR, and operations teams each require access to data and insights from different business intelligence and planning tools for their specific needs, such as optimizing sales goals, building workforce forecasts, or predicting operational capacity. But when it’s necessary to share data and reporting across departments, complexities can arise because those teams are using multiple solutions. This can result in duplicate content across applications, which can threaten data consistency and quality. IBM Business Analytics Enterprise helps enterprise data be more easily shared, while remaining protected and avoiding data duplication by giving users across departments a single point of entry to view the data they need.
“Businesses today are trying to become more data-driven than ever as they navigate the unexpected in the face of supply chain disruptions, labor and skills shortages and regulatory changes,” said Dinesh Nirmal, General Manager of Data, AI and Automation, IBM. “But to truly be data-driven, organizations need to be able to provide their different teams with more comprehensive access to analytics tools and a more complete picture of their business data, without jeopardizing their compliance, security or privacy programs. IBM Business Analytics Enterprise offers a way to bring together analytics tools in a single view, regardless of which vendor it comes from or where the data resides.”
ALH Gruppe is a leading finance and insurance company in Germany, and with thousands of employees who need access to data insights, the majority of whom are not data scientists or highly technical users, they sought a solution to help streamline their data infrastructure even more.
“We’ve been using IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson for well over a decade now to support decision-making of all kinds across our business. We frequently use it in conjunction with other business intelligence tools, and one challenge was that those tools were always standing side-by-side with no connection between them and the data was separated,” said Bernd Oerthle, Head of Analytics Reporting and Infrastructure, ALH Gruppe. “With the new IBM Analytics Content Hub, we plan to connect internal stakeholders to multiple different BI solutions for easy access to self-service data, enabling better support for our end customers.”
The launch of Business Analytics Enterprise further builds on IBM’s strategy to provide businesses with tools to support data-driven decision-making. IBM Cloud Pak for Data and IBM’s business intelligence solutions work in tandem to help clients create a data fabric architecture that simplifies data integration, allowing them to run their analytics anywhere and take advantage of data across different environments.
