IBM Business Partner Megatrend launched a new business intelligence (BI) solution, built with IBM® Cognos® technology, that offers access to corporate reporting and analytics systems while on the go. With a smartphone or other mobile device, users can gain critical insights and share actionable intelligence with key decision-makers in the office or the field.
Realizing that its customers were underutilizing their analytics data, IBM Business Partner Megatrend Poslovna Rješenja d.o.o. wanted to simplify access to this critical information.
Megatrend launched a new, mobile BI solution that gives users the ability to access key reporting and analytics data from their smartphones.
For the past several centuries, a company’s wealth relied primarily on its physical assets. The amount of real estate it held, the size of its inventory, how much gold it had in its coffers — with these facts, it was easy to determine the health and stability of a given organization.
But since the digital revolution, physical resources have increasingly become less significant. In fact, some of the world’s most successful businesses — particularly those located in Silicon Valley — are known for products that don’t even exist in the real world. And increasingly so, businesses are placing greater focus on these more ethereal resources.
“Data — particularly financial data — is one of a company’s most important assets,” comments Darko Tukulj, Head of Sales at IBM Business Partner Megatrend. “Businesses are very protective about what they are reporting on, because that information is some of the most useful to them. Which products, which markets, which regions are growing? How are they performing compared to previous years? How close are their budgets to actual results?”
Making it easier to parse through company records and find these answers is one of the specialties of Megatrend, which delivers intuitive BI solutions that empower key decision-makers to pursue more informed choices. But among users of its analytics offerings, Megatrend noticed a clear trend — its customers were avoiding integrating these BI platforms with their mobile systems. This pattern seemed odd, since the true value of this information is routinely found when using it outside of the boardroom.
“We asked our customers what was going on,” recalls Tukulj. “And they were concerned about security — if the information was safe being transmitted to a mobile device. They also had logistics concerns. How do they handle different mobile devices — if some of the team have iPhones, but the rest use Androids? Do they need to be connected the company network? How can they present the data in an intuitive and usable way on something mobile?”
He continues, “We decided to help our customers answer these difficult questions.”
In early 2019, Megatrend launched its new Dashboard2Go solution, a BI platform that provides users with on-the-go access to company data. The solution is designed to facilitate the consumption of predefined business reports at a highly-granular level using a mobile device. And if the needed insights aren’t available in these bundled reports, users can quickly adjust parameters or even generate ad-hoc reports to identify the missing details.
“It makes business reports prettier, even on your phone,” adds Tukulj. “You can zoom in on the numbers and really look at what’s going on. And you don’t need to be connected to your corporate network to use it — that’s really helpful when you’re away from the office or giving a presentation at a customer’s site.”
Dashboard2Go relies on IBM Cognos Analytics to manage the underlying reporting and analysis functions. And to coordinate transmitting these insights back and forth with mobile devices through a platform-agnostic framework, the solution takes advantage of IBM Cognos Mobile technology.
While still only recently launched, the Dashboard2Go solution is already garnering praise from users, particularly around the efficiency offered by the tool.
“Having access on your phone makes everything more convenient,” explains Tukulj. “If you’re in a meeting, you have the numbers. If you’re on a plane or a train or anywhere, you can pull up the reports and have easy insight into all of the figures. It gets rid of the waiting.”
“And,” he continues, “it makes reporting faster as well. Before, our customers would need around 12 days for a typical report. Today, they can have it done in 1 – 2 days. So we’ve been cutting their reporting times by around 80 percent.”
The new solution also helps allay users’ concerns over security. “We use encryption,” explains Tukulj. “We encrypt the data when we transmit. We encrypt it on the device. And Cognos has its own authentication. Beyond that, there is a mobile device management component that can control use and remotely wipe devices if need be.”
Alongside this enhanced data protection, users are also pleased with having a solution based on Cognos technology. “Cognos, in our opinion — and the opinion of a lot of our customers — is the best analytics solution you can find. Our customers know that when they go with Cognos, there is a clear roadmap for the future.”
Focused on the local market, Megatrend (link resides outside of ibm.com) develops custom business and IT solutions designed to drive efficiency among its customers. The business, founded in 2004, also offers a suite of software solutions targeted at geovisualization, data storage and mobile reporting. Headquartered in Zagreb, Megatrend also maintains offices in Split, Croatia.
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Produced in the United States of America, November 2019.
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