ERP and Business Intelligence (some of the popular tools like Cognos, Business Objects)

Every business is data driven today. The inflow of humongous amount of big data requires equally competent tools to manage and analyse the information. Such pressing needs has led to an aggressive market of business analytical tools or Business Intelligence tools.

BI systems allow a company to gather (from environment), store (in database), access (from database) and analyze corporate data to aid in decision-making. Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to retrieve (from database), analyze (data), transform (data to information) and report data for business intelligence.

SAP became one of the leaders of the business intelligence market after acquiring Business Objects, a French company, in 2007. In 2007, one month after SAP bought Business Objects (for $6.8 billion), IBM took over Cognos, based in Canada for $4.9 Billion.

The BO applications of SAP enable generation of reports, creation of interactive dashboards, visual manifestation, online as well as offline analysis of big data, and an interface for navigation and search. 

The business intelligence platform offered by the Big Blue(IBM) is Cognos. Cognos 8 software was presented in November 2005 including a few refreshed tools: Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio (in the place of former PowerPlay), Metrics Studio (instead of Metrics Manager), and Events Studio (replacing NoticeCast).

Both platforms – IBM Cognos Series 8 and SAP Business Objects – have specific advantages and disadvantages. Some of them are major, some only minor. Nevertheless, when choosing the right business intelligence platform for your organization it might be a good idea to precisely define your needs, then talk to the technical sales people from both SAP and IBM and try to get a trial version of both platforms and test it in your business environment. This will say which platform suits the end-users best.