Bistech Newsletter - Autumn 2006


B I S T E C H U P D A T E аааAutumn 2006
BISTECH AWARDED COGNOS "BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PARTNER OF THE YEAR 2006"... It's with great pride that we can announce Bistech has been awarded with this years СCognos Business Intelligence Partner of the Year'! Announced at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Sydney on Tues 11 th April 2006, Cognos awarded Bistech with the BI Partner of The Year for Australasia during its annual Partner Update and Partner Awards ceremony. The awards ceremony is a chance for Cognos to recognise those partners who have achieved success with the Cognos solution based on understanding of the technology, sales performance and value add. Bistech's attainment of the 'BI Partner of the Year' award was achieved through the high levels of success achieved from helping customers derive value and benefits from the Cognos solution across a variety of industries and applications. "We are honoured to receive this award from Cognos as the BI Partner of the Year for FY06. It's certainly rewarding to get this recognition for the hard work we've put in over the last year as we've continued to not only grow our partnership with Cognos but ensure our customers achieve business success with their Business Intelligence and CPM initiatives" Shane Morgan - Bistech Director BISTECH GOES PLATINUM... Bistech are also proud to announce that we are now a Cognos Platinum Reseller Partner, making us one of only four other Australian partners to achieve this status and the ONLY one based purely in Queensland ! The Platinum partner status is the highest level of attainment within the Cognos partner programme and Bistech has achieved this through our continued success in delivering successful business solutions and increased product sales. "Achieving the highest level of partnership with Cognos on the back of our Accredited Consulting Partner status achievement last year, simply adds further proof that Bistech is seriously committed to it's customers, it's people and it's partnership with Cognos. To be the only Cognos partner based in Queensland to hold this level of partnership is something of a milestone for Bistech. We are extremely proud of this accomplishment and we look forward to continuing to grow our relationship with Cognos"Justin Hoareau - Bistech Director
THINKING OF MIGRATING TO COGNOS 8... Join us at the Cognos Training Centre in Brisbane for a FREE "hands-on" Cognos 8 workshop and learn how you can benefit by moving to a truly integrated Business Intelligence platform. The sessions will give a brief overview of just some of C8's capabilities including: Dashboarding, Analysis, Scorecarding and Event Notification. Don't miss out, places are strictly limited! Register today for one of the following sessions running in June... Session:1 - Thurs 8th June, 2006 (8:45am to 12:00pm) Session:2 - Thurs 8th June, 2006 (12:45pm to 4:00pm) Session:3 - Fri 9th June, 2006 (8:45am to 12:00pm) Session:4 - Fri 9th June, 2006 (12:45pm to 4:00pm) CLICK HERE for more details on how to register. COGNOS 8 Ц NEW FEATURES & MR1 NOW AVAILABLE... The Cognos 8 Maintenance Release 1 (MR1) is now available for download by migrated C8 customers. This release includes a number of enhancements and maintenance fixes for the initial C8 product which was released earlier in the year during the Cognos Performance Days seminars. One such enhancement worth noting is the ability to leverage Microsoft Office products to embed refreshable reports in Excel and even PowerPoint! (see below). As you may also be aware, Cognos 8 now allows advanced web reporting from multiple cubes and data sources within a single web report! Cognos and Google Team Up! The latest release of Cognos 8 BI now includes new search and reporting capabilities that enable users to instantly find relevant, strategic business information available through Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. The Cognos Go! Search Service allows users to search the full data content of reports, as well as titles, descriptions, and metadata layers leading to better overall performance management. Users can find reports, metrics, analyses, and business events that answer critical business questions with a simple keyword search. Using search technology jointly developed with Google, business users can find the right information quickly, locating existing reports already created thereby reducing the creation of redundant reports. Like modern search solutions it provides sophisticated ranking of results with the most relevant results returned first. C8 Extends BI Reach with Office Connection In addition to the ability to embed refreshable reports within Microsoft® Excel®, Cognos 8 users can now view, interact with, and refresh Cognos 8 BI reports, analyses, and metrics within Microsoft PowerPoint®. This ensures centralised control and manageability of information and helps extend the reach of trusted BI content to more users within a familiar environment without requiring additional IT support. Cognos Office Connection enables users to enhance Microsoft Office documents with accurate, rich data, and share those documents and BI content throughout the organisation. Cognos 8 Business Intelligence is the only BI product to deliver the complete range of BI capabilities: reporting, analysis, scorecarding, dashboards, business event management as well as data integration, on a single, proven architecture. Like to know more or perhaps see a demo? Feel free to contact us at: info@bistech.com.au WELCOME TO OUR LATEST RECRUIT... style='color:white'> ItТs with great pleasure that we introduce our newest member of the Bistech team: Brad Culbert (B. Info TechЦ D.Comms/S.Eng) Brad joins Bistech from Dialog IT where he worked on such high profile consulting engagements as the Queensland Transport Data warehouse and Cognos Scorecarding project. As a professional consultant with a degree in Data Communications and Software Engineering from QUT, he has developed wide ranging skills in the areas of Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence Systems, Performance Monitoring (Scorecarding) and Web Development. Brad is a certified Cognos product professional across the PowerPlay, Impromptu and ReportNet product suite with particular expertise in the area of Scorecarding and Cognos Metrics Manager. Appointed as a Senior BI Consultant with Bistech, Brad is a welcome addition to our current team, bringing he's expertise to both new and existing Bistech customers. He is also currently involved in assisting our customers to configure and migrate to the new Cognos 8 platform. If you would like to talk to Brad about any aspect of your deployment, please don't hesitate to contact him on; email: bculbert@bistech.com.au phone: 3230 0377 NEW BISTECH WEBSITE NOW UPЕ Finally, it's here! Bistech's website has had a new facelift, incorporating our new logo and branding as developed and released in the second half of last year. The new look and feel went through a number of interations before arriving at the final result which you can now see at www.bistech.com.au The new branding has a much more professional appearance set on a conservative yet contrasting grey background while still consisting of our corporate colours black, white and bold red! Feel free to drop by and take a look when you have few spare minutesЕwe have posted all the latest news and a bunch of Business Intelligence whitepapers which are certainly worth taking a read.		ATTEND A PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT BRIEFING... Success is a reflection of the decisions you make every day! So why not join us for an informative briefing... Bistech and Cognos would like to invite you to our upcoming Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Briefing located at the Brisbane Cognos offices, where we will present the power of Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI), Scorecarding and Enterprise Planning (EP) solutions. For details and sessions times make sure you check out the Bistech website (CLICK HERE). COGNOS FORUM 06 - BOOK NOW... We're heading south this year for the Asia Pacific - Cognos Forum which will take place at the Crown Promanade Hotel in Melbourne. The Cognos forum is the region's premier customer conference for business intelligence, enterprise planning, and performance management. This is your chance to go deep on Cognos products and business solutions. Cognos Forum is the place to connect with the people who know Cognos. Bistech will again be a sponsoring the event so make sure you drop by our booth and say hello! Registration is Now Open! BISTECH TEAM SURVIVES STINSON TREK... Yes, we survived and made it back in one piece to tell the story! Having conquered Barefoot Bowls earlier in the year, the latest Bistech Team Building event held in April, involved an all day mountain trek in the rugged Lamington National Park to re-trace the famous path taken to rescue the remaining survivors of the Stinson plane crash of 1937! An extremely challenging walk through very steep ascents and descents, the team pushed through all physical (& mental) barriers to reach the peak of the McPherson Ranges and the limited remains of the Stinson aircraft wreck. Once at the top, the team then faced the daunting task of travelling back down the mountain...in the end it was a job well done with only minor scratches and muscle strains received by the guys! BISTECH SUPPORTS VARIETY QLD CHILDRENS CHARITY... As part of the XXXX Gold Variety Bash, Bistech is sponsoring Samantha Traylen (Neumann Contractors) and the girls in 'Car 5' on their charity race from Cairns to Birdsville in August. All money raised goes to a worth cause - the Variety Qld childrens charity. We'll let you know in our next newsletter how the ladies got on!!! Visit www.varietyqld.org for details BISTECH PTY LTD Level 20, 300 Queen Street BRISBANE QLD 4000 Ph: (07) 3230 0377 Fx: (07) 3230 0299 www.bistech.com.au info@bistech.com.au