Programs like Cognos Impromptu

[Claudius-07]

For over 15 years I’ve been working for a government agency, looking at relational databases, analyzing data, building reports and cubes for clients, operations, budgets, running queries etc. It’s all I do. In fact running ad hoc queries is 85% of my day based on constant urgent requests from every possible department. For all these years we’ve used one product predominantly: Cognos Impromptu. Impromptu is apparently being sunset in 2018 and everyone is up an arms about finding a replacement.
We’ve tried SPSS modeler, Cognos 8 and 10 now, with all their packages. We’ve played with SAS EG, etc., but NOTHING is as simple and intuitive as using Impromptu. With Impromptu you don't really need to know SQL but you can certainly use it, as I've taught myself over the years.

I don’t need to change the world; I just need to look at lots of data; figure out my sources, do my joins, get the data on the screen, look at what I need, look at relationships etc., filter out what I don’t want, and start working. The problem is that I know the data, from all the various sources. I’ve been doing this for ever. Yet the folks that are now just coming in, it seems everyone wants or believes that these big new shiny packages can do a lot of the “thinking” for you, and now the whole push is for predictive and prescriptive analytics, the forecasting model. I am totally on board for this but if all these new kids have no idea about what the data is to START with, it’s pretty hard to start forecasting no matter how good the tool is. I mean looking at a total that comes up... does it make sense?? We need people to look at data, play with it, understand it first.

Anyhow getting back to the subject at hand, if and when Impromptu is forcibly removed from my computers, are there any other simple easy to use FAST EFFICIENT packages like Impromptu? Of have I not given SPSS or SAS a proper go? Just seems that when I sit down to use these packages I have to go through SOOOOOOOOO many steps JUST to do what I could do in Impromptu in 2 minutes. They look great for medeling and statistics but for the simple stuff... grrr.

 

[cbrunny]

We use impromptu as well. Actually we are in a very similar situation as you are (also a BPS org) but we are currently transitioning to Cognos 10.2.2, and possibly to Cognos 11 at some point in the future as well. We are about 1 year into the C10 transition from Impromptu 7.5. Like you, I've taught myself SQL & have dabbled a bit in cubes. But my background is more on the analysis side. I'm a good reporter but only because I have to be - resources are tight.

But I have found that Cognos 10.2.2 is quite good. I'm really impressed with it. It still requires (and uses) the same basic logic systems as Impromptu, but sub-queries, unions, and various custom joins between custom-defined tables are much easier to manage than having to create stupid hotfiles. The learning curve is very steep even coming from Impromptu, but I'm already able to build some really sweet looking reports.

Of course, like anything database, there is tremendous value in having the right people make the right reports. Like you say, seeing projections is cool but the math and analysis that goes into the projections is where the real value is. We saw a TM1 demo yesterday and this was very apparent. It can do a lot of really cool things but it still requires you to have a mastery of your data AND a mastery of analyzing in order to get to the forecasting piece. This was also my feedback to my boss, essentially. Yes, it is very cool and can do some great things, but if given the choice I would opt to enhance our knowledge and our existing models than port our existing models into new systems.

This will definitely change from one organization to another but I suspect in most places this is generally true. Get better intelligence first, then worry about getting it faster.

I use SPSS to supplement Cognos and SQL but not to actually query data. There is some kind of integration between SPSS and Cognos but I haven't explored it at all yet. We're still a ways away from that I think.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. You and I sound like we have very similar jobs!