In what ways does Cognos Analytics help companies?
Vinay Gupta: Cognos is a business intelligence software. Companies will use it to answer business questions. Examples could be what product is selling the best and where is their product selling the best? What is the average price or average sales per month per quarter? So it allows companies to present their data in a more logical fashion that is understandable by upper management. And analysts and regular users will use the software to answer these kind of questions. Usually management and analysts will use it a little bit more. But even normal users would be able to get the data which is helping them to do their job better. So it is a business intelligence software and is used by many companies.What do people need to do to start using Cognos?
Vinay Gupta: To be able to use Cognos, you might need to go through certain courses, but those courses will depend upon your job function. If you are responsible for managing users using Cognos or administering the Cognos content, you would need to attend a Cognos administration course, which will let you know how to manage the content, how to secure the content, who can access what content and how to set permissions. But if you're mostly going to be a modeler who will present the data to authors, business users in a more understandable format, you will need to go through the modeling course. But if you are a user who will be doing analysis reporting or creating presentations on Cognos, then you will need to go through the reporting and analysis courses. So based on your job function, there will be different courses which you will need to attend.What do you like most about teaching Cognos?
Vinay Gupta: I love teaching in general. So I, I like teaching. But if you talk about Cognos courses in particular, I like teaching Cognos courses because Cognos courses have got lots of hands-on practice in them. So when you attend a course, you are given a virtual VM or a virtual machine, which is a self- contained environment and you can do all the practice which is needed to learn and get comfortable with what is being taught in the class. So the hands on is the portion which I particularly like about Cognos courses. And it's a very steep learning curve for a two- or three-day course. Many participants have got no idea. They've never been in touch with Cognos. But at the end of the course, they are feeling comfortable, and they are able to start making reports or creating models. So that is what I particularly like about teaching Cognos.
