Integrated Change Management^®
The Low Cost Solution for IBM Cognos Governance, Risk and Compliance
^{patent pending}

In the past few years, transparency regulations legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) have renewed the emphasis on internal controls and therefore has required organizations to invest substantial time and resources in compliance.  These regulations stipulate that newly designed systems having a significant financial impact must have internal controls designed, documented and tested.

Compliance doesn’t stop with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other transactional, data collection systems, but for most organizations, extends into their IBM Cognos performance management environments.

The Impact on Cognos Environments

As Authors create content within an IBM Cognos environment, the development process is often iterative. Throughout the lifecycle of this content (inception through completion), there are often numerous modifications made along the way. This could be due to peer review, checkpoints in the development process, incremental changes, saving prior to testing a change, etc.

Typically, the only method of reverting back to, or recovering from, a previously saved artifact is to modify the name upon each save. Rather than saving in place of the current artifact when changes are made (thus causing the artifact to be replaced with the modified one), users can save with a different name (i.e. v1, v2, etc.).

In addition, content is not easily protected during the development cycle, so multiple Authors can inadvertently modify the same content without each other knowing it.

The Solution

As an extension to Integrated Version Control, Integrated Change Management is designed for companies that desire workflow and process around their development efforts.  With Change Management, all public content is required to be checked out prior to making modifications.  Upon Checkout, the public report becomes locked preventing other users from modifying the content.  Within the checked out copy, Authors can make any number of modifications, saving versions each time they save the content.  Once they are satisfied with the changes, the Author can check in the report, unlocking the public version and replacing it with the updated copy.

Integrated Version Control with the optional Integrated Change Management satisfies the internal control requirements placed on many organizations throughout design documentation and testing process.  Because the product is entirely automated and transparent, very little time or resources are expended ensuring complete compliance.

To use Integrated Version Control, you must have:

• Proper user permissions to install software on the Cognos 8 Gateway and Dispatcher Server(s)
• IBM Cognos 8.0 and higher

Integrated Change Management can be demonstrated onsite or via a web meeting. To arrange a product demonstration, please contact us.

Integrated Change Management^®
The Low Cost Solution for IBM Cognos Governance, Risk and Compliance
^{patent pending}

In the past few years, transparency regulations legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) have renewed the emphasis on internal controls and therefore has required organizations to invest substantial time and resources in compliance.  These regulations stipulate that newly designed systems having a significant financial impact must have internal controls designed, documented and tested.

Compliance doesn’t stop with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other transactional, data collection systems, but for most organizations, extends into their IBM Cognos performance management environments.

The Impact on Cognos Environments

As Authors create content within an IBM Cognos environment, the development process is often iterative. Throughout the lifecycle of this content (inception through completion), there are often numerous modifications made along the way. This could be due to peer review, checkpoints in the development process, incremental changes, saving prior to testing a change, etc.

Typically, the only method of reverting back to, or recovering from, a previously saved artifact is to modify the name upon each save. Rather than saving in place of the current artifact when changes are made (thus causing the artifact to be replaced with the modified one), users can save with a different name (i.e. v1, v2, etc.).

In addition, content is not easily protected during the development cycle, so multiple Authors can inadvertently modify the same content without each other knowing it.

The Solution

As an extension to Integrated Version Control, Integrated Change Management is designed for companies that desire workflow and process around their development efforts.  With Change Management, all public content is required to be checked out prior to making modifications.  Upon Checkout, the public report becomes locked preventing other users from modifying the content.  Within the checked out copy, Authors can make any number of modifications, saving versions each time they save the content.  Once they are satisfied with the changes, the Author can check in the report, unlocking the public version and replacing it with the updated copy.

Integrated Version Control with the optional Integrated Change Management satisfies the internal control requirements placed on many organizations throughout design documentation and testing process.  Because the product is entirely automated and transparent, very little time or resources are expended ensuring complete compliance.

To use Integrated Version Control, you must have:

• Proper user permissions to install software on the Cognos 8 Gateway and Dispatcher Server(s)
• IBM Cognos 8.0 and higher

Integrated Change Management can be demonstrated onsite or via a web meeting. To arrange a product demonstration, please contact us.