| Synergy builds on 25-year partnership with IBM Cognos |
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Over the last 25 years, Synergy Business Intelligence has seen its partnership with IBM Cognos South Africa evolve from leading Business Intelligence (BI) solutions provider to today include the Financial Performance Management (FPM) discipline, allowing the company to realise its strategy of harnessing the value of data to its entrenched customer base. According to Christo Bredenkamp, MD of Synergy Business Intelligence, the company has in the last 25 years relied on IBM's Cognos offering to develop sophisticated and innovative business solutions. "As we don't develop our own softwarelutions, our partnership with IBM Cognos has been beneficial as they invest heavily in R&D which in turn enables us to provide sophisticated solutions, be it BI or FPM to our customers. "Indeed, we believe this lies at the very heart of our relationship with IBM Cognos; our ability to successfully deliver their software to our customer base." Adds David McWilliam, Regional Manager BI & PM, IBM Software Group, Sub-Sahara Africa, "It is also extremely gratifying to see a 25-year relationship go from strength-to-strength. Synergy is a valued partner and we believe they will continue to grow as we evolve in the various disciplines we play in." Synergy Business Intelligence started off as a Cognos Power House partner and today features a 40-strong BI technical complement that continues to drive its 'ability to turn data into information' to the local marketplace. In Synergy's efforts to promote and grow its FPM business, the company has a recently established FPM division, which focuses on driving growth in this area of business within targeted marketplaces. "We have great plans for FPM business and our intention is to grow it to the size of our BI business. Ultimately, it is about the ability to harness the power of data and we believe FPM will enable us to realise this," comments Bredenkamp. Synergy Business Intelligence's business approach follows a systematic, best practice methodology which starts with an engagement to gain a thorough insight into the customers' business challenges. This is followed by a complete review of relevant data sources, how they can be brought together, structured and optimised for information delivery in such a way that the vastly different information needs can be met. The company features four areas of focus: products and support, consulting, training and outsourcing. Article taken from IBM Cognos SA Newsletter, Issue 2 2009 |