Riachuelo selects IBM Cognos 8
August 10, 2010 – Riachuelo closed a deal with IBM to implement a Business Intelligence (BI) solution. The project involves the adoption of Cognos 8 BI as Riachuelo’s analytics tool. The data integration layer will be based on Infosphere DataStage, which is connected to Data Warehouse based on DB2 9.7.

Implementation of the Cognos 8 Mobile application is also included, which will allow the board of directors and operation executives to view reports, analyses and other BI content in mobile devices like smartphones and Blackberries. IBM counted on its business partner RCI Consulting for executing the project.   

  “IBM has demonstrated it has business knowledge, robust tools and expertise in implementation, which will provide Riachuelo with an open architecture to help us in future projects”, Elias Bittar, CIO of Riachuelo, commented on the deal. 

  Riachuelo is Brazil’s third largest fashion retailer, with 112 stores. The group also retains a textile industry based in Natal and Fortaleza, Midway Financial, which supports the group’s financial operations and the Midway Mall, located in Natal.

RCI is Brazil’s best in Cognos.
June 3, 2009 – Rio Grande do Sul’s RCI Consulting, IBM’s partner for its Information Management brand software line, was awarded in May in the United States as the 2008 consulting firm with highest degree of satisfaction among IBM Cognos clients in Latin America.

20 partners received awards, only four from Latin America. The award was received in Orlando by directors Fernando Cabeda and Vivian Campos.

At the occasion, product manager Thiago Teixeira achieved the IBM Cognos maximum level of qualification, a set of four certifications granting him the title of IBM Certified Solution Expert – Cognos 8 BI.

Since 2002, RCI has had the maximum level of Cognos certification: Cognos BI Certified Engagement Manager.

RCI and IBM promote event in Porto Alegre
April 14, 2009 – RCI and IBM will promote this Wednesday the 15th at the Sheraton Hotel in Porto Alegre, from 2 to 6:30 PM, an open event entitled “Information Agenda: The Challenges of Information – How to conduct growth and innovation in times of change”.

The seminars “Accelerating BI and Performance Management with Trusted Information”, “IBM Cognos Technology in Performance Management projects – A practical view” and “The new role of IT in Information Management” will be held, besides an HSBC case presentation.

RCI: Development Center attracts Latin American clients
June 12, 2007 – Having completed a year since its foundation, RCI’s BI Shared Development Center has already added to the company portfolio clients from several Latin American countries such as Mexico and Colombia, besides Brazil.

The unit, created to increase the company’s development capabilities in the BI area, possesses a software factory structure with defined in-out procedures, quality and performance indicators, asides from task monitoring through the 0800Net system.

RCI is also a Cognos distributer in Brazil, working with CPM, BI and Enterprise Planning solutions. “We have been working with Business Intelligence since 1994, exclusively as a solution integrator in the area of Managerial Information Management”, as comments Vivan de Arújo Campos, director of the company.

There is intelligence in Unisinos’ education
August 25, 2006 – With the support of integrator RCI, Unisinos has increased the use of BI tools to manage its finances and education activities. Considering information technology, the one who stops winds up missing the train. When Unisinos (Vale do Rio dos Sinos University), from Rio Grande do Sul, concluded the implementation of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, in February last year, it knew it would have to advance further and invest in the acquisition of a BI (Business Intelligence) tool to deal with the new transactional data source and with the analytic needs it demanded in that occasion. But which path would it trail: continue with the Cognos Business Intelligence solutions it already had or try something different? Faithful to the saying that you shouldn’t make changes in a winning team, the institution decided to keep their bet on Cognos and replace the Powerplay and Impromptu solution, used from 1997 to 2005, for the Powerplay and ReportNet tag team.

The new ReportNet tool was presented to the university by RCI, Cognos’ solution provider in Porto Alegre and long time product and service supplier for Unisinos: “We showed the institution this technological evolution, presented all the tool’s possibilities and indicated how it could fit the needs of the university”, Erbene Oliveira, RCI commercial director, affirmed. “Given that the education market has been through a period of higher offer than demand, with fierce competition between universities, managers have realized the value of obtaining more relevant information to support decision making and conquer new students”, says Erbene. Besides implementing ReportNet, RCI provides the university with support and training services in the development of applications. “The expansion process was smooth because RCI has worked with Unisinos for several years and knows our business well”, Aliomar Silva de Oliveira, the institution’s IT manager, affirmed about the partnership.

The implementation of a new BI tool was concluded last February. The term “conclusion” might not be the best choice of words. According to Silva, from Unisinos, the institution has already placed the Powerplay and ReportNet solutions at the hand of 100 managers in the areas of marketing, supply, education management, financial management and HR. Until 2007, it intends on using the resources of the technology in its favor as regards the institutional assessment process conducted by the Ministry of Education and other government agencies in charge of monitoring private university activities. “We will monitor variables throughout time to be more proactive. We want the information at hand so we can anticipate the necessary measures to put the university up to date with what is being demanded”, Silva affirmed

Impacts on Management – In the areas it has already been implemented, the expanded Business Intelligence solution has shown to guarantee greater flexibility and agility in the extraction of managerial reports. According to Silva, “with Powerplay we had graphics to analyze the information, but we were not able to get more thorough reports. Now we continue working with Powerplay to obtain consolidated data and we use ReportNet for dynamic reports”.

The combination of both tools in education management, for example, enables the analysis of search tendencies so that the institution can adjust the offer of vacancies to the demand, manage the allocation of professors and physical space, analyze the number of entries and departures and monitor student performance. During the enrollment period, analyses and adjustments in the schedule and offer of disciplines are made in real time. “We are particularly concerned about the competition with other institutions in the region. We collect information from these institutions available in the media, feed our BI system and consolidate it with our own data to have a more precise picture of the movements in the sector”, Silva affirms.

In the financial-economic area, one of the most useful BI applications is related to the monitoring of cash flow and non-compliance indicators. According to Silva, monthly monitoring helps correct the annual budget limit. “The data consolidated by the BI tools later re-feed the ERP system”, he says. Moreover, managers are able to confront in a month-to-month basis the budget with the real expenditure. Unisinos’ marketing professionals have also adopted BI as a tool to deepen their knowledge of the student body. The department wants to know exactly who are the institution’s 30 thousand students from a social-economic and demographic viewpoint in order to take the inverse route of what is done today – to go after those interested instead of just waiting for them to show up.

World Cognos event in Porto Alegre
November 1, 2004 – Cognos Performance 2004 will take place in Porto Alegre for the second time in November. The Sheraton Hotel Porto Alegre (Rua Olavo Barreto Viana 18, Moinhos de Vento) will host the event on the 9th. The event is supported by RCI and registrations can be made in the address below.

Thiago Teixeira receives Cognos award
April 12, 2004 – RCI, leading company in Business Intelligence in southern Brazil, won another international achievement from Cognos Corporation Inc. Infrastructure and Support Manager Thiago Teixeira was given the Cognos Business Partner Best Technology Consultant award. The award ceremony was held in April 12th 2004, in São Paulo

The award aggregated qualification to the team, which already counts with Vivan Campos and Flávia Staud as detainers of CCPP certification – Level IV, unique in Latin America. This approves RCI’s commitment in providing its clients with high quality services and products. RCI has been working to qualify even more its employees, aiming constant improvement of its staff to better meet the needs of its clients.

November 20, 2003 – Event intends to disseminate the concept of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and present the Cognos solutions to Rio Grande do Sul’s most important companies.

Cognos, the worldwide leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management, and RCI, the company’s business partner in Porto Alegre (RS), are organizing the event entitled “CPM – How to integrate planning, scorecards and business intelligence”, to take place in November 25th, from 2 to 6 PM at the Sheraton Hotel Porto Alegre. Carlos Guimarães, general director of Cognos Brazil, affirmed, “we are the only company in the market to offer a complete CPM solution. The concept of CPM was defined by the Gartner Group to qualify the solutions capable of contributing to improve business process management and qualify the information available inside the corporations’ infrastructure”. Still according to Guimarães, the event will be an excellent opportunity for businessmen and professionals that want to get to know the practical benefits that can be obtained to improve company business and profitability with the adoption of planning, scorecards and business intelligence solutions.

Fernando Cabeda, director-controller of RCI, Cognos’ partner in Rio Grande do Sul, and event organizer, affirms that “for some time we have dedicated ourselves to publicizing the advantages of conscious management, in which access to all the company’s information is made available before decisions are made that have an effect on the business and the company’s relationship with the market”. Therefore, Cabeda believes that the event will draw the attention of the local market and should have a participation of around 80 professionals.

Those interested in participating in the event can register, free of charge, at www.rci.com.br or via email at inforci@rci.com.br, or even by phone at (51)3027-2777. CPM – How to integrate planning, scorecards and business intelligence.
When: November 25, from 2 to 6 PM
Where: Hotel Sheraton Porto Alegre
Address: R. Olavo Barreto Viana, 18 – Porto Alegre (RS)

Ipiranga wants access to strategic data
October 23, 2001 – Ipiranga Oil Products Distribution (DPPI) is enhancing its Business Intelligence (BI) project in order to have faster access to strategic information and grant a more efficient support to its customers. The company, which provides fuel and other oil derivatives to 930 gas stations and other 2,000 corporate clients in Rio Grande do Sul and part of Santa Catarina, is building a vast data warehouse that will consume around R$ 300 thousand until next year.

The work has already kicked off and will be carried out in cycles with the assistance of RCI consulting, a partner of Canadian Cognos, which has provided the BI tools used by the distributer for the last four years. “We began registering information regarding fuel and lubricants, which form the company’s most computerized sector. In November our attention will be turned to the oil change franchises and convenience stores. Afterwards, it will be the turn of the financial department, as we slowly evolve with this project”, says Plínio Figueiredo Neto, DPPI computer manager. Last year the distributer earned R$1.6 billion.

New servers will also be acquired next year to support the progressive growth of the data warehouse capacity. The idea is to concentrate all the information that circulates internally concerning clients in one only database to improve relationship and later reach the final consumer, the one who fills his car in the gas stations. The manager tells us that the project has already begun, although for the time being, at a timid pace.

Around 150 thousand users of the company’s oil change services – named Jet Oil – have been registered and are contributing to constitute a still-modest database. “It’s still a very small number compared to the universe of people that fuels their cars in our stations. But the idea is to slowly evolve”, affirms the executive.

Two other companies that have been developing Business Intelligence projects are Monsanto and MD Papers. The first is a giant in the seed sector and the second is part of the Gusmão dos Santos group, formed of 17 paper and package manufacturers. Monsanto has reached a high efficiency level in data control and increased productivity, while MD sought for an update in its information management systems.

Cognos selects RCI as South region distributer
June 27, 2001 – Compelled to cover the whole national territory, Business Intelligence (BI) solutions supplier Cognos elected RCI as its distributer in the South region of Brazil.

RCI, which has had a strong performance in the public sector and telephony, was already working with the brand, but was supplied by a distributer and did not have a direct relationship with the manufacturer.

Today, Cognos works with five other Alliance Partners, as they call their VADs: Integratech, Netpartners, Resource Informática, Softech and Uniplace. “Since there is a very large demand for BI solutions, we want to continue expanding our partnerships to better meet the needs of other regions and vertical markets which we still haven’t focused on”, said Mauro Orlando, pre-sale and service manager.

RCI’s expectation with the deal, according to Vivian Campos, technology director, is to achieve an invoicing of R$ 15 million in the next two years, which represents growth of over 100%.

The distributer is also creating the RCI Consulting division for project development, consulting, training and support. The division will stay linked to RCI, which will focus on product sales and commercialization.