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Cognos Unveils Business Intelligence Portal
Cognos unveiled a new EnterpriseService Portal (ESP), a customizable, personalized portal that allows Cognos business intelligence customers to receive the level of customer service, support and education they choose. Cognos will implement the portal in stages throughout the year. The first phase will become available in May.
The Cognos EnterpriseService Portal provides access to training, including new Web-based training offers; technical support; and post-sales consulting through Cognos' Consulting Services organization. ESP delivers Web-based training to Cognos' customers anywhere in the world, at any time. It also provides access to live customer support, customer chats, FAQs, a solutions knowledge base and other forms of knowledge transfer, such as online diagnostic support. ESP's online consulting services help customers with e-business implementations.
"Cognos is evolving from the brick-and-mortar customer service model to a new e-business model which is more in tune with the new e-conomy," Rob Ashe, Cognos’ Senior Vice President of Customer Service and Support, said in a statement. Ashe's comments about the "new e-conomy" are underscored by a report just released by San Francisco-based E-Offering, an online investment banking firm. The report, which says that the Internet and information technology are fundamentally changing the way companies conduct business, predicts that the growth of business-to-business e-commerce will far exceed that of business-to-consumer e-commerce. This, of course, isn't news. The GartnerGroup has already reported that it expects the worldwide business-to-business e-commerce market to exceed $7 trillion by 2004.