IBM Recognises Cortell Australia as Global Partner of the Year

SYDNEY - Nov. 22, 2013 - PRLog -- In a world that has an ever increasing reliance on fact based analysis to make business and personal decisions, data is becoming the new oil, and data scientists, the new job of the century. Organisations are using data and analytics to remain competitive, take advantage of, or create, new opportunities, and to evolve and respond to local and global market conditions. Data volumes are growing, new data sources are evolving, and the speed by which we need to investigate and make decisions is forever increasing.

To have access to data, on demand, at our fingertips is a critical key differentiator. But despite knowing this, many organisations struggle to begin their performance management journey.  Some have had a number of false starts getting a specific program of work undertaken, while others battle to put a business intelligence and analytics strategy in place, let alone one that is integrated.

Thankfully, there are companies that specialise in the field of analytics to help organisations take advantage of, and use data to deliver the insights required to make crucial business decisions.

Cortell Australia is one such company … highly regarded and globally acknowledged by IBM as the Partner of the year for Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics.  Cortell Australia received the award, presented during IBM’s annual Information on Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas, NV with some 13,000 customers in attendance. IBM extends this award to a single IBM Partner globally, based on a broad range of strategic criteria, including: creative and innovative use of the technologies and solutions; high levels of customer satisfaction and outcomes; excellent representation of IBM within their local, regional and global market place, and a deep and broad knowledge base to ensure world class delivery capability.

Cortell Australia was recognised for its continued and constant ability to deliver high value solutions around performance management, business intelligence, data mining, predictive and advanced analytics across an array of industries and business functions.

Matt Hill, Director and Head Consultant for Cortell Australia has witnessed firsthand the surge in analytics, observing, “The demand for smarter, or advanced analytics, is increasing. We are seeing our customers evolve from, streamlining their financial and operational planning models, replacing MS Excel based processes, reducing time to process, and delivering significant cost savings, to a more sophisticated and advanced analytical predictive solution framework. A recent project example is a large Australian bank … they’re mining text data from social networks, unsolicited complaints and supporting demographic, and activity data, in order to assess common themes or threads of information. This effectively provides a picture of the areas they can focus on to address customer attrition and retention.”

Analytics projects can vary dramatically. Cortell Australia have enabled a state correctional facility to identify offenders and those most likely to reoffend, and a mining company to reduce some $600m in unscheduled maintenance plans for assets. They are thought leaders in predictive analytics for Universities and Higher Education, where they’ve helped to identify students at risk of leaving prior to completing studies. Cortell have deployed solutions for many organisations, across all industries, and see immediate and real financial returns on such projects.

Cortell Australia’s success as a company has been built on the provision of financial performance and operational performance solutions using the IBM Cognos TM1 platform for more than a decade. They have been recognised locally and internationally for their expertise and quality, winning IBM’s Business Analytics Australia Partner of the Year for 2013, and the IBM Business Analytics Asia Pacific Partner of the Year: Excellence award for 2011 and 2012.

In recent years, Cortell Australia has taken advantage of IBM’s growth and expansion in Information Management offerings and has selectively focussed on product acquisitions that are complementary to the strengths of TM1, and those that create significant value for their customers … products like SPSS, for predictive analytics and data mining, and Cognos Disclosure Management (CDM) for the “last mile of reporting”.

While Cortell Australia’s strategy has proved very successful for both the company and its clients, a large amount of their success is attributed to the professional services and account management teams.

“We are very pleased with the level of experience and capability within our client and consulting teams. We only hire very experienced staff, and as such, we are able to articulate business solutions and engage immediately from day one.  Business Intelligence and analytics is a journey that evolves, and working with people who understand, can consult, design, and deploy the appropriate solutions, at the appropriate time, is a very important part of that journey,” says Nick Potts, Director, Cortell Australia.

About Cortell Australia

Cortell is a Business Performance Management practice that helps customers improve visibility, transparency, accuracy and efficiency for all aspects of the business performance management and decision making cycle. We have developed invaluable expertise in many industry sectors over the years. Our projects leverage the IBM Business Analytics and Information Management range of products including IBM Cognos TM1, Cognos BI, Cognos Controller, Cognos Express, SPSS and CDM (Cognos Disclosure Management) applications. Our consultants have delivered 900+ solutions to 500+ companies in all industry sectors & functional areas.

For more information on Cortell Australia’s information management, business intelligence, performance management and analytics expertise utilising IBM technologies, visit www.cortell.com.au