Cognos Insight vs Excel? Managing with personal analytics

Think about the world we live in. Literally anything we want is at our fingertips. The latest weight loss super drug that just got banned in Bulgaria? It’s on Amazon. You’re in your Monday morning meeting and your manager “suggests” a book for you to read. Oh, that’s simple. Just slide your phone out of your pocket, slide down the search bar for Amazon.com (because you’ve already memorized the keyboard layout), type in the book, and add in the phone case and headphones you’ve been looking at. Hit submit and next thing you know, there’s a box on your door step when you get home from work on Wednesday.

Now that same ease is at your fingertips when it comes to personal analytics. How much water did I drink today? How is my performance in the gym or the 10k I’m training for going? How long is it taking me to get to work? If you can measure it you can improve it.

Have some fun and empower yourself by viewing your life just as you would in business. If you can measure it, you can improve it. Does a company think, “Oh we’re profitable… keep it up” or do they look to drill into their numbers to gain context? What are our biggest profit centers and how do we expand them? What are our areas of weakness and how do we either understand, fix, or minimize their under-performance. Whether you’re old school and prefer the familiarity of excel or you’re utilizing the power of a personal desktop application like Cognos Insight, anything is possible.