How appropriate then that Cognos calls its Plato-specific client Aristotle. Aristotle is a muscular and flexible tool with a broad set of features for playing with Platonic cubes. It's important to note, though, that it's going to be an IS or high-end data analyst's job to prebuild and design the information visible to executives. One of the most productive concepts Cognos has implemented is the hierarchical structure of presented information. Analysts prebuild data views, each one with its own tabs, like a multipage spreadsheet.
Analysts can then package views in binders, sets of information with a related theme.
Binders go into Domains, each of which is optimized for a department or kind of analysis. So, for example, you could build separate domains for sales and finance, and while these might call on the same data, or possibly even contain some parallel views, each could be organized into a separate set of binders. The interface for views is quite good. In many cases, a single button click can provide a lot of added presentation value. For example, a single click can add a chart and reformat the screen to show both numbers and the graph, or can execute a drill-down process.