Dubai, UAE - Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions, announced today a major contract with Saudi Arabia's The National Commercial Bank (NCB).
Cognos signed the deal with the NCB, popularly known as Bank AlAhli, to extend the full BI solution at this year's GITEX Technology Week, following a successful and complete production roll-out. The Cognos BI Solutions are in place to navigate the complexities of a changing banking environment in the Kingdom, where customers are replacing traditional visits to local branches with a preference for internet and telephone banking.
The solution captures a complete vision of customer segmentation, demographics, product holdings and provides tools to help the business managers to understand and serve the dynamic needs of customers. The NCB Executive Management sought to better understand customers, products and distribution channels in order to manage performance, facilitate planning and decision-making process and develop appropriate marketing, business, and customer service strategies.
In turn, this has enabled the Bank to refine services and enable more customers to make a seamless transition to alternate channels like Al-Ahli Online Banking and Al-Ahli Phone Banking.
"The data made available to our NCB business users through Cognos BI solutions has made a remarkable impact on their business analysis needs and capabilities," said Mohammed Siddiq, Head of Central MIS Department, The National Commercial Bank.
The migration to a Cognos-based system follows hot on the heels of a global report reflecting the growing prestige of the NCB. World Banks for 2007, prepared by the Banker Middle East in association with the Financial Times, ranked the NCB 110th best worldwide bank, the top bank in the Middle East and top bank in Saudi Arabia.
"Cognos is involved at the cutting edge of the banking and finance industry, and we are proud to see a forward-thinking company like the NCB using our advanced technologies to achieve dramatic results," said Ged Simmons, Sales Director, Middle East and South Africa, Cognos.
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About The National Commercial Bank:
The National Commercial Bank is the most prominent of Saudi banks and was the first bank established in Saudi Arabia in 1953. The NCB is the largest Bank in terms of capital in the Arab world. The Bank's paid-up capital at year end of 2006 was SR 9,000 million (US$ 2400 million). The credit rating of the bank has been raised at rating of A from Fitch Agency and A+ from Standard and Poors. The Bank has 260 branches throughout the Kingdom dedicated exclusively to Islamic Banking services and serving over 2 million customers. The Bank also runs 2 international branches in Beirut and Bahrain, and 3 representative offices in London, Seoul, and Singapore.
The Bank operates a comprehensive array of alternative channels for services delivery such as Al-Ahli Telephone Banking, Al-Ahli Mobile Banking, Al-Ahli Online , Al-Ahli Trade, Al-Ahli Tadawul, Al-Ahli International Brokerage.
The bank is one of the pioneers in Islamic Banking since the beginning of the nineties by creating Islamic alternatives for many traditional service and products. The Bank is the biggest Financial Asset Manager in the Arab region and it is the first to offer Investment Funds in the kingdom. The Bank manages the largest investment fund with Murabaha in the world which is the Murabaha fund with Saudi riyal.
For more information visit the bank's website www.alahli.com/index.asp.
About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? - and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.
Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com/ae/index.html.
© Press Release 2007
