Innovation centre will host web seminars to showcase new offerings for customers
Dubai - Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM), has expanded its portfolio of Plan-to-Perform Blueprints by adding initiative planning and strategic long range planning models.
The new blueprint models are based on proven best practices in enterprise planning and define all the necessary technology and process design choices, allowing customers to jump-start new efforts and extend their existing planning, budgeting and forecasting deployments across their organization.
"What Cognos has recognised is that planning is more than just a financial activity - that it is something that needs to spread across the enterprise and be coordinated across multiple departments. However, appreciating that fact and supporting it in principle in the planning software is one thing; supporting it in practice is another. This is where the Cognos blueprints come in, enabling users to adopt these practices relatively easily," said Philip Howard, technology research director, Bloor Research, Europe's leading independent IT research organisation.
"What the Plan-to-Perform Blueprints provide is not just a fast start to implementation but also a way to think about a CPM-based solution. They are good, not just for Cognos, but for the whole CPM industry."
The new Initiative Planning Blueprint covers capital and labour initiatives. It addresses multi-phased project planning for capital intensive undertakings such as adding new manufacturing capacity, and labour intensive plans such as implementing large IT projects. These solutions help companies improve their ability to justify major multi-phased initiatives; forecast capital expenditures associated with each phase; evaluate the impact of changes to the timing and size of capital outlays over the various phases of an initiative; and automatically generate the impact on cash flow projections.
The strategic Long Range Planning Blueprint helps companies assess the impact of market growth assumptions, strategic initiatives such as implementing a major new IT project, and external risk such as currency fluctuations on long range revenue and profitability.
"Major initiatives such as new IT infrastructure or new facilities can be essential ingredients for revenue growth and increase productivity. Managing the financial impact of complex, multi-phased initiatives can be difficult. The Blueprints provide customers with a means to reduce implementation project time and costs, while improving the overall project success rate. They are based on industry best practice, helping finance quickly see the impact of changes in operational plans, and helping departments and functions improve resource allocation in support of company objectives," said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East, Turkey and Greece.
Developed by the Cognos Innovation Centre, the Plan-to Perform Blueprints are targeted, pre-built process models based on proven industry best practices and designed to accelerate the realization of an integrated, reliable and dynamic planning process across the enterprise.
With the addition of the two new models, Cognos Plan-to-Perform Blueprints are available in 12 process areas including capital projects, discretionary capital expenditures, headcount and compensation, expense planning and control, sales planning and forecasting, strategic financial planning and forecasting, allocations, risk analysis and sales compensation.
-Ends-
ABout the company
- Beginning Oct. 6th, the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management is hosting an executive Web seminar series to introduce the most recent Blueprints. For more information, please visit: http://www.cfo.com/executiveforum/index.cfm/l_eventdetail
- See: http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html
Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
About Cognos
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and corporate performance management, delivers software and services that help companies drive, monitor and understand corporate performance. Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage - Corporate Performance Management (CPM) - achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale. Our integrated CPM solution helps customers drive performance through planning; monitor performance through scorecarding; and understand performance through business intelligence.
Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence and 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
About Bloor Research
Founded in 1989, Bloor Research is one of the world's leading IT research, analysis and consultancy organisations - distributing research and analysis to IT user and vendor organisations throughout the world via online subscriptions, tailored research services and consultancy projects. Bloor Research's research and analysis have been acknowledged by the world's press, other industry analysts and commentators as some of the most authoritative work ever produced on computing and business issues.
For more information please contact:
David Brierley
Regional Manager
Cognos Middle East
Turkey and Greece
Tel: 9714 3625433
E-mail: david.brierley@cognos.com
Shilpa Mathai
Lina ZainAldin
Polaris Public Relations
Dubai
UAE
Tel: 9714 3348520
Fax: 9714 3341326
E-mail: s.mathai@polaris-me.com
E-mail: l.zainaldin@polaris-me.com
© Press Release 2005
