Leading Midsize Organizations Rely on Cognos to Reduce Costs and Track Business Performance

Cognos® (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that leading midsize organizations are using Cognos performance management solutions to enable quick and easy access to information, improve visibility into business performance, and react faster to competitive pressures. "According to figures from IDC, in North America the SMB segment (organizations with up to 1,000 employees) represents 41% of the total BI software market and is expected to continue growing at 12% compound annual growth rate over the next 5 years. Our research shows that mid-market companies are now relying on BI and business analytics for performance management just as large organizations do. Use of this technology is spreading from upper management and dedicated analysts to all decision makers, and we see this trend continuing in the foreseeable future,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president Business Analytics, IDC. Cognos has a significant presence in the mid-market through its direct sales and a network of 3,000+ partners. These partner organizations have very specific technical and industry-specific expertise that match well with the needs of midsize customers. As a result, these customers gain proven enterprise-class BI and planning capabilities through a low-risk, low-cost environment. US Lumber Group is a $325 million, specialty, wholesale building-materials distributor based in Atlanta. Initially, US Lumber had a small vendor providing day-to-day metrics. The Web-based application was limited to daily performance indicators, and the overall data scheme was small in scope and difficult to extract. As the company grew, US Lumber needed a complete performance management solution to help calculate and analyze the full year’s activities, including all of their financial forecasting. Now more than 130 users across the organization access Cognos to view key performance indicators on an hourly basis and track company cost centers. US Lumber is now able to catch an order that was missed or billed incorrectly and make the necessary adjustments the same day. "Cognos 8 BI has opened the eyes of the corporation to how much data we actually have,” said Felipe Herrera, senior financial analyst, US Lumber Group. "Now management, finance, procurement, marketing and sales teams all use Cognos 8 BI to view data in a timely fashion to make better decisions for their business operations.” The Cognos open architecture leverages existing IT environments including data, hardware and security and provides an integrated platform for easy access to any kind of data, without the need for incremental fixes and custom coding. Since the architecture is based on open standards, Cognos can support future investments and easily extend across the organization as the company grows. Maines Paper and Food Service, Inc., the nation’s second largest independent systems foodservice distributor, works closely with its foodservice operators and vendor partners to improve system integration and increase efficiencies in the company’s supply chain. Customers were demanding that the company make data more accessible to enable faster decision making. It needed a performance management solution to share critical information with its franchise restaurant customers, and one that could integrate with its IBM Linux-based DB2 system. "Using Cognos, we’ve been able to bring our business intelligence to the Web. We can now offer customers easy access to web-based reporting to get invoices, financial data, and delivery data – a capability that was non-existent before,” said Bill Kimler, vice president of application development at Maines. "If I’m talking to a customer who makes a recommendation on how to change something, I can do it while they’re still on the phone. That just wasn’t possible before.” Cognos also provided seamless integration with the company’s homegrown, J2EE-based scheduling system for delivery drivers and commissions program for sales representatives, enabling better business decisions. Cognos’ performance management software – covering planning, metrics and business intelligence –delivers tangible benefits to a company’s performance. As a result, midsize organizations can create plans to take advantage of opportunities and trends, analyze and make decisions based on what’s actually going on, and monitor results. Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo, two of New England’s most well respected and well-known quick service restaurant chains, use Cognos 8 BI, Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos financial reporting to optimize performance for their 370 restaurants and to support future growth in current and new markets. Cognos 8 Planning allows the companies to improve the efficiency of their financial and restaurant planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. "Cognos delivers both planning and business intelligence through a single, integrated offering that a company of our size can easily implement, manage and support,” said Louie Psallidas, senior vice-president of finance and chief financial officer at Papa Gino’s, Inc. "With Cognos, we can easily gather sales and labor forecasts from our restaurant managers, and then let them know how they are performing against those forecasts on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Being able to streamline the planning process, communicate performance vs. plan and identify key trends means we spend more time improving operations and satisfying guests while ensuring we grow profitably.” Blue Mountain, a four-season recreational destination and conference facility, is Ontario’s largest mountain resort. With 13 different lines of business including restaurants, ticketing, call centers, lodging and snow schools, Blue Mountain needed a comprehensive solution that would run traditional budgeting, consolidation, reporting and forecasting as well as performance analysis drawing from many different types of applications and data sources. The resort also required a performance management system that would be straightforward to install and maintain given the thinly stretched internal IT resources. "After an extensive review, Blue Mountain selected Cognos TM1 to streamline our performance management process covering planning, budgeting, forecasting and analysis,” said John Gowers, director of information technology, Blue Mountain. "Cognos TM1 speeds up a budgeting and forecasting process that was incredibly time-consuming, and provides our finance and operational teams with a powerful, flexible solution that enables them to compare budget to actuals against highly complex data in real-time.” Cognos technology is entirely Web-based, and its services-oriented architecture easily scales and integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources. Creativity, Inc. is a leading designer, marketer and distributor of paper crafting products in the $10 billion crafts industry. The company selected Cognos to coordinate disparate data sources across the company and to boost the analysis capabilities of its CMS ERP system. Using Cognos solutions, the company increased efficiency by standardizing reporting; improved its forecasting; and reduced the time it takes to close its books by 50%. "With Cognos 8 BI, we’re beyond the point most companies hope to reach with data accuracy. Employees can now speak confidently about our data, and easily match up reports and metrics, knowing they are speaking the same language,” said Jim Mulholland, vice president of IT at Creativity. "As a result, we’re one of the few craft suppliers that can service the large retailers in the way they want. Cognos helps make this level of service possible.” "Cognos takes an adaptable approach to servicing midsize customers, since they have limited resources and need solutions that are easy to deploy and maintain,” said Leah MacMillan, vice president of product marketing, Cognos. "We can tailor the solution to the unique needs of the business as it grows, so even a small deployment can bring big benefits. In fact, many Cognos customers start with one capability, such as reporting or analysis, or with a few users in a single department. From there, they’re able to expand and add additional capabilities as their needs dictate.” 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. 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. Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on Cognos' Web site at http://www.cognos.com