Provider touts solution as a way for customers to manage the financial impact of complex, multi-phased initiatives
Burlington, MA — October 11, 2005 — Cognos, a business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM) solutions provider, said it has expanded its portfolio of plan-to-perform blueprints by adding Initiative Planning and Strategic Long Range Planning models so customers can extend their existing planning, budgeting and forecasting deployments across their organization.
The new Initiative Planning Blueprint covers capital and labor initiatives and addresses multi-phased project planning for both types of undertakings (such as adding new manufacturing capacity or implementing large IT projects). Cognos said the solutions help companies 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 P/L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections.
ADP Canada, the country's largest provider of payroll and human resource information solutions, said it has achieved 98 percent forecast accuracy, faster planning cycles and substantial cost savings through its deployment of Cognos Planning.
Financial Information Systems Manager, Bobbi Slater, sees the additional value the Blueprints deliver to customers: 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. For customers like us, the Blueprints can provide us 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 Slater.
Philip Howard, technology research director of the United Kingdom-based Bloor Research, commented that Cognos has recognized 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. 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, he said. They are good, not just for Cognos, but for the whole CPM industry.
Cognos http://www.cognos.com
