Sydney, Australia, January 7th, 2003—Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI), today announced that an independent study by Nucleus Research shows 80% of Cognos customers interviewed have achieved a positive return on investment (ROI) from their Cognos deployment. The report found that customers saw increased productivity and revenues, and reduced operational costs as a result of their Cognos deployments.

"Our research clearly shows the positive impact that business intelligence solutions like Cognos can have on the corporate performance of the world's leading organisations," said Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research's vice president of research. "Now more than ever, business intelligence solutions represent an attractive investment for companies that are seeking to improve revenues and increase efficiencies across the enterprise."

Nucleus, a US-based firm that evaluates financial return on IT assets, conducted its analysis independently. The report found that 75% of customers interviewed completed their deployment on schedule and within budget. According to the research, the three primary areas of benefit for customers using Cognos were: more efficient reporting, improved information organisation and access for decision-making, and improved customer management. For example, companies that had previously relied on spreadsheets for reporting indicated that by using Cognos they were able to reduce personnel time associated with reporting by as much as 50-90%.

Some of the customer success highlights from this study include:

• Brayton International, a furniture manufacturer, achieved a 576% ROI and a payback period of one month by deploying Cognos' reporting, analysis and ETL solutions.
• Trimac Corporation, a transportation services provider, achieved 185% ROI, with a payback period of about a year by using Cognos to analyse capacity utilisation and other shipping data to reduce costs and increase billing accuracy.
• The City of Albuquerque achieved a nearly 2000% ROI from its Cognos deployment by reducing administrative overhead and identifying other cost-savings opportunities.

"Our mission is to make Cognos customers the best performing organisations in the world," said Jack Thomas, vice president, Asia Pacific and Offshore. "The results from this independent research clearly show that our corporate performance management vision, combined with a strategic focus on product quality and customer success, provide a winning formula for our 20,000 customers around the world."

Additional highlights from this report, including an executive summary, can be accessed at http://www.nucleusresearch.com/press_releases/prcognos.html.