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COGNOS INNOVATION CENTER EXPANDS TO EUROPE
by Johan Berggardh, Director European Programme Office,
and Rich Lanahan, Vice-President Americas Program Office
We are pleased to announce that Cognos, world leader in planning and performance management, is continuing its commitment to the office of finance by expanding the Innovation Center for Performance Management to Europe.
The Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management is an open forum dedicated to performance management best practices. It brings together best-practice expertise, business solutions, and customer experience to inform and enable the improvement of performance management systems. It helps stimulate the dialogue between business professionals, technology experts, and industry thought-leaders. The Innovation Center is dedicated to helping Cognos customer understand, adopt, and implement next-generation planning and performance management practices.
Since its inception in June 2004, the Cognos Innovation Center has
- Delivered Cognos Performance Blueprints. Blueprints are pre-defined data, process, and policy models based on proven best-practices in enterprise planning. Offered to Cognos customers at no cost, the Blueprints are designed to link operational and financial plans in strategic process areas to improve forecast reliability and jump-start deployments.
- Enrolled thought leaders. Industry luminaries like David Axson of the Sonax Group, Jeremy Hope, Research Director of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, and Michael Sutcliff, Finance and Performance Management Practice Lead at Accenture have become members of the Innovation Center Advisory Board.
- Conducted Innovation Roundtables and Workshops. Ten roundtables and workshops worldwide have hosted finance executives from more than 250 companies. Participants shared best-practice examples, real-world experience, and innovative insights focused on driving financial and operational performance at ever-increasing levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
- Published ground-breaking articles and research. Exclusively for its members, the Innovation Center has made available original work by David Axson and Jeremy Hope, in-depth case studies, and guides to enhancing value through transforming planning and performance management policies and practices.
Feedback from Innovation Center members and Cognos customers has been overwhelmingly positive.
"We've thoroughly enjoyed sharing best-practices in planning and performance management with other large organizations that are deploying innovative, modern technology to drive corporate performance. The Innovation Roundtables have provided us with a great opportunity to build a network of fellow customers, with similar issues and challenges. Both the external peer perspective and the clear direction provided by Innovation Center experts and thought leaders have helped us speed our deployment."
Greg Bozigian
Director of Financial Planning
Princess Cruises
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We're expanding to Europe for several reasons: We want to build upon our current success, we want to share the expertise and experience of our European customers, and-given our recent acquisition of Frango – we want to broaden our scope to include best-practices in compliance, consolidation, and reporting. To facilitate our expansion, we are investing in a local European team with expertise in performance management best-practices.
"We are operating in a very competitive landscape within the Swedish insurance industry and constantly striving to improve our processes and technical platform for performance management. For us it is vital to maintain relations with a software supplier in this space that not only provide high standard software, but also is proactive and provides value beyond the software itself. The Cognos Innovation Center is a great example of this. Having just joined, we are excited about what access to the forums and the resource center can mean to us. Especially now, when the Innovation Center is expanding its presence into Europe."
George Janson
Business Intelligence Competence Center
Folksam
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We'll be collaborating with BBRT's Jeremy Hope to develop best practices that should prove especially relevant to European finance executives and their collagues. Innovation Center Europe members will be able to interact with Jeremy in a number of venues including local Innovation Center Roundtables and Special Interest Groups. Center members will also have the opportunity to access exclusive, regularly published opinion and research on best-practice compliance, planning, and performance management.
"Cognos recognizes that companies need to become more adaptive and this must be supported by their performance management systems. The journey requires new disciplines and new tools. By working closely with local companies, the Cognos Innovation Center Europe can help customers embark on a path to becoming more lean, adaptive and compliant organizations."
Jeremy Hope
Research Director
Beyond Budgeting Round Table
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We've long said that the most successful organizations are able to transform routine business activities into "next practices" that help reduce costs, minimize risk, streamline business processes, boost productivity, enable companies to respond more effectively to emerging threats and opportunities, and increase management visibility to performance throughout the enterprise. We are convinced that the European Progamme Office will be vital in identifying emerging "next practices" and in turn-driving our customers' success.
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