ENTERPRISE '00 COGNOS USER CONFERENCE, ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 3, 2000—Cognos^® (Nasdaq: COGN; TSE:CSN), the world's largest and most successful business intelligence company, today unveiled the industry's most complete business intelligence solution for the customer relationship management (CRM) marketplace. The announcement was part of an aggressive CRM market initiative showcased at Cognos Enterprise 2000 conference to an audience of corporate executives and industry experts.

Cognos showcased its Cognos business intelligence for CRM solution that provides the extensive interactive reporting, analysis and scorecarding functionality critical to organizations looking to better attract and retain customers.

The Cognos customer relationship management solution empowers organizations to strengthen ties with their customers through a better understanding of their needs. This leads to greater customer retention and easier customer acquisition, ties that drive top-line growth and create sustained competitive advantage. Cognos enterprise business intelligence for CRM allows organizations to transform vast amounts of customer data into meaningful information.

With Cognos business intelligence organizations can analyze customer data, identify trends in behavior, and create profiles which can then be used to create a better value proposition to attract the right new customers and retain the most profitable existing customers. The end result is lowered customer acquisition and retention costs, and competitive advantage both resulting in a positive impact on the bottom line.

"An effective CRM system is no longer a 'nice-to-have' but a must-have requirement for competing and winning in the Internet economy. Cognos allows organizations to consolidate data, across inventory to sales and customer information, to deliver the operational efficiencies and high-touch customer relationships demanded by today's customers," said Joanne K. Masingill, Cognos' senior vice president of marketing.

Organizations like e-tailers Send.com, and WeddingNetwork.com; and United Guaranty - a national mortgage guaranty insurer -- are using Cognos enterprise business intelligence to drive their competitive advantage and get closer than ever to their customers.

As a leading e-service business, Send.com serves the multi-billion dollar business and consumer gift market. The innovative online gift service, which focuses on creating and enabling gift transactions online for local products and services, has redefined the meaning of 'attention to detail' with gift selections that include fine wines and single malt scotch wrapped in crisp white linen, savory teas from around the world, organic baby products, high-quality themed book gift sets, rounds of golf and private lessons, and luxurious spa treatments delivered right to your door.

Using a business intelligence solution from Cognos, Send.com is able to view and "drill down" to provide sophisticated multidimensional analysis to understand the factors influencing the level of customer service it offers its customers. Cognos business intelligence enables the company to analyze issues by product type and time-to-resolution of customer order in ensure it can make the ongoing, necessary changes to its business, keeping customer retention high.

"Send.com recognizes that success is careful balance between unique, high quality product offerings, superior customer service and careful attention to detail, that attract and retain customers," said Tim Twombly, director of information technology, Send.com. "With the adoption of Cognos' enterprise business intelligence, we now gain deeper insight and measurement of the marketing efforts and product offerings that appeal most effectively to our customers."

Send.com differentiates itself by creating and partnering with networks of local specialty retailers and service providers to "fill" and deliver unique gifts, such as golf play and lessons, fine dining, spa services, wines and even exotic car rentals. This true "click and mortar" partnerships model leverages the existing sales channel's infrastructure, which gives Send.com an unmatched level of flexibility and scalability.