BURLINGTON, MA, July 19, 2001—At Future Shop, one of North America's largest computer and electronics retailers, the latest technology is available not only to customers, but to employees as well. Future Shop recently rolled out a powerful business intelligence solution from Cognos to provide employees across their 88-store chain and in regional offices and distribution centers with superior reporting and analysis capabilities on critical business data. Cognos^® (Nasdaq:COGN; TSE:CSN) is the leading provider of business intelligence solutions.

Future Shop has deployed Cognos to analyze and report on data in the company's Enterprise Data Warehouse, a repository that contains data on Future Shop's traditional and online business. Future Shop's corporate Intranet serves as the single point of entry for users to access, report, and analyze data. The in-depth view of operations will allow users to spot trends in data and identify problem areas in the business.

"Our business systems contained a huge amount of critical business data that was not uniformly available for reporting," said Bill Akam, Director of Strategic Programs for Future Shop. "Cognos now provides managers with a high-level view of operations and the ability to drill down into the details to analyze underlying problems. As a result, business decisions are made faster, easier, and with more confidence."

Cognos will also enable Future Shop to quickly analyze the previous day's Sales and Margin performance at a granular level and make necessary changes. Previously, information was only available at a very high level with no analytic capabilities.

"Before deploying Cognos we could see our daily sales at the total level for each store but had little ability to look under the covers to see what the reasons were for variances from expectations. With a cube built upon all our sales transactions, we now have the ability to drill into the results from yesterday to see what went well and what did not. This allows us to make more timely adjustments to merchandizing and promotions to drive our sales," added Akam.

Future Shop's widespread presence and required daily sales reporting from both traditional and online sources previously presented some challenges. Future Shop is now using Cognos DecisionStream to extract and consolidate data from several existing systems including ERP, financial, human resources and the data warehouse, with the result being the ability to work with very large amounts of data in a very short period of time. This aggregated, report-ready data will be used enterprise-wide by a variety of users, including executive level officers, finance, and marketing.

"Cognos provides a comprehensive business intelligence solution that can be deployed across the enterprise, allowing companies to access, analyze, and report on data stored in existing business systems," said Alan Rottenberg, senior vice president, e-Business Applications Unit, Cognos. "With the majority of businesses that have adopted online business processes, customers need a solution like Cognos in order to derive critical business insights from newly generated volumes of data."

About Future Shop:
Future Shop is Canada's largest, fastest-growing national retailer and e-tailer of consumer electronics products for the digital age, with 88 superstores, and the nation's premier online electronics superstore, at futureshop.ca. Future Shop and its 7,500 associates are committed to providing Canadians with fast, friendly service, the latest digital products such as DVD players and wireless internet devices, and a wide selection of televisions, computers, music, and appliances. Future Shop is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol FSS. For more information about Future Shop, please visit us online at http://www.futureshop.ca.