OTTAWA, ON, April 22, 2002—Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSE: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI), today announced that it is the first BI vendor to deliver a comprehensive framework for corporate performance management (CPM) — the strategic application of BI. Cognos has embraced CPM as the future of the BI market, as organizations look to align business strategy with execution across the enterprise.

While other BI vendors offer point products that address isolated elements of corporate performance management, Cognos is unique in its ability to deliver a comprehensive BI solution that empowers an organization to fulfill its entire CPM strategy. Cognos enables the entire management cycle — planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and scorecarding.

"I believe that the next level of competitive advantage — and the next breakthrough in productivity — will come from companies better connecting their people to the business, its vision, its strategy, and its performance so that the organization as a whole can focus on a single outcome: winning the race," said Ron Zambonini, chief executive officer, Cognos. "As enterprises around the world move to adopt corporate performance management, Cognos will continue to direct our products, support, and services toward helping our customers deliver on that promise."

Increasingly for industry-leading organizations, CPM represents the natural evolution of their enterprise-scale business intelligence implementations. Gartner, a leading market research firm, defines CPM as "the methodologies, metrics, processes, and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise." In a recent report, Gartner stated that "CPM is an important concept, as it represents the strategic deployment of business intelligence solutions." (Source: Gartner, December 2001 Research Note)

"We believe enterprises will start to embrace corporate performance management (CPM) in 2002, combining BI infrastructure and applications," said Nigel Rayner, Research Director at Gartner. "Enterprises that effectively deploy CPM solutions will outperform their industry peers."

Specifically, Cognos enables effective CPM by:

• Enhancing the strategic value of an organization's investments in operational systems such as ERP, CRM and SCM, in warehouses and other data sources through robust reporting and analysis

• Enabling strategy-led planning and budgeting

• Aligning business people to company strategy through the management and use of key performance indicators

• Empowering all stakeholders in an organization to participate in elevating business performance through broad scalability to users inside and outside the enterprise

• Delivering a consistent view of the organization across functions and processes through the consolidation and transformation of data from disparate sources

• Driving coordinated and collaborative decision-making by ensuring consistent information is shared across the enterprise in formats suited to individual business needs and objectives

• Allowing timely, informed action at the point of impact through the identification of trends or events affecting performance

Cognos recently strengthened its ability to help customers enable their enterprises for corporate performance management when the company announced a global alliance with PwC Consulting to be part of the consulting firm's iAnalytics solution set. Cognos is providing core business intelligence tools within the iAnalytics solution set as part of PwC Consulting's total offerings.

"Our clients today are seeking ways to consistently embed strategic and performance management analytics across their entire value chain. Corporate performance management, which helps clients transform their corporate strategy into business solutions, is a goal we are helping our clients to achieve," said Mike Schroeck, Global iAnalytics leader, PwC Consulting. "Our alliance with Cognos in this area is a natural complement to our own iAnalytics strategy for clients. We have a shared vision in providing cross industry, analytical business solutions that help global organizations strategically plan, monitor, and assess the future of their company quickly and effectively."

Fossil, headquartered in Richardson, Texas, is a leader in the design, development, marketing, and distribution of contemporary, high-quality watches, apparel, and accessories.

"Fossil is committed to corporate performance management," said Mike Kovar, chief financial officer and senior vice president, Fossil. "It is clear that Cognos understands and is in line with our desire to see the efforts of every employee across our organization have a direct and positive impact on the fulfillment of our business strategies."