BURLINGTON, MA, May 13, 2002—Sesame Workshop, a company whose work is loved by millions of children worldwide and who are best known as the creators of Sesame Street, Dragon Tales and Sagwa, has implemented a business intelligence solution from Cognos®. Sesame Workshop has reaped significant ROI from its Cognos investment, achieving insight into brand performance and profitability, and reducing reporting and operational time from months to days. Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSE: CSN) is the world leader in business intelligence (BI). EIA Inc. is a New York-based BI provider and a Cognos partner.

"We needed a solution that would deliver immediate information about the global performance of our brands. With Cognos DecisionStream® we have built a series of integrated data marts that allow us to look at our whole company and see the relationships between the different areas," said Sherra Pierre, vice president of information systems, Sesame Workshop. "EIA Inc. implemented a Cognos solution that gives us the ability to look at every aspect of a character like Elmo — from production to marketing to license revenues — and determine the global viability of that character. You can't put a price on our ability to understand the strength of our brand and hasten our time to market."

The analytical capabilities of Cognos PowerPlay® deliver a powerful, fully integrated solution that provides a 360-degree view of operations and assists executives in making critical financial decisions about the future success of the business. Cognos allows managers at Sesame Workshop to track the profitability of individual characters across all distribution channels, including the Web, print, interactive, consumer products, and broadcast, including Noggin, the Workshop's 24-hour kids' thinking channel. By understanding a character's total costs, expenses, and revenues, Sesame Workshop can justify why they should continue to invest funds in different shows or characters in the future.

"Since implementing the Cognos business intelligence, we have seen significant improvements in internal operational efficiencies, which has translated into substantial cost and time savings for our company. For example, we are now able to perform quarterly closes in less than a week - a process that previously took almost two months," added Pierre.

Sesame Workshop also uses Cognos to analyze and create reports on HR data. With 200 to 300 freelancers working at any given time — from puppeteers and cartoonists to set designers — managers need to know exactly who is in the building, where, why, and how much it is costing the company.

"For Sesame Workshop, the strength of the Cognos solution lies in our ability to unite disparate data sources to derive value and better manage the corporate performance of their business on a global level," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president, global marketing, Cognos. "This insight allows Sesame Workshop to identify problem areas, and maximize funds and productivity to ensure they support the company mission of childhood education."

About Sesame Workshop:
Sesame Workshop is a not-for-profit educational organization that stands alone in its ability to creatively help solve major educational and developmental needs that affect children around the world. For over 30 years, the Workshop has created innovative and engaging media to help all children reach their highest potential. The organization grounds its work in research to understand how multi-media platforms help children learn, develop and grow. Best known as the creators of Sesame Street, Dragon Tales and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat airing on PBS, the Workshop continues to break new ground with Noggin, the only 24-hour kids' thinking channel. Find the Workshop online at www.sesameworkshop.org.