BURLINGTON, MA, & DEVON, PA, August 12, 2003—Cognos (NASDAQ:COGN; TSX:CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, and Smart and Associates, a leading business advisory and technology integration firm, today announced a partnership to provide Enterprise Planning solutions. The combined offering will provide customers with innovative solutions for Corporate Performance Management (CPM) that has a direct, positive impact on companies' top-line growth and bottom-line revenue.

"By partnering with firms like Smart and Associates that provide both process and technical expertise, Cognos is ensuring that an organization's key stakeholders can all work from consistent information. Customers can get the direction and flexibility required to elevate budgeting and planning from a financial necessity to a dynamic and strategic process," said Michael Morrison, vice president of North American Enterprise Planning and Financial Applications, Cognos. "Cognos Enterprise Planning Series is a key pillar in our CPM vision, providing software that allows companies to measure execution against business strategy, offering a clear path for customers looking to improve overall corporate performance management. Delivering solutions that help organizations drive value across the enterprise continues to power our business."

"Now more than ever, companies need to track, understand and manage their corporate financial data and budget information to improve business performance and meet increasing regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act," said Stanley Pittman, Partner at Smart and Associates. "Our focus has always been on improving management reporting processes and providing companies clear insight into their corporate performance. This alliance with Cognos offers joint clients a highly scalable platform for rapidly forecast, manage and analyze their data to make better business decisions."

Cognos Enterprise Planning Series energizes the performance management cycle, bringing together planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, reporting and financial analytics to eliminate the inconsistencies that constrain effective decision-making. Enterprise Planning Series empowers the CFO to ensure operating plans align with corporate objectives, to drive consistency, accuracy and visibility by engaging the managers across the organization, whose decisions today will determine tomorrow's results.

In turn, accelerated planning cycles anticipate evolving market conditions to provide real-time insight to future business performance.

Additionally, Cognos Enterprise Planning Series dramatically speeds up the mechanics of the planning process. Users can build business models in days rather than months, letting them test scenarios and reduce risk and can turn annual budgets into rolling forecasts that give more accurate visibility into future operating performance.

About Smart and Associates:
Smart and Associates, LLP is a technology, business advisory and accounting firm headquartered in Devon, Pennsylvania with offices in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia serving clients throughout the US and globally. The firm practice specialties include Accounting, Assurance, Tax, Business Management, Technology, and Financial Advisory Services.

Whether a client wants to expand its customer base, integrate disparate systems, or improve the efficiency of its business processes and enterprise operations, Smart and Associates' experienced professionals work closely with clients to develop cost-effective solutions that provide rapid business impact. Our consultants' knowledge and skills bring an unparalleled depth of industry-specific solutions to client projects.