BURLINGTON, MA, August 12, 2003—Cognos (NASDAQ:COGN; TSX:CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, and Paradigm Business Solutions, a leading provider of strategic consulting services, today announced a new partnership. Under the agreement, Paradigm will sell and offer consulting services for Cognos Enterprise Planning Series to various vertical markets including healthcare, government, professional services, retail, communications, and financial services.

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 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.

"Paradigm and Cognos are unique in their ability to deliver a comprehensive solution that empowers an organization to better manage their financial processes and to fulfill its entire corporate performance management strategy," said Chris Fibbe, Chief Executive Officer, Paradigm Business Solutions. "The combination of Paradigm's consulting expertise and Cognos' product expertise creates a powerful solution that gives companies unprecedented insight into critical financial data - especially in a time when companies are feeling the pressure to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley - and the ability to apply powerful analytics to use that data for maximum effect."

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.

"Monitoring the financial stability of a company is core to a company's success - especially with the certification requirements mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act," said Michael Morrison, vice president of North American Enterprise Planning and Financial Applications, Cognos. "With capabilities such as consolidation, planning, budgeting, and forecasting, Cognos Enterprise Planning customers are able to quickly gain insight into the financial health and performance of the company and use that data to make, better more informed decisions about the future."

About Paradigm Business Solutions
Paradigm Business Solutions, LLC is a leading provider of strategic consulting services integrating front and back office operations and streamlining business processes by implementing and deploying critical business applications. Paradigm's team of over 35 consultants offer companies senior-level consulting services customized to solve their business challenges. In addition to providing expertise in the Cognos applications, Paradigm's expertise also spans across many other complementary product suites. Paradigm's customers include the Fortune 500 elite as well as small and medium size businesses across several industries including Professional Services, Healthcare, Bio Tech/Pharmaceuticals, Government, Retail, Communications and Financial Services. Paradigm has also engaged in strategic partnerships with several of the industry's leading technology and professional services organizations. For more information on Paradigm Business Solutions, contact Chris Fibbe at 781-598-9384 or cfibbe@paradigm-erp.com or visit our Web site at www.paradigm-erp.com.