BURLINGTON, MA & TORONTO, ON, August 13, 2003—Cognos (NASDAQ:COGN; TSX:CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM), and BPM Enterprise Solutions, which supplies world leading software and consulting services, today announced a partnership. Under the agreement, BPM Enterprise Solutions, will sell and offer consulting services for Cognos Enterprise Planning Series.

Cognos Enterprise Planning Series streamlines the performance management cycle and empowers CFOs and financial professionals to ensure operating plans align with corporate objectives to drive consistency, accuracy and visibility. As a result, CFOs gain better visibility and reliability in their financials with the ability to distribute accountability throughout the organization. This provides a single, reliable, and accurate view of the corporate plan for all stakeholders and forms a key component in an organization's CPM strategy.

"Corporate accountability has always begun in the CFO's office but the corporate finance function has recently experienced a paradigmatic shift in what is expected," said Gaston Primeau, President of BPM Enterprise Solutions Inc. "Best practices now require that the planning and budgeting processes be completed in days or weeks rather than months; that rolling quarterly forecasts replace traditional annual monthly budgets, and that financial targets be much more precise and accurate than ever before. Cognos Enterprise Planning Series facilitates this by providing our customers with a single, global view of their financial information."

"We have chosen to partner with Cognos because we feel they are currently the only software vendor capable of delivering a complete, integrated CPM solution that meets our customer's needs," said Randy Becher, BPM's Vice President of Sales. "Cognos Enterprise Planning Series offers sophisticated top-down planning, bottom-up budgeting, consolidation and balanced score-carding functionality that will enable the finance department to deliver on all that is expected of them in a timely and effective manner."

"Faster business cycles, greater complexity, and intense pressure from investors for positive business results all impel finance executives to look beyond their current budgeting process. Executives are looking for new business capabilities that will allow them to plan in a more collaborative, de-centralized way, link strategic objectives to operational targets and actions, and increase the levels of ownership and accuracy of the business plans," said Michael Morrison, vice president of North American Enterprise Planning and Financial Applications, Cognos. "Partnering with leaders in the financial space like BPM Enterprise Solutions will allow Cognos to drive corporate performance to our customers."

About BPM Enterprise Solutions Inc.:
BPM Enterprise Solutions Inc. is a full-service solution provider of application software and consulting services. The company offers enterprises advanced Corporate Performance Management capabilities by supplying world leading software, unsurpassed levels of personalized consulting services and extensive business experience working with Fortune 1000 companies across North America.