BURLINGTON, MA, June 16, 2004— Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN; TSX; CSN) the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management solutions, today announced that an independent study by Ventana Research found that Cognos Enterprise Planning Series customers such as Hollister, Inc., Lucent Technologies, Ace Hardware, and AmeriPath have achieved significantly improved levels of performance visibility and operational control through their planning and budgeting solution. As a result, these customers and others are realizing greater accountability through higher participation in the planning and budgeting process, controlling expenses more effectively and intelligently during challenging economic times, deepening visibility into their business, and enhancing plan and forecast accuracy as a result of their Cognos deployments.

"This research shows the positive impact Cognos Enterprise Planning-based solutions have had on the corporate performance practices of these organizations," said Robert D. Kugel, CFA, VP & Research Director, Financial Performance Management, Ventana Research. "With enterprise planning solutions, we see companies improving efficiency, and more importantly their effectiveness. This is a major step towards sustainable performance management practices and improved profitability."

Cognos Enterprise Planning Series drives the performance management cycle, bringing together planning, budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, reporting, and financial analytics. Enterprise Planning, typically driven by the CFO, closes the loop between planning and performance throughout all key processes and planning areas of a corporation, delivers real-time insight into future performance, and aligns plans and activities across the organization for fast, efficient, and synchronized execution to maximize business results.

Cognos Enterprise Planning Series also enhances and extends the strategic value of an organization's investments in ERP and operational systems such as SAP and Oracle, among others. The solution allows for ease of data access, with the ability to model the complex business environments of companies who have deployed these ERP systems. It also scales to support thousands of users in a wide variety of planning and forecasting processes.

Some of the customer highlights from this study include:

• Hollister, an 80-year-old global healthcare product manufacturing company with a reputation for quality and innovation, has succeeded in the intense medical appliances market by sustaining successful research efforts and achieving high-quality/low-cost manufacturing capabilities.
  
  

  Since implementing Cognos, Hollister has transformed its budgeting and planning process and as a result, has realized numerous economic and organizational benefits. Eliminating spreadsheets has made its planning cycle more productive as finance people spend less time on administrative duties and more time on analysis and discussion with business units. Using Cognos for sales forecasting has produced more accurate, granular projections that enable manufacturing units to plan their production schedule and manage inventory better. There is greater visibility of expense drivers so the company can better match resource requirements to budgeted amounts. Finally, by pushing out the planning process to more people in the organization, Hollister has enhanced accountability and predictability throughout the company, ensuring that individual activities and objectives sync up with corporate strategy and ensuring that individual contributors to the plan understand how their piece fits within the broader enterprise plan.

• With annual revenues of approximately $500 million, AmeriPath is a leading anatomic pathology company, processing approximately 4 million tissue samples annually. The business is undergoing consolidation in an effort to achieve greater efficiency while delivering higher levels of service to attending physicians.
  
  

  Since implementing Cognos, AmeriPath has realized value by significantly cutting its plan/re-plan cycles. By reducing the amount of time spent on consolidating spreadsheets, the finance organization has more time to spend thinking about the plan and dealing with the issues that come out of this analysis. It is also has greater visibility of daily production data and can perform trend analysis. The availability of production data has given the company the ability to enhance operating decisions. In addition, the company has changed from static annual forecasting to a more nimble rolling forecast approach, which ensures more accurate forecasts with data being adjusted frequently to reflect changes in business strategy and market conditions.

"Our mission is to make Cognos customers the best performing organizations in the world and Cognos Enterprise Planning Series is an important enabler in this process - dramatically reducing planning cycle time, increasing forecast accuracy, and ensuring data and process integrity," said Doug Barton, vice president, Enterprise Planning Product Marketing, Cognos. "The results from this independent research confirm the substantial value achievable when deeply capable products and thoughtful process improvement efforts are combined to drive higher performance. It's a winning formula for our 22,000 customers around the world."

Profiles in Planning, an independent Ventana Research study, which shows how eight leading companies are currently using Cognos Enterprise Planning Series to dramatically improve their planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes can be accessed at http://www.cognos.com/profilesinplanning/.

ABOUT VENTANA RESEARCH:
Ventana Research is the preeminent Performance Management research and advisory services firm helping their clients leverage technology and business processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness throughout their organizations. Putting research in an IT and business context Ventana Research provides insight and education on the best practices, methodologies and technologies enabling their clients to leverage assets to understand, optimize, and align strategies and processes to meet their goals and objectives. For more information, visit the Ventana Research Web site at www.ventanaresearch.com.