Cognos Unveils New Performance Solutions to Help Manufacturers Improve Sales & Operations Planning and Trade Promotions Management

– New Cognos Performance Blueprints latest in a series of industry-specific solutions –

BURLINGTON, MA June 13, 2006— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, continued its strong industry momentum with the launch today of two new performance solutions designed to help manufacturers drive more effective sales & operations planning (S&OP) and trade promotions management.

Matching product demand with production and supply chain capabilities is a key driver among manufacturers looking to improve business performance in today’s dynamic marketplace. Yet, organizations have struggled with their S&OP processes due to a lack of coordinated planning, metrics and reporting across all departments. The new Cognos Sales and Operations Planning Blueprint enables management to reconcile sales and demand forecasts with supply plans using a single, integrated performance management framework that ensures enterprise-wide alignment. Users can model and assess the financial impact of supply/demand scenarios to create a multi-plant S&OP view, and then monitor the plan on an ongoing basis using scorecarding and analytics, making ‘right-time’ adjustments as needed.

“As new opportunities arise, manufacturers need to plan quickly and in detail. Success is contingent on a number of ingredients – enterprise-wide integration of systems, ubiquitous information visibility across the supply chain, a strong ‘what-if’ capability, and deep analytics for comparing outcomes, so management can anticipate the impact of potential actions across business functions,”  said Colin Snow, vice-president and research director of operational and supply chain performance management at Ventana Research. “The Cognos Sales and Operations Planning Blueprint empowers organizations to react quickly to ad-hoc exceptions – like changes in demand, supply, capacity and product – plan effectively and measure the progress of responses against key performance objectives.”

Another significant challenge for manufacturers is the inability to understand and measure the effectiveness of their retail trade promotions, given limited information access and an increasingly complex marketing and promotions mix. The Cognos Trade Promotion Management Blueprint enables brand and category managers as well as sales executives to evaluate multiple trade promotions scenarios, helping them more effectively plan promotional activities that lead to the greatest sales and margin lift. The solution provides an automated and consistent vehicle to consolidating input from all stakeholders at the corporate, regional and district levels – including finance, sales and marketing management. Past promotion results can be analyzed and used as the basis for future plans. Various scenarios can also be tested to determine the best promotion investment model to maximize return on investment.

"The Cognos Performance Blueprints are probably the most valuable tools available to Cognos customers. They take standard business problems that organizations are modeling for, and provide a head start, allowing them to get more from their investment in their Cognos software," said Robbie Kaplan, director of business intelligence at Constar International. With 19 plants worldwide, Constar is a leading global manufacturer of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic containers for food, carbonated beverages, sports drinks, juice, new age beverages, flavored alcohol and bottled water. " Cognos provides us a tool where we can capture assumptions, make them visible to the people who need to see them, and provide a methodology where we can disseminate information quickly to the people who need to react to it. The Cognos Sales and Operations Planning Blueprint in particular addresses issues and constraints that must be considered in developing an effective plan.”

Anchored on Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 BI, the Cognos Sales & Operations Planning and Trade Promotion Management Blueprints are the first Manufacturing-specific solutions planned by Cognos, and the latest in a series of industry-specific performance solutions to be rolled out this year. Since January, Cognos has launched Performance Blueprints for retail store operations, retail store development, bank branch performance, pharmaceutical clinical trials and pharmaceutical sample optimization.

Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the new Cognos Sales & Operations Planning and Trade Promotion Management Blueprints are targeted, pre-built data, process and policy models based on proven best-practices in manufacturing planning, budgeting and forecasting. These Performance Blueprints equip customers with all of the necessary technology and process design choices, enabling them to synchronize and coordinate financial and operational plans in order to make better resource allocation decisions.

“Many manufacturers today are relying on spreadsheets to drive their sales & operations planning and trade promotions management. While they may be passable, short-term fixes at the departmental levels, their siloed, localized capabilities fall well short in enabling a consolidated, coordinated, enterprise-wide intelligence that can positively impact an organization’s overall performance,” said Paul Hoy, director of manufacturing solutions at Cognos. “Cognos’ new Performance Blueprints provide executives and managers with the information and sophisticated insights required to effectively assess the trade-offs that are vital to ensuring the right mix of production, outsourced resources and trade promotions to maximize sales effectiveness and meet demand.”

The Cognos Sales & Operations Planning and Trade Promotion Management Blueprints are available immediately to Cognos customers. Both Blueprints will be demoed at the 2006 Consumer Goods Technology Sales and Marketing Summit June 12-14, 2006 at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering performance management solutions for the manufacturing industry. Currently, 19 of the top 20 consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, 9 of the top 10 high tech companies, and all of the top 10 automakers use Cognos to improve sales and operations performance, marketing effectiveness, and supply chain management. For more information on Cognos solutions for the manufacturing industry, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/manufacturing/index.html

ABOUT COGNOS 8 PLANNING:
Cognos 8 Planning further leverages Cognos 8 BI to enable reporting and analysis on real-time plans and integrates with Cognos 8 Controller for certified financial data. This provides customers with a consistent platform from which to plan future performance and avoid predictable surprises.  New enhancements include native integration with Cognos 8 BI – plans are accessible live to accelerate reporting, analysis and dashboarding.  This provides additional and timely insight to the status of the planning process for more effective plans. For further information on Cognos 8 Planning see http://www.cognos.com/products/planning_consolidation/
enterprise_planning/index.html

ABOUT COGNOS PERFORMANCE BLUEPRINTS:
Cognos offers a full suite of Performance Blueprints to address planning and performance management process areas that directly impact an organization’s ability to create business value. Both functional and industry specific process areas can now be automated, streamlined and transformed to help organizations quickly create more business value.  The Cognos Performance Blueprints are a key component within the Cognos Performance Management System, which combines technology, best practices, analytical applications and solutions, and a broad network of partners into a single performance management solution for customers. For further information on the Cognos Performance Blueprints see http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html.

About Cognos:
Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.