Kingspan Insulation cuts out data inefficiency with Cognos

London, December 13, 2005 – Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM), has announced that Kingspan Insulation, a UK-based manufacturer of building materials, is rolling out Cognos ReportNet to get rid of ‘data islands’ that have developed across the business. In doing so, it plans to introduce greater speed and flexibility of reporting on sales data, particularly for senior management users.

A recent period of growth meant the company wanted to enable key users to design and run their own reports as well as automate regular queries. Senior management executives also wanted access to strategic analysis that was simple to run and delivered in a consolidated report.

Following a six-month trial period of Cognos ReportNet through Cognos partner BI-Inform, the system has now launched with 20 full-time users, 15 of which are expected to be creating reports through the Query Studio tool by the end of the year.

"We have been using Cognos PowerPlay for the last six years so we needed a tool that could integrate seamlessly, as well as having the power to pull together reports from data sources across all our departments," said Peter Smith, business systems manager at Kingspan. "We needed to centralise data analysis to ensure everyone was seeing one version of the truth."

Kingspan is also looking to increase the number of senior sales staff, many based away from the office, who access their own reports. This will be possible using Cognos ReportNet, as any employee with access to the Internet will be able to run reports individually, or view and update other reports.

"We needed to remove our sales managers’ reliance on phone calls and Excel spreadsheets," added Smith. "The next 12 months will be dedicated to extending the reach of our standard reporting and speeding up the sales process by educating our staff in how to create their own, ad hoc queries, so they can respond faster to customer needs."

"Kingspan has been a user of Cognos technology for a number of years, and this implementation of Cognos ReportNet is an example of how businesses can develop their reporting technology to speed up sales cycles," said Graham Walter, VP of UK, Middle East and Africa at Cognos. "Working with BI-Inform, we have been able to provide a layer of dedicated reporting functionality across an established PowerPlay environment and simplify the process of report creation and delivery for Kingspan."

About Kingspan
Kingspan Insulation is a division of Kingspan Group plc, one of Europe’s fastest growing building materials manufacturers. Kingspan Group plc was formed in 1970 and is a publicly quoted group of companies with its headquarters in Kingscourt, County Cavan, Ireland. Kingspan Insulation is consequently able to draw on the many resources and support of a focused, innovative group.

Kingspan Group is rapidly expanding its manufacturing operations and distribution networks across Europe, North America, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand.

Kingspan Insulation is the market leader in the manufacture of rigid urethane and rigid phenolic insulation products and offers an extensive range of premium and high performance insulation products for:

• pitched roofs
• flat roofs
• tapered roofing systems
• cavity walls
• insulated dry lining
• timber and steel framing
• externally insulated cladding systems
• floors
• soffits
• ductwork in building services applications.

Kingspan Insulation also manufactures:

• the Kingspan KoolDuct zero ODP System of pre-insulated ducting
• Prelite pre-insulated plenum boxes
• Kingspan nilvent - breathable membrane for roofs and walls.

About BI-Inform Ltd
Established in 1997, BI-Inform is a leading business intelligence and enterprise planning consultancy and Cognos Gold partner specialising in delivering corporate performance management solutions.

BI-Inform’s success is built on delivering projects with a best practice approach, using Cognos best of breed solutions. We provide the highest quality consultancy services and ongoing support. Our mission is to support your information project from scoping the business requirements all the way through implementation and development to its successful completion, giving you the confidence to make better decisions every day.

BI-Inform has developed performance management solutions using Cognos technology to over 200 organisations, but mainly specialising in retail and manufacturing.

About Cognos, an IBM Company
Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions.

It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.
Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com/uk/

For further information about Cognos, please contact:
Katy Lyons or Farimah Saadat at LEWIS, the PR agency

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7802 2626
Fax: +44 (0)20 7802 2627
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For sales enquiries call:
Tel: +44 (0) 1344 486 668
www.cognos.com/uk