L’Oréal to manage customer forecasting with Cognos


~ picks Cognos planning solution to get closer to retail giants ~


LONDON, England, February 6th, 2007 – Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, has announced that L’Oréal UK has selected Cognos Planning to automate existing spreadsheet-based business processes and improve reporting efficiencies.

The world’s leading cosmetics manufacturer, working with Cognos partner BI Inform, has chosen Cognos Planning to drive the development of joint business plans for major retailers that sell its range of L’Oréal Paris, Garnier and Maybelline products.

L’Oréal UK’s national accounts team, which works with retailers including Tesco, Asda, Boots and Morrisons, is using Cognos to improve the planning and forecasting information available. By taking customers’ electronic point of sale (EPOS) data, the national accounts team can develop unit, sales and profit margin projections including built-in key performance indictors that are tailored to each customer’s individual requirements. In addition, scenario modelling can be used to forecast the success of customer or L’Oréal-led promotions and look at how seasonal variations may impact on sales and profits.

Previously, L’Oréal had been using Excel spreadsheets but, given the range of products and level of sales in the UK, these had become difficult to manage and highly admin intensive. Account managers were often tied to their desks for far too long, reconciling manual analysis.

“The Excel spreadsheets that the national accounts team had been using prior to the rollout of Cognos Planning had become gargantuan,” explained Keith Mattocks, project leader, Sales and Marketing IT at L’Oréal UK. “Not only that, every time a new scenario needed to be created, our account managers had to start again from scratch. This meant spending hours reworking the spreadsheets and inputting new data.”

“Cognos’ initial demonstration of what its technology could do literally sold it on the spot,” Mattocks continued. “We can now demonstrate to customers the effect of various different scenarios much more quickly than before, in minutes rather than hours. This gives them the information they need to make vital decisions in the fast moving retail sector.”

“L’Oréal is well respected for its technological innovation and its approach to working with its major retail partners is no different,” said Dave Laverty, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer, Cognos. “This is a classic story of a company struggling with spreadsheets and turning to Cognos to provide a secure, spreadsheet-like environment that is robust for the enterprise, yet an easy-to-use tool for the rep on the street.”

L’Oréal, working with BI Inform, took the classic project route developing the technology spec from the ground up. Following an initial review of the business need, workshops were held with potential users to set the project requirements ensuring a solution was developed to meet their needs.

The rollout of the Cognos application began in October 2006 and was completed by the end of the year.

Cognos is a recognised leader in delivering performance management solutions for the consumer goods industry. In fact, 19 of the top 20 consumer goods companies in the world use Cognos. For more information about Cognos solutions for the consumer packaged goods industry, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/manufacturing/index.html.

About L’Oréal UK
L’Oréal is the world’s number one cosmetics company, present in over 130 countries with 52,000 employees world-wide and a turnover of 14.5 billion euros in 2005, an increase of 4.8% on 2004 on a like-for-like basis. L’Oréal is the only cosmetics group that is present in every distribution channel: mass market, hair salons, department stores, pharmacy and mail order. Its brand portfolio includes L’Oréal Paris, Garnier, Maybelline, Soft Sheen Carson, Matrix, Redken, L'Oréal Professionnel, Kérastase, Vichy, La Roche-Posay, Lancôme, Biotherm, Kiehl’s, Shu Uemura and Armani, Cacharel and Ralph Lauren fragrances.

L’Oréal has been present in the UK for more than 70 years. Today L’Oréal UK is the fourth largest subsidiary of L’Oréal in Europe and the fifth world-wide.

L’Oréal UK is a major player in the UK cosmetics market, with an annual turnover in 2005 of £602 million (an increase of 3.7% on 2004).

67% of women in the UK use one or more L’Oréal product.

Overall, L’Oréal employs over 2,500 people in the UK who work across five sites including: a manufacturing and distribution centre in Llantrisant, South Wales; two distribution centres in Manchester; and the headquarters in Hammersmith.

About BI Inform
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
www.lewispr.com

For sales enquiries call:
Tel: +44 (0) 1344 486 668
www.cognos.com/uk