West Bromwich Building Society chooses Cognos TM1 to help streamline and strengthen their financial database


London, UK – January 30, 2008 – Cognos® (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, has announced that it has been chosen by the West Bromwich Building Society (WBBS), to supply Cognos’s TM1® to manage its budgeting, reporting and financial planning.

Following the introduction of Cognos’ TM1 in April 2007, WBBS plans to use the solution to provide a more flexible analytics system to build multiple, sophisticated financial models while retaining the security of a database structure. Cognos TM1 will be able to provide real-time analysis to help speed up response time for decision makers in the business.

The biggest benefit of installing Cognos TM1 will be the ability to collate data from multiple sources, whilst scheduling the data transfer internally through TM1’s integration tool.

“Specific features of the solution such as the read/write capability for reporting, analysis and data entry will help streamline our budgeting process immensely,” said Andrew Conroy, Financial Controller of West Bromwich Building Society. “Cognos TM1 is renowned for exceptional real-time consolidation and complex business calculations and we look forward to using one secure, low cost system for all our budgeting and forecasting.”

WBBS has seen sustained financial growth and the current tool deployed for the management and presentation of the financial results is no longer able to support this increased volume of data, both in terms of security and flexibility. By introducing Cognos’ TM1 there will be support for the growing demand of the business around real-time financial information from the current systems.

Martin Richmond-Coggan, VP FPM of EMEA, Cognos commented: “Implementing Cognos TM1 means minimal IT dependency. This new system will give more flexibility and help the business to develop an integrated business intelligence model providing fully reconcilable information. This will enable key individuals to make business decisions in an informed manner.”

Cognos’ TM1 will be used in a number of ways throughout WBBS. Primarily, it will benefit the society by capturing, reporting and managing the budgetary control element of the business. This in turn, means the society will be able to respond immediately to budgetary changes providing scenario and what-if analysis, enabling the decision makers to asses the impact of the group of stressed scenarios in the industry.

Cognos integration partner ICit, specialists in delivering business intelligence solutions, have been instrumental in developing this Activity Based Costing model for WBBS. They have demonstrated how costs could be allocated to the individual products to calculate specific profitability for WBBS and are offering training and support throughout the entire process.

Andrew Conroy is confident that, in the future, WBBS will expand Cognos TM1 into other departments. “With the recently announced acquisition of financial performance management expertise from Applix, coupled with Cognos’ leading BI technology, WBBS is excited about the new possibilities that may be available.”

About West Bromwich Building Society
West Bromwich Building Society has been a mutual building society for over 150 years and is committed to staying that way. As a building society, no dividends are paid to outside shareholders which means profits are passed onto their members.

The main objective of the society is to deliver significant member value through higher savings rates, lower mortgage rates and professionally qualified one-to-one advice to help people buy their own homes, save for the future and enjoy financial security in retirement.

West Bromwich Building Society is the 8th largest building society in the UK with assets of over £8bn. It employs nearly 1,000 staff and distributes its products and services through its 47 branches situated primarily in the West Midlands, telephone and internet services.

West Bromwich Building Society invests more than £500,000 each year into local communities through sponsorship and by supporting community and grassroots projects.

About ICit business intelligence limited:
Established in 1999, ICit is one of the leading independent business intelligence consultancies in the UK today. Our unrivalled experience means that we understand why businesses choose to invest in BI. For that reason we only partner with the best BI software providers on the market today. For more information please visit www.icitbi.com.

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