Cognos Continues Retail Industry Leadership, Launches New Performance Solution To Help Optimize Promotions

– Cognos Strategic Promotions Planning Blueprint enables retailers to more accurately model, analyze and evaluate effectiveness of promotional activities –

2006 RILA ANNUAL LEADERS EXCHANGE (ALEx), DALLAS, TX October 16, 2006— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, continues to extend its retail market leadership by announcing today the launch of a new retail performance solution – its third in less than one year – designed to help chains optimize the effectiveness and return for both retailer- and vendor-funded promotional activities.

Marketing and promotions costs can significantly impact a retailer’s top and bottom lines. The Cognos Strategic Promotions Planning Blueprint empowers managers and executives across the retail chain to model multiple scenarios, then analyze and evaluate the success of their promotions, enabling more efficient use of company and trade dollars to ultimately drive higher returns. Through the Performance Blueprint, senior executives can best determine company-wide marketing spend, strategically allocating funds to banners, regions or types of marketing activities; Marketing and merchandise managers can plan retailer-funded promotional campaigns that will lead to the greatest return on their investment; and Buyers, merchandisers and category managers can plan the best use of trade funds and monitor promotion effectiveness as well as vendor compliance to remittance terms.

“In an industry where profit margins are key, retailers are always looking for ways to streamline their promotion processes to deliver consistent, targeted messages to their customers at lowest possible costs and in the quickest timeframe,” said Cathy Hotka, senior vice-president of technology and business development at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA). “Sophisticated promotions planning solutions are becoming more prevalent in this industry, allowing retailers to spend more time strategizing and optimizing, and less time on administrative tasks like aggregating and validating their data.”

Anchored on Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 BI and based on retail industry best practices, the Cognos Strategic Promotions Planning Blueprint delivers an intuitive top-down and bottom-up planning and reporting environment where retailers can capitalize on:

* An integrated planning process between finance, marketing and merchandising, ensuring all departments have visibility to promotions and are working towards common objectives
* Built-in calendaring that provides organization-wide visibility into planned promotional activities
* The ability to perform analysis on historical promotions and use the results of that analysis to drive future campaigns and optimal promotional mix
* Rapid re-forecasting capabilities that empower chains to adjust their promotional mix and campaigns ’on the fly’ based on performance and consumer responses to date
* A fast consolidation process which reduces planning cycles and allows chains to react quickly to new vendor-sponsored opportunities, address market trends, and counter competitive actions
* Embedded workflow functionality, complete with alerting capabilities, helping drive collaboration and accountability, while streamlining the approval and monitoring process
* Compliance monitoring capabilities to improve control over trade funds and accelerate reimbursements due from vendors

Available immediately to customers, the Cognos Strategic Promotions Planning Blueprint is the third retail solution launched by Cognos in 2006. In January, Cognos unveiled the Cognos Store Operations (P&L) Planning Blueprint, which helps retail chains build top-down and bottom-up budgets and performance reports for comprehensive profit and loss management. In May, Cognos launched the Cognos Store Development Blueprint, which helps retailers more effectively plan capital-intensive projects like new store construction, remodels and upgrades. The latest Performance Blueprint extends Cognos’ retail solutions suite beyond store operations to deliver an integrated, top-down performance management approach that ties together all functional areas of the retail enterprise to a single set of objectives.

“Retailers have traditionally struggled with their promotions planning because they lack the complete view of company-wide activities, making it very difficult to accurately gauge how to optimize the promotional mix across the chain,” said Patricia Vekich Waldron, retail industry director at Cognos. “The Cognos Strategic Promotions Planning Blueprint provides a complete performance management framework that enables retailers to accurately and confidently plan, measure and report on their promotions activities so they can achieve a competitive advantage while protecting margins. Together with our other retail Performance Blueprints, this solution provides a significant step forward in helping retailers bridge information silos and reduce management complexities in this highly-competitive market.”

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering business intelligence and performance management solutions for the retail industry. In fact, 25 per cent of the world’s top 250 retailers, and over 300 retail chains worldwide, are already Cognos customers. Retail customers include Burlington Coat Factory, Amazon.com, American Eagle Outfitters, LVMH Perfumes & Cosmetics, and 7-Eleven. More information about Cognos solutions for retail can be found at www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/retail/index.html.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
Cathy Hotka will be presenting a session at ALEx entitled “Better Predictability, Better Results: Performance Management in Retail.” Set for today - Monday October 16 at 10:15 am Central – the session will also feature Merv Tarde, CIO at Interstate Battery, and Patricia Vekich Waldron, retail director at Cognos, who will collectively discuss how an integrated performance management framework – including planning, metrics and reporting – can empower retailers to optimize operations.

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. Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, 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 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.
Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Contact Information

Carrie Bendzsa

Senior Manager, Public Relations

Cognos

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