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Cognos Unveils New Performance Solution For Workforce Resource Management


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– Cognos Workforce Resource Management Blueprint provides service-based organizations with best-practices to improve workforce utilization –

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, ORACLE OPENWORLD, BOOTH 1424, October 24, 2006— Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced the launch of a new performance solution designed to help organizations better manage workforce resources and improve workforce utilization with Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 BI.

Service-based industries such as retail stores, restaurants, hotels, and hospitals are particularly challenged to manage the process of effectively allocating employee resources to meet customer-service demands. Service-oriented internal functions that provide shared services to the enterprise are also challenged to meet the needs of internal clients. The new Cognos Workforce Resource Management Blueprint provides staffing managers with a Web-based planning process and the associated visibility to forecast workforce requirements based on customer demand across the global scope of the organization.

“We have integrated Cognos enterprise planning across marketing, engineering, production and finance operations and are just beginning to extend our implementation to a workforce planning project across Qualcomm,” said Robert Loreto, Senior Manager, Finance Systems, Qualcomm CDMA Technology group. “This new blueprint helped us provide a valuable headstart to capitalize on industry best-practice, quickly increase visibility, make more efficient and effective use of human resources and eliminate disconnected decision-making across the staffing process.”

The Blueprint delivers a process anchored in industry best-practices that helps managers determine headcount requirements based on activity levels and gain real-time visibility to cumulative variances in the staffing requirements which may impact key business metrics, such as customer satisfaction, from a financial and operational perspective.

“CFOs and CIOs should consider looking to Cognos’ blueprints as a way to improve the ROI on their performance management investments. Cognos’ Performance Blueprints are based on pre-built business processes and drivers. This can drive improved ROI on performance management,” said David O’Connell, Senior Analyst, Nucleus Research. “These Blueprints have the added benefit of improving breadth of adoption which can enhance a company’s standardization efforts by promoting uniformity across the enterprise. With the shrinking workforce and competition for good workers, companies need to both retain the good workers and deploy them optimally. The Workforce Resource Management Blueprint can help companies use performance management for this with less custom code development.”*

Staffing managers can use the Workforce Resource Management Performance Blueprint to eliminate ‘best-guessing’, and:

* Determine headcount requirements by activity, based on highly flexible methods that map to the key business drivers of the organization
* Set staffing effectiveness ratings by activity for each employee
* Streamline entry of employee shift details to reduce schedule creation time
* Vary employee pay rates
* Set additional pay multiples for national holidays by employee by day and;
* Automatically generate detailed financial implications of the staffing schedule.

Through these capabilities staffing managers can allocate the correct resources to the activities that meet customer demands. Through a forward looking planning process, corporate Human Resources teams can better understand the demand requirements of operations and set hiring and personnel development practices to meet these requirements.

“Our Workforce Resource Management Performance Blueprint helps organizations take the first step towards linking financial and operational planning to improve resource allocation decision-making,” said Doug Barton, vice-president, product marketing, Cognos. “The blueprint’s best-practices provide service-based organizations with invaluable insight into the nature and timing of human capital requirements. This improved visibility enables companies to take related action that can simultaneous raise customer satisfaction, service levels and profitability.”

Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the Cognos Workforce Resource Management Blueprint consists of targeted, pre-built data, process and policy models that are designed to reduce the time and risks associated with new performance management implementations. The Blueprint is the 22 nd in a series of Cognos performance solutions developed for a wide range of functional areas and industries. It equips 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 across the organization. For further information on the Cognos Performance Blueprints see http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html

About Cognos 8 Planning:
Cognos 8 Planning provides integrated operational and financial planning for immediate visibility into resource requirements and future business results. Cognos 8 Planning 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 performance management platform from which to plan future performance. For further information see: http://www.cognos.com/products/planning_consolidation/
enterprise_planning/index.html

*Nucleus Research Note, October 2006, “Cognos Performance Blueprints: ROI Out of the Box.” Full article: www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/enterprise-planning/index.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.



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