ACADEMIA

Cognos today announced it has extended its industry-leading enterprise planning solution with the launch of Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2. This release expands Cognos' leadership in enterprise planning with a broad range of customer-driven functionality, flexibility, and technical enhancements. Cognos has also strengthened its CPM solution by further enhancing the interoperability of enterprise planning with Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series, including Cognos ReportNet and Cognos Metrics Manager. Some of the companies working with Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2 include The Cheesecake Factory, Deloitte, and Deltek. The Cheesecake Factory: Before implementing Cognos, The Cheesecake Factory was using spreadsheets for its budgeting and planning processes. With Cognos, Cheesecake was able to find a single platform to meet all of its budgeting and planning needs. As a result, the company was able to shift the focus from data collection to data analysis and provide the organization access to one official version of the truth. This evolution has made it easier to manage visibility across the entire organization. "With Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2, Cognos is delivering a solution that will drive tremendous value at our organization through improved functionality and deeper, more enhanced integration with Cognos' business intelligence, reporting and, scorecarding solutions," said Mark Quandt, Director of Planning and Analysis, The Cheesecake Factory. "These features, along with integrated security, provide a complete solution that will help enable enhanced corporate performance management at The Cheesecake Factory." Deloitte: Deloitte and Cognos combine technology expertise, accounting and reporting expertise and planning, budgeting, forecasting best practices with industry- specific knowledge and current legislative requirements. This helps clients to identify, evaluate, capture and share intellectual capital for better corporate performance management and decision-making. "As a strategic implementation partner for Cognos, Deloitte's CFO services group recognizes that Cognos is an organization that is constantly geared towards its customers needs. Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2 is no exception, demonstrating that customer feedback is truly essential to Cognos' philosophy," said Denis LeClerc, Manager of CFO Services, Deloitte. "The single sign-on user authentication allows administrators to control security across all Cognos products. This means shared security across Cognos products with a single collection of common user and user class definitions. This truly gives the client the best of both worlds." DELTEK: With Cognos, Deltek employees have secure access to critical information such as project and financial accounting, employee time and expense, human resources and payroll, and customer call tracking. This maximizes the visibility of each division's overall performance, enhancing collaboration, information access and productivity. Deltek has achieved more efficient communication since implementing Cognos, allowing users to eliminate redundant work, increase productivity, and make faster, better decisions. In addition to utilizing Cognos in its own operations, Deltek delivers Cognos' corporate performance management solutions to its clients, offering its business intelligence toolset as part of its enterprise services offerings as well as Cognos' enterprise planning solutions. Deltek worked with Cognos in influencing Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2, testing it within the Deltek environment. "We are very impressed with the new functionalities of Cognos Enterprise Planning Series Version 7.2 and are eager to roll out these enhancements, specifically on the enterprise reporting side, to our customer base," said Rick Lowrey, executive vice president, Deltek. "Because it is integrated with all Cognos products, Cognos Enterprise Planning Version 7.2 offers real time reporting and analytics. Through tighter integration with the full Cognos suite, it also offers complete CPM capability by giving users the ability to plan, monitor, and report on performance across the enterprise. Overall, this product delivers a powerful and comprehensive planning solution that puts the most accurate and up-to-date performance management data into the hands of decision-makers."