Cognos 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 corporate performance management (CPM) solution by further enhancing the interoperability of enterprise planning with Cognos Enterprise Business Intelligence Series, including Cognos ReportNet and Cognos Metrics Manager.
"In the face of changing markets, increased regulatory pressures and a desire to optimise operations, the most successful companies are taking an integrated, broad-based approach to managing performance," says David McWilliam, MD of Cognos SA.
"Version 7.2 ensures the integrity, timeliness and relevance of forecasts, plans and reports - giving financial executives the means to improve performance and enable CPM integration across the company by incorporating financial and operational planning processes with business intelligence and scorecarding."
Integrated with all Cognos products, the solution offers real-time reporting, calculation of and visibility to drivers and metrics, and integration with other related management consolidation processes. It extends core planning and continues to enhance enterprise planning values that drive high participation planning, monitoring and reporting on performance across the enterprise.
Designed to solve spreadsheet budgeting problems more effectively through high-productivity data entry, process integrity and data security, Cognos Enterprise Planning Series 7.2 enables organisations to evolve from static, finance-centric budgeting to dynamic, business manager-engaged, enterprise planning. The vision of enterprise planning goes beyond spreadsheets to fulfil the requirement for delivering plans based on business drivers that can rapidly and reliably shape an up-to-the minute view of business performance. This enables users to bring together diverse and complex planning requirements across an organisation`s processes and activities into a single, unified plan.
"Enterprise planning is a strategic core for performance management in any global organisation that is looking to decentralise planning and budgeting while maintaining centralised control and consistency," says John van Decker, META Group VP. "Firms will need planning tools that are integrated with other business intelligence components - such as scorecards and management reporting - and financial consolidations to ensure uniformity in reporting and one version of the truth."
Tested by a wide range of global organisations, such as Deloitte & Touche, Deltek and Discovery Networks Europe, Version 7.2 delivers new functionalities, such as:
* Real-time reporting: Integration with enterprise planning further enables companies to move beyond periodic budgeting and reporting cycles to real-time visibility of operating performance. Participants in the planning process can see planning information in real-time and can access analysis and reporting capabilities instantly.
*.Enterprise managed reporting: Planning data is easily and seamlessly integrated with other information and distributed through a managed reporting environment in Cognos Enterprise BI Series for delivery of information that helps measure performance.
*.Active planning: New quick commands easily translate typical planning data changes - such as increasing sales by 10%, decreasing a value by 2% - into easy-to-use, direct entry commands. And all of the data changes are auditable, allowing users and reviewers to understand the business thoughts in arriving at a final plan.
*.Enhanced consolidation and financial reporting: Attribute-based models facilitate complex dimensional consolidation and reporting needs and deepen integration with Excel.
*.Closed-loop CPM: In core financial functions, financial reporting, consolidation and planning models are integrated to provide reuse and standardisation of key financial information. In addition, Version 7.2 integrates with Cognos Metrics Manager to manage and update plan metrics, and with Cognos Enterprise BI Series to prepare data for next-generation reporting and analysis.
*.Enterprise security and application access: 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. Users only need to log on once to access applications.
"Through this extended offering, Cognos truly owns a different, more capable, and more valuable platform for modernising the planning and performance management practices of today`s companies," says McWilliam. "Our enterprise planning solution resolves the recurring pains associated with the `million-spreadsheet` march and takes customers well beyond the limited visibility and predictability that traditional budgeting, consolidation and reporting process and tools have provided. And through tighter integration with the full Cognos suite, we offer complete CPM capability by giving users the ability to plan, monitor and report on performance across the enterprise."
Share
Editorial contacts