David McWilliam joins Cognos South Africa as managing director

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI), today announced it has signed a partnership agreement with David McWilliam, one of the most recognised entrepreneurs in the South African ICT industry.

Under the agreement, McWilliam will take on the role of MD of Cognos South Africa to further establish the company`s market-leading position as a supplier of corporate performance management (CPM) solutions. Cognos has embraced CPM as the future of the BI market, as organisations look to align business strategy with execution across the enterprise.

McWilliam is one of the most renowned and experienced entrepreneurs in the South African ICT market. He has an impressive track record of both executive and non-executive positions with several South African and international ICT companies and has a broad experience with BI solutions.

He will take up the general management of Cognos South Africa and implement the company`s new strategy, directing the activities and partnerships toward the global CPM solutions offering.

"We are honoured to have McWilliam join our South African operations as managing director," says Rein Hoogland, Cognos VP Northern Europe and SA. "His thorough knowledge of the local BI market and his management experience will help Cognos South Africa take its activities to a higher level and realise its aim to increase market share. Also, through this partnership, we are sending a signal to clients and partners that Cognos is committing to its presence and activities in SA."

"Since Cognos started its South African activities five years ago, the company has seen major growth, becoming one of the most important suppliers in the local BI market," said David McWilliam. "Today, with its complete range of corporate performance management tools and solutions, Cognos is no longer just another software supplier, but a true strategic partner to major companies and organisations. I look forward to helping Cognos realise this strategy in SA."

Cognos started its South African operations 1997. Today the company has a team of 12 highly skilled professionals. Cognos South Africa has an impressive reference list of more than 1 000 customers in Sub-Sahara Africa. Among its customers are important companies and organisations such as Standard Bank, Parmalat SA, Nandos, RCI, La Farge, Impala Platinum, Air Mauritius, Nike South Africa, City of Cape Town, Sasol. Among its business partners are Synergy Computing, ACS/Global Technologies, Comparex Africa, Sunstone Business Solutions, Dimension Data, BI Planning Services, and Datacentrix.

In April 2002, Cognos was the first BI vendor to announce a comprehensive framework for corporate performance management (CPM). CPM lets organisations measure execution against business strategy to ensure the two are aligned at all levels across the enterprise. To be effective, CPM requires an infrastructure that links people, information, and decision-making processes throughout the organisation. Our enterprise software enables the complete management cycle with planning, budgeting, reporting and analysis, and scorecarding. Cognos BI combines information from the entire business to let people make smart decisions and, together, drive corporate performance.

Increasingly for industry-leading organizations, CPM represents the natural evolution of their enterprise-scale business intelligence implementations. Gartner, a leading market research firm, defines CPM as "the methodologies, metrics, processes, and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise." In a recent report, Gartner stated that "CPM is an important concept, as it represents the strategic deployment of business intelligence solutions". (Source: Gartner, December 2001 Research Note)