Cognos Updates Financial Planning Software

Business intelligence heavyweight Cognos released Tuesday a new version of its financial planning software that more closely melds with the functions of Cognos' reporting, scorecard and analytic applications.

Cognos executives said that, despite its 7.2 designation, the new version of Cognos' Enterprise Planning Series provides notable enhancements to the software--the prize in Cognos' $160 million acquisition of Adaytum a year ago. "The 7.2 numbering understates the impact we expect the product to have," said Doug Barton, vice president of Enterprise Planning product marketing. "We tried to keep the numbering in sync between the Planning Series and the Business Intelligence Series."

Comprising different modules for modeling, budgeting, forecasting, collecting and consolidating finances, Cognos' Enterprise Planning Series forms a key component in the company's vision of corporate performance management (CPM). Also called business performance management, CPM combines advanced financial capabilities with business intelligence (BI) tools--such as scorecards that monitor key business metrics, event-triggered alerts and data analysis--to help companies adjust to changing conditions. CPM is fast becoming among the hottest markets to emerge in the data management arena.

With version 7.2, the Enterprise Planning suite now exchanges data in realtime with Cognos' BI software, including its ReportNet online reporting tool, PowerPlay analysis application and Metrics Manager scorecard software. This capability to seamlessly share continually updated financial, operational and subscription service analytical data enables users to fine-tune business and financial plans whenever they need.

In addition, a new "active planning" feature gives users a fast and easy way to calculate different scenarios. Typing "INC 10" into a cell, for example, will increase the number in that cell by 10 percent. In another example, users could highlight a series of months, type "G10," and see the numbers grow arithmetically for each month in the selection. Version 7.2 includes more than 25 of such direct-entry commands. All changes can be viewed in a single screen showing the original number and business reasoning leading to the final results.

Other new features include seasonality modeling, the ability to seamlessly add general ledger and consolidated financial data to a financial forecast, and single sign-on user authentication.

Pricing for a 50-user system of Cognos Enterprise Planning Series version 7.2 starts at $75,000, depending on configuration. It is available now.