Cognos Updates Finance Application With Links To Outside Data

Cognos

"You can get transaction details from other systems," said Delbert Krause, product marketing manager at Ottawa-based Cognos.

Conversely, users can publish Cognos Finance information to a relational datamart for consumption by third-party tools, Krause said.

Enhanced integration with Microsoft Excel also enables users to download key data to a spreadsheet along with meta-data controls, including formulas, color-coded variances and locked cells. That allows users to work offline, make changes and link the changes back to the application, he said.

"One of our selling points with 6.0 is you can work detached," said Lynn Lindsay, financial systems specialist at Stonebridge Technologies, an integrator based in Dallas. "There's a collection of budgeting templates and you can work with all the security, platform features, hierarchies, business rules inherent to Finance and export it to Excel, and some manager up the line can plug in updates."

Lindsay said a "blended interface" retains the look and feel of finance but is still comfortable for Excel users

The price to new customers is about $75,000 for 25 users. The software is shipping now.