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Cognos and Acorn Systems Form Alliance to Deliver Activity Based Costing and Corporate Performance Management SolutionsSimplified, Scalable and Accurate Costing helps Organizations Grow and Profit through understanding how to Increase Customer, Product and Service ProfitabilityHouston, TX & Burlington, MA— December 14, 2004 — Acorn Systems, the best-of-breed costing and profitability analytics vendor, and Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM), today announced a global alliance to deliver comprehensive activity based costing and corporate performance management solutions. The two companies have entered into a strategic technology partnership, in which they have integrated Acorn Systems activity based costing and the BI components of Cognos’ corporate performance management suite, comprised of: Cognos Enterprise BI Series, the industry’s most comprehensive business intelligence solution; Cognos Enterprise Planning Series, the industry-leading solution for planning, budgeting, modeling, and forecasting; and Cognos Metrics Manager, the most robust and flexible enterprise scorecarding solution. Organizations can drive profitable growth by making opportunities more transparent and actionable through visibility of product, service and customer profitability. As part of their agreement, Acorn Systems and Cognos will undertake joint market development, with special emphasis on financial services, distribution, consumer packaged goods and retail sectors. According to a recent Gartner* report, “The metrics, the definitions and the underlying data should be consistent, but various users will make different uses of the data at various levels. On an aggregated level, the metrics come together in, for example, a balanced scorecard for the enterprise. To translate scorecard metrics into operational drivers, managers may use the same data for an activity-based costing exercise. The same definitions are used again for planning purposes. Finally, the outcome and corresponding planning data are aggregated to feed the metrics at the strategic level.” Acorn Systems Profit Analyzer™ delivers undeniably accurate enterprise scalable cost and profit metrics to enhance Cognos’ industry leading CPM solution by providing: With accurate, readily available and actionable enterprise-wide costing data joint customers will gain the full benefit of corporate performance management,” said Patrick O’Leary, vice president of strategic alliances, Cognos. “In partnership with Cognos, Acorn System solutions enable companies to understand the underlying drivers of net profitability of individual customers, services, products and transactions. Cognos and Acorn Systems help organizations create a results-producing performance-driven culture with greater focus on growth and profit from their workforce.” Numerous clients in Financial Services, Life sciences, Distribution, and Government sectors have already invested in and successfully implemented both Cognos and Acorn’s solutions to create a powerful ‘best of breed’ activity based costing and BI solution,” said Chris Fraga, executive vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Business Development for Acorn. “Our clients and prospects are increasingly focused on a more holistic solution that combines both companies’ core competencies. These include critical elements of Performance Management such as, BI, and Budget, Planning, Forecasting and Consolidation solutions. Teaming with the market leader like Cognos enables Acorn to broaden our solution footprint to achieve this vision, while fulfilling the needs of our joint clients.” About Acorn Systems About Cognos Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage – Corporate Performance Management (CPM) – achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale. Our integrated CPM solution helps customers drive performance through planning; monitor performance through scorecarding; and understand performance through business intelligence. Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise business intelligence and performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.
Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. * Mapping the Road to Corporate Performance Management, Gartner, January 30, 2004 |
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