Cognos Store Development Blueprint

Cognos Inc., known as the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced the launch of the Cognos Store Development Blueprint, a retail performance solution designed to assist retailers in effectively planning, managing and measuring the financial impact of store development initiatives, including new store construction, remodeling, refurbishments and upgrades.

The Store Development Blueprint includes features such as top-down planning to integrate finance, store development and store operations; analysis for development scenarios; consolidation features; forecasting and re-forecasting options; embedded workflow functionality; and, naturally, complete integration with the Cognos Store Operations Planning Blueprint. The software is designed to reduce time and risk associated with new performance management implementation, and promises to enabling businesses synchronization and coordination of financial and operational plans. The Cognos Store Development Blueprint comes on the heels on Cognos’ other industry-specific performance solution, Cognos Store Operation Planning Blueprint, which was released in January, and represents yet another feather in the cap of this heavily producing company.

In early May, Cognos introduced a pair of new products designed to assist pharmaceutical companies in improving clinical trials management and sample distribution for sales reps. The Cognos Clinical Trial Forecasting Blueprint is promised to help “pharmaceutical companies better anticipate clinical trial resource requirements and accompanying expenses in order to comply with FDA filing requirements.” And early in the year, Cognos announced a deal with business data quality product company Similarity Systems, in which Cognos and Similarity would work together to provide “enterprise customers with a range of products for analyzing, managing, monitoring and improving the quality of data within the Cognos platforms.”

Getting down to brass tacks, this means that Similarity Systems data quality metrics will be employed within Cognos 8 Business Intelligence; the latest upgrade to this product was released in March, thereby encouraging the addition of Del Monte Produce and Mueller, Inc. to Cognos’ impressive catalogue of customers. The firm now boasts a clientele which reportedly includes over sixty of the top 250 retailers in the world (including 7-Eleven, amazon.com and American Eagle Outfitters) and over 300 retail chains worldwide. Cognos customers can get the Cognos Store Development Blueprint as of the release date (today, 17 May 2006) is available immediately to Cognos customers, and the program will be on display for demos at the 2006 Retail Systems Conference and Exposition in Chicago next week.

On the human resources front, Cognos representatives announced on Monday that Les Rechan had been hired to fill the position of chief operating officer; Rechan will be responsible for international sales, services and marketing operations. He brings twenty years’ worth of experience from a virtual “Who’s Who” of CRM: IBM, Oracle and Siebel Systems.