Cognos unveils new blueprints for initiative and strategic long range planning

The new blueprint models are based on proven best practices in enterprise planning and define all the necessary technology and process design choices, allowing customers to jump-start new efforts and extend their existing planning, budgeting and forecasting deployments across their organization.

"What Cognos has recognised is that planning is more than just a financial activity - that it is something that needs to spread across the enterprise and be coordinated across multiple departments. However, appreciating that fact and supporting it in principle in the planning software is one thing; supporting it in practice is another. This is where the Cognos blueprints come in, enabling users to adopt these practices relatively easily," said Philip Howard, technology research director, Bloor Research, Europe's leading independent IT research organisation.

"What the Plan-to-Perform Blueprints provide is not just a fast start to implementation but also a way to think about a CPM-based solution. They are good, not just for Cognos, but for the whole CPM industry."

The new Initiative Planning Blueprint covers capital and labour initiatives. It addresses multi-phased project planning for capital intensive undertakings such as adding new manufacturing capacity, and labour intensive plans such as implementing large IT projects. These solutions help companies improve their ability to justify major multi-phased initiatives; forecast capital expenditures associated with each phase; evaluate the impact of changes to the timing and size of capital outlays over the various phases of an initiative; and automatically generate the impact on cash flow projections.

The strategic Long Range Planning Blueprint helps companies assess the impact of market growth assumptions, strategic initiatives such as implementing a major new IT project, and external risk such as currency fluctuations on long range revenue and profitability.

"Major initiatives such as new IT infrastructure or new facilities can be essential ingredients for revenue growth and increase productivity. Managing the financial impact of complex, multi-phased initiatives can be difficult. The Blueprints provide customers with a means to reduce implementation project time and costs, while improving the overall project success rate. They are based on industry best practice, helping finance quickly see the impact of changes in operational plans, and helping departments and functions improve resource allocation in support of company objectives," said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East, Turkey and Greece.

Developed by the Cognos Innovation Centre, the Plan-to Perform Blueprints are targeted, pre-built process models based on proven industry best practices and designed to accelerate the realization of an integrated, reliable and dynamic planning process across the enterprise.

With the addition of the two new models, Cognos Plan-to-Perform Blueprints are available in 12 process areas including capital projects, discretionary capital expenditures, headcount and compensation, expense planning and control, sales planning and forecasting, strategic financial planning and forecasting, allocations, risk analysis and sales compensation.