FileNet extends alliance with Cognos to deliver demonstrable process-enabling Business Performance Management

The agreement paves the way for FileNet and Cognos to market their respective platforms, the FileNet P8 platform and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI), to customers. The two companies will now be able to deliver jointly-developed solution templates that create frameworks for easy application deployments, and provide a holistic view of business process and business intelligence information through a number of integration points.

The agreement holds great relevance to the Middle East market, where the demand for integrated business performance management solutions has been gaining in strength.

"There is a need for today's organizations to be more agile in responding to customer demands and changing competitive dynamics. To accomplish this, information required to make decisions and monitor business performance should be integrated with the business processes that drive the organization. FileNet's partnership with Cognos facilitates this integration, providing businesses with a unique solution,"

said Carlo Stellati, Vice President, South Europe, Middle East and Africa, FileNet.

"Business intelligence information essential for decision-making is easily incorporated into each step of a FileNet BPM process, allowing users to have all the information required to make the best decision at the right time.'

"Enterprises continue to make investments in both automating their business processes and analyzing their enterprise data. The next logical step is to synchronize the value of both initiatives," said Leah MacMillan, Vice President of Product Marketing at Cognos.

"Leveraging BI with business process capabilities that span both people and systems facilitates more active and effective decision-making. By collaborating with FileNet, we are helping organizations gain deeper contextual intelligence about their business processes, which can result in a clearer view of the overall health of a project, a program or the enterprise as a whole."

An integrated FileNet-Cognos offering allows customers to improve productivity by delivering relevant information at the point in the business process where key decisions must be made. By making business performance data useful to a wide range of employees, the solution helps strengthen decision-making across the enterprise, provides greater insight into how work is accomplished, and enables companies to close the gap between current and desired operational performance. Furthermore, organizations can quickly detect a performance trend or issue, and then automatically launch a business process in response to this alert.

Additionally, Cognos and FileNet's process-enabling BI collaboration helps facilitate regulatory and corporate governance compliance. All BI information used in a process can be recorded, facilitating future analysis and providing proper context in which a decision is made. This historical visibility allows customers to substantiate factors that drove business process decisions, thus delivering critical accountability and audit.