Cognos introduces new financial services performance solution

Retail bank branches are under pressure today to deliver accurate, timely profitability plans that are aligned with corporate revenue objectives. Traditional banking solutions like ERP, branch teller and platform systems, or spreadsheets are typically not designed to handle sophisticated, branch network-wide planning, modeling and budgeting.

The new Cognos Branch Performance Blueprint was developed to help retail banks perform detailed top-down and branch-up revenue and expense planning to ensure organization-wide alignment with strategic objectives.

The solution extends the critical planning process beyond the finance department to the branch network, enabling managers to drive profitability planning, analysis and reporting at the product and customer segment levels.

Branch performance

'Branch performance is at the very core of retail banking success. Aligning branch operations with the bank's overall plans and objectives is critical for growth and solidifying customer loyalty,' said Laurence Trigwell, senior director of financial services solutions at Cognos.

'Our Cognos Branch Performance Blueprint provides both world-class BI and high-participation planning, helping banks achieve consistent operating performance through collaborative, real-time planning, forecasting, analysis and reporting. This inevitably leads to increased revenues, higher profits and a stronger customer experience and corporate brand.'

Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the Cognos Branch Performance Blueprint consists of targeted, pre-built data, process and policy models based on proven best-practices in bank operations planning, budgeting and forecasting.

The solution equips customers with all of the necessary technology and process design choices, enabling them to synchronise and coordinate financial and operational plans in order to make better resource allocation decisions, from the corporate center down to the branch network.

Performance Blueprint

Cognos Branch Performance Blueprint is the first in a series of financial services industry-specific solutions. To date, Cognos offers a full suite of Performance Blueprints that cover a wide spectrum of planning and performance management process areas, such as strategic financial planning and forecasting; sales planning and forecasting; workforce planning; expense planning; and capital expenditure planning.

Cognos Performance Blueprints are a key component within the Cognos Performance Management System, which brings together technology, best practices, analytical applications and a broad network of partners into a single performance management solution.

Cognos is a recognised leader in delivering performance management solutions for the financial services industry. Over 1,000 financial services institutions worldwide use Cognos solutions and customers include SWIFT, the financial industry-owned co-operative servicing over 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.