Ottawa-based Cognos Inc. will use its Enterprise Planning software in a partnership with accounting firm Smart and Associates LLP, to offer a corporate performance management (CPM) solution that the companies said will streamline customer business efficiencies.
Cognos’ Enterprise Planning software includes such features as budgeting, forecasting, planning, collaboration, consolidation and financial reporting. Devon, Pa.-based Smart and Associates will bring its consulting strength to the deal, which together with Cognos, will provide customers the CPM solution. CPM links enterprise scorecarding to monitor business performance, business intelligence reporting capabilities and enterprise planning to drive corporate performance, according to the companies.
Rich Sepe, a sales executive for Cognos in Burlington, Mass., says the software vendor partnered with Smart and Associates because of its extensive dealings with customers in the insurance, financial and real estate markets and its knowledge of the Sarbanes-Oxley U.S. tax laws. The legislation is intended to improve how financial reporting and accounting practices are stated and documented by companies.
“Smart and Associates is about subject matter and process expertise (and) they bring intellectual know-how and consulting strength,” he said.
While the centrepiece of the deal for Cognos is its Enterprise Planning software, customers can also choose to bundle its supply chain management, sales and marketing and performance management products with the CPM offering.
In a survey released earlier this week by Comshare Inc., a provider of CPM solutions, 61 per cent of 250 financial executives surveyed in November 2002 across the U.S. said they plan to implement a CPM solution over the next 18 months. [See: CPM solutions high on enterprise priority list: Comshare, Aug.11]
The solution will be available in Canada in the next three to six months. Pricing for the CPM solution was not available. The companies are online at www.cognos.com and www.smartassociates.com.