Cognos TM1 Yields Improved Agility and Efficiency for Envision Credit Union

Cognos(R) (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that Cognos TM1 enables Envision Credit Union, a Florida-based financial institution, to improve the overall efficiency of its finance department processes while simultaneously improving the quality and timeliness of reporting, and analysis of business performance.

BURLINGTON, Mass. (Business Wire EON) January 28, 2008 -- Cognos® (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that Cognos TM1 enables Envision Credit Union, a Florida-based financial institution, to improve the overall efficiency of its finance department processes while simultaneously improving the quality and timeliness of reporting, and analysis of business performance.

Both large and mid-sized enterprises constantly require new levels of information about past, present and future performance, and Cognos TM1 provides users with the flexibility and responsiveness to rapidly access and evaluate that total view and apply it to their day-to-day operations and to long-term strategic plans

“To streamline the finance department’s planning, forecasting and reporting processes, it was critical that we deploy a state-of-the-art solution such as Cognos TM1,” said Dan McGowan senior vice president and CFO, Envision Credit Union. “Consolidating all the reporting and analysis activities into a single platform enables us to facilitate both internal and external financial reporting and analytical activities and do it much nearer to our ultimate real-time goal.”

Envision Credit Union is dedicated to effectively managing about $190 million for its 32,000 members. “To remain competitive, the finance team is always in search of innovative solutions that address operational challenges,” said McGowan. “From my experience, most organizations do not have existing mechanisms in place to provide quick and cost effective answers to the frequently posed but non-standard questions from executive management. With Cognos TM1, Envision has the business analytic platform needed to answer those ad-hoc questions essential to gaining insight and improving business performance.”

In addition to streamlining financial reporting for external stakeholders, directors and executive management, TM1 has enabled Envision Credit to make significant strides in operational efficiencies spread over a dozen projects with varying degrees of complexity. Capabilities that have improved the company’s view into performance include the modeling of fee-related income, analysis of charge offs and recoveries, reporting of financing activity trends, comparative analysis of all income statement and balance sheet accounts with ‘point and click’ ease. Reporting and analysis often employs percent thresholds bringing management focus to significant performance variances from plan or forecast expectations. A typical example of the efficiency impact is illustrated through the reduction of monthly teller activity reporting from 20-plus manual labor hours to less than 10 minutes. Overall, Cognos TM1 has reduced effort, paper utilization, keying errors, and process redundancies while also enhancing timeliness and quality of management decision making.

“We’ve managed to accomplish all of this, and more, in our first year as a Cognos TM1 client, and yet feel we’ve only scratched the surface as to what we can do in the years ahead. In the immediate future, the Accounting Department will be expanding the scope of services offered to executive management and other departments using TM1’s Web interface,” McGowan said.

“Both large and mid-sized enterprises constantly require new levels of information about past, present and future performance, and Cognos TM1 provides users with the flexibility and responsiveness to rapidly access and evaluate that total view and apply it to their day-to-day operations and to long-term strategic plans,” said Doug Barton, vice president of product marketing, Cognos. “Armed with more sophisticated, timely and appropriately detailed information, the business users and executives within companies of all sizes can understand the bottom line impact of potential business decisions and drive superior performance.”

Award Winning Leadership

McGowan’s creativity and innovative financial solutions have been publicly recognized. He has been honored with “Best Practices” awards in the areas of innovations for operational efficiency and advances in business intelligence from Inside Risk Magazine and the Credit Union Journal. McGowan is a member of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), and served a three year term on the Board of Regents of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA), the standards setting, governing body for the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) professional credentials.

About Envision Credit Union:

Established January 26, 1954, Envision Credit Union has grown its initial $50 investment to over $190,000,000. This full service financial institution serves about 32,000 members at ten financial centers, and around the world via the Internet.

About Cognos:

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance.

Cognos brings together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers a complete performance system. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that leverages an organization’s ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. It gives customers the ability to answer the questions -- How are we doing? Why are we on or off track? What should we do about it? – and enables them to understand and monitor current performance while planning future business strategies.

Cognos serves more than 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries, and its top 100 enterprise customers consistently outperform market indexes. Cognos performance management solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.

Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cognos Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Cognos TM1 is a registered trademark of Cognos Incorporated. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on Cognos' Web site at http://www.cognos.com