Challenger Selects Cognos For Performance Management

BURLINGTON, Mass., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that Challenger has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) and Cognos 8 Planning for enterprise-wide reporting and performance management.

Challenger is an established player in Australian financial services and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The company is focused on its four core business lines of mortgage management, funds management, asset management, and financial planning.

Challenger chose Cognos 8 BI and Cognos 8 Planning after an analysis of competitive options, which showed that Cognos 8 BI delivers a comprehensive set of BI capabilities on a single, Web-based services-oriented architecture. Combined with Cognos' enterprise planning capabilities, it provides decision makers at all levels with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance.

Challenger's Enterprise Reporting System project was designed to enhance business reporting and streamline the budgeting and planning process across the organization. "We are taking an iterative prototyping approach to the implementation to ensure we deliver a system that is of ongoing value to the business," said Brendan O'Connor, project sponsor at Challenger. "We expect to increase the speed and efficiency of our reporting and provide powerful analytical capability to our business."

About Challenger

Challenger is an established player in Australian financial services, dedicated to providing smarter solutions to financial intermediaries and their clients, offering a broad spectrum of financial products and services.

Listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, Challenger has $38 billion of assets and loans under management/administration across four core businesses: mortgage management, making it one of Australia's largest non-bank mortgage lenders; asset management, with strong expertise in infrastructure and property; a highly regarded funds management business across a number of asset classes and investment styles; and a financial planning business -- Genesys Wealth Advisers.

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. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

  Media Contacts:
  Amy Shanler
  Cognos, Inc., 781-313-2464
  amy.shanler@cognos.com

  Jolene Bonina
  Lois Paul & Partners, LLC, 781-782-5849
  jolene_bonina@lpp.com

  Investor Relations:
  John Lawlor
  Cognos, Inc., 613-738-3503
  john.lawlor@cognos.com

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