Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management, today at Cognos Forum 2004 announced the formation of the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management. The Innovation Center has been created to advance the understanding of proven planning and performance management techniques, technologies, and practices. Cognos also announced that Accenture is a founding member of the Innovation Center. Staffed by experts in planning, management, and technology, the Innovation Center partners with Cognos customers, academics, industry leaders, and others seeking to accelerate adoption, reduce risk, and maximize the impact of technology-enabled performance management practices. By bringing customers and prospects into regular contact with peers, thought leaders, and Cognos experts, the Innovation Center facilitates the discovery and sustainable application of innovative and proven planning and performance management practices that will help companies achieve their business goals to increase profitability, gain competitive agility and achieve sustainable growth. "In the past five to ten years, the bulk of managerial effort has been directed at automating isolated and inefficient planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and decision making processes. Finance and business executives alike are frustrated by the perpetuation of slow and ineffective decision processes to drive, monitor, and understand business performance. The result is significant opportunity for meaningful and sustainable innovation in performance management practices," said Rich Lanahan, vice president, Cognos Innovation Center. "Companies are looking to define and design critical elements of their deployment strategy and technology enablement. The Cognos Innovation Center has been formulated to address this opportunity." Among the many global organizations that are already participating in The Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management are industry-leading organizations such as Accenture, Best Buy, Brown-Forman, The HON Company, Target, The Cheesecake Factory, Halliburton, Lucent, Pfizer, Manpower, Marathon Ashland Petroleum, TravelCenters of America, and Princess Cruises. "Accenture is focused on helping clients gain better insight, and align process and technology to drive business performance. Our vision and messages are well aligned with those of Cognos," said Mike Sutcliff, Global Managing Partner for Accenture's Finance and Performance service line. "We look forward to working with Cognos through the Innovation Center to help clients achieve the business insights corporate performance management can deliver." -- Reinforces Cognos' industry leadership in performance management -- The Cognos Innovation Center is open to organizations seeking to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability. It helps participants maximize value on two levels. The Center offers: -- Seminars, roundtable discussions, and teleconferences on finance and performance management issues such as capital and expense planning and control, human resource planning and management, marketing, and sales forecasting. -- Special-interest groups that address industry-specific concerns - facilitating peer-to-peer networking. -- Publications including case studies, issue papers, solution blueprints, and implementation roadmaps. -- A portal for research and publications, and provides access to Innovation Center updates and activities. The Center is staffed with experts who combine deep domain expertise and knowledge of planning and performance management technology with extensive experience in complex, large-scale, global implementations. The Innovation Center staff: -- Provide process performance benchmarks that help assess readiness and define realistic process improvement goals. -- Help diagnose planning and performance management challenges. -- Help define best practice, implementation pathways, and deployment strategies. -- Maintain a hands-on venue for customers to co-develop successful implementation models alongside industry and technology experts. "Cognos customers routinely turn business practice as they know it into cutting-edge 'next practices' that creates competitive advantage," continued Lanahan. "We're very excited about the launch of the Innovation Center. This sets the stage for establishing Cognos as the recognized innovator in performance management, and provides our customers and prospects with a partner in their journey with the credentials, expertise, and experience to ensure they are successful." To learn more about the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, and to see a list of Innovation Center publications and upcoming events, visit http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter.