Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management (CPM), has launched a new financial services performance solution designed to help retail banks drive greater branch profitability. This will be done as a result of effective customer segment and product-level planning, analysis and reporting.
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 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.
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.
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.
For more information about Cognos solutions for the banking and financial services industry, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/banking-financial-services/index.html.
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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.
