IBM Cognos, a leading performance management software company brings together technology, analytical applications, and best practices to give companies an open, adaptive, and complete performance management platform. It offers solutions that deliver the integrated planning, consolidation, querying and reporting, analysis, and metrics management capabilities that enable better decision-making across the enterprise. IBM Cognos Planning is the cornerstone of the corporate performance management platform. It is developed for companies that possess even the most complex business planning models. It is a state-of-the-art, scalable planning and forecasting solution that gives managers real-time visibility into operational and financial plans. Its also gives financial analysts powerful modeling tools that enable the design of complex models, and allows the financial analysts to perform what-ifs and scenario planning using latest version of the plan. Its distributed administration architecture provides localized ownership and responsibility for the preparation, control, and maintenance of plans across functional, geographic, and organizational boundaries while still keeping a unified and secure planning environment.
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is a term that describes the practices, processes, technologies, and metrics that are used to measure and manage a company's performance. There are a host of similar terms in business literature, such as Business Performance Management (BPM), Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and Financial Performance Management (FPM). Notwithstanding the differences in terminologies, the concept is the same: companies need a way to manage performance within a complete and comprehensive framework. CPM provides answers to three fundamental questions: "How are we doing?", "Why?", and "What should we be doing?" Leading organizations are succeeding through an integrated CPM approach that encompasses planning, scorecarding, and business intelligence. This approach enables companies to define strategic goals and then measure and manage performance against these goals. Such organizations establish performance expectations through planning, monitor performance by using scorecards, and understand what drives performance by reporting and analyzing information.
The following figure shows the various steps in the CPM approach:
IBM Cognos Planning helps to improve financial and operational planning by giving companies the ability to transform a high-level strategy into discrete plans. It encompasses the entire company yet it enables the finance department to own and manage the process. It supports dynamic planning and provides the cornerstone for enterprise-scale performance management. Some of the benefits are:
Centrally managed system to be used to produce budget, estimates, and forecasting reports
Generation of reports through an iterative process that ensures data integrity
Ability to support the generation of bottom-up budgets while enabling top-down adjustments
Ability to capture commentary at all levels
Ability to generate and retain "what-if" scenarios
Drill-down capability
Ease of use of the system with little requirement for technical proficiency
Ability to deliver reports electronically
User access security defined within the system
Ability to provide user audit trail
Model documentation and maintenance
Ability to effectively store multiple time periods and iterations
Ease of access to the system for management, accounting staff, and business users
Ability to perform allocations within the system