BPM solutions.Cognos Inc., a leading provider of business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM (1) (Critical Path Method) A project management planning and control technique implemented on computers. The critical path is the series of activities and tasks in the project that have no built-in slack time. ), has released Cognos Planning Series 7 Version 3, which the company says "extends a customer's ability to connect global operational and financial planning Financial planning Evaluating the investing and financing options available to a firm. Planning includes attempting to make optimal decisions, projecting the consequences of these decisions for the firm in the form of a financial plan, and then comparing future performance against processes in real-time 1. real-time - Describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical plant is the classic example. for immediate visibility into resource plans and future business performance." "New distributed administration capabilities allow customers to securely share responsibility for plan administration across functions, geographies and business units in a single, unified planning environment," the Ottawa-based Cognos said in an announcement. Cognos says that customers are aware of the delays, management control issues and performance risks associated with spreadsheet-based planning. As a result, the company is addressing this "connected planning challenge" by implementing cross-functional, enterprise-scope planning that links models for important operational plans such as headcount and compensation, sales forecasting Sales forecast A key input to a firm's financial planning process. External sales forecasts are based on historical experience, statistical analysis, and consideration of various macroeconomic factors. or cost center budgeting. "This approach to connected planning efficiently and effectively supports the participation of thousands of front-line business managers in an intuitive, relevant driver-based plan process," the company said. Planning Series 7 Version 3 streamlines key financial and operational processes by providing component-based planning to link these planning models in real-time across the global scope of the organization. At Manpower Inc., a leader in the staffing industry, this capability supports the synchronization (1) See synchronous and synchronous transmission. (2) Ensuring that two sets of data are always the same. See data synchronization. (3) Keeping time-of-day clocks in two devices set to the same time. See NTP. of planning drivers, assumptions and values across a broad set of plan components. "Cognos Planning Series 7 Version 3 enables us to share data in real-time between operational plans and the overall corporate plan," said Vivian Adashek, a manager in U.S. Accounting for Manpower's North American operations North American operation Surgical oncology Radical surgery of a 'frozen pelvis', consisting of radical en bloc resection of the uterus and urinary bladder. See 'Frozen pelvis.'. Cf 'All-American' and 'South American' operations. . "We have more than 1,000 users who take advantage of this real-time access, and they are able to do so independently without the help of our IT group. "Users can easily conduct real-time data Real-time data denotes information that is delivered immediately after collection. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Some uses of this term confuse it with the term dynamic data. transfer between driver-based operational plans for integration into a single financial statement view," Adashek adds. "The distributed administration capabilities provide secure, real-time, integrated management of this process." Web: www.cognos.com |
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