Cognos Extends Higher Education Industry Leadership, Launches New Performance Solution to Optimize Tuition and Enrollment Planning.

Cognos Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint empowers colleges and universities to analyze tuition revenues, forecast enrollment and better align academic programs with growth

SEATTLE -- Cognos[R] (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, continues to extend its higher education market leadership, announcing today the launch of a new performance solution designed to help colleges and universities drive more efficient enrollment and tuition revenue planning.

While enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are used by many higher education institutions to capture important transactional information about students and programs, these systems offer very limited insights in critical areas such as tuition revenue streams, time to graduate, graduation rates, and overall financial performance. To be successful, colleges and universities must be able to track progress against enrollment objectives, and tie that progress to the downstream impact on curriculum, lecture demand, and tuition revenues.

"Better visibility into enrollment and tuition planning is a business-critical issue that higher education institutions absolutely need to address. For many institutions, enrollment planning is a key pillar in the strategic planning process, from which short and long-range programs and service plans are developed," said Michael Zastrocky, Vice-President for Higher Education Research at Gartner.

The Cognos Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint offers colleges and universities a complete performance management framework, integrated on a single platform and tailored to each user's needs. Admissions staff can analyze tuition revenues, forecast enrollment and effectively plan for current academic and resource availability and future growth; recruiters can evaluate the effectiveness of prospect outreach, then apply lessons learned to future planning; and administrators and faculty can report on performance in order to meet regulatory demands and effect improvements.

"Our experience of using the Cognos Planning and Business Intelligence tools has been an overwhelmingly positive one. The Cognos Planning tools have reduced the effort required to complete the student planning process, while providing a more flexible and accurate planning model," said Des Butcher, Team Leader, Corporate Services, Information Systems at the University of Warwick. "The partnership with the Cognos Innovation Center has been mutually beneficial, allowing us to partner with their experts in the CPM area, while sharing our knowledge of the higher education environment. The resulting Blueprint gives us a solid foundation from which to extend our student planning model and achieve further benefits."

Using out-of-the-box functionality from Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) - including dashboards, analytical reports and a pre-configured data model - and encompassing higher education industry best practices, the Cognos Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint lets users:

* Model relevant business and environmental drivers of enrollment and growth. Enrollment can be tracked to the desired level of detail, such as by faculty, curriculum or class

* Project tuition and student fee revenue out to relevant planning horizons

* Track and project the amount of tuition discounting taking place at their college or university. The model enables tracking of absolute discounts in tuition, as well as effective tuition discounting through student grants and bursaries which are applied to tuition fees

* Track and more effectively manage retention, and manage transfer rates to other faculties

* Project capacity and flag potential "lost opportunities" from courses that are oversubscribed 

* Initiate marketing efforts for underperforming programs

"Enrollment and tuition planning is a fundamental activity for colleges and universities. These two areas are interlinked and, by extension, are connected to many other critical activities and business processes across the institution," said Terence Atkinson, Director of Government and Education Solutions at Cognos. "The Cognos Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint offers improved visibility into these core areas, enabling managers, faculty and administrators to better understand and plan for changes in demand, adopt new strategies to deal with the evolving market for education, and ultimately assure the ongoing legacy of their institution."

Available immediately to customers, the Cognos Enrollment and Tuition Planning Blueprint is the second higher education solution launched by Cognos in less than three months. In July, Cognos teamed up with Exeter Group and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) to deliver an online, interactive solution designed to help colleges and universities compare tuition discounting management strategies with a peer group and industry norms.

Cognos is a recognized leader in delivering performance management solutions for colleges and universities. Over 1,000 higher education institutions worldwide use Cognos, including Southern Methodist University, The George Washington University, University of Minnesota, University of Toronto, University of Ulster (Ireland) and University of Wollongong (Australia). More information about Cognos solutions for higher education can be found at www.cognos.com/higher_ed

Note to Editors:

Cognos will be demonstrating the Cognos Enrollment & Tuition Planning Blueprint at the 2007 EDUCAUSE Conference, Booth # 737, Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, WA, October 23-26, 2007.

About Cognos Performance Blueprints:

Cognos offers a full suite of Performance Blueprints to address planning and performance management process areas that directly impact an organization's ability to create business value. Both functional and industry-specific process areas can now be automated, streamlined and transformed to help organizations quickly create more business value. Developed by the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management, the Cognos Performance Blueprints are a key component within the Cognos Performance Management System, which combines technology, best practices, analytical applications and solutions, and a broad network of partners into a single performance management solution. For further information on the Cognos Performance Blueprints see http://www.cognos.com/innovationcenter/blueprint.html.

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. Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on the Cognos Web site at www.cognos.com.