Leading Asian Companies Select Cognos for Financial Consolidation

Cognos Controller gives companies better corporate reporting and faster, secure consolidation capabilities.

Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN - News; TSX: CSN - News), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, today announced that two leading Asian companies, Johnson Electric in Hong Kong and Mapletree Investments in Singapore, have selected Cognos Controller to manage their financial consolidation and reporting.

Established in 1959, Johnson Electric is a world leader in motors for automotive and commercial markets, exporting its products to more than 30 countries. The organization is structured into four business unit groups, the Commercial Motor Group (CMG), the Automotive Motor Group (AMG), the Components & Services Group (C&S) and the JE Capital Group, with more than $2 billion in annual revenue.

With a fast-growing global business, complex product line and operations spread over four business units and more than 20 countries, Johnson Electric's objectives are to enhance operational and financial performance management by moving from a time-intensive, manual spreadsheet-based process to quarterly rolling forecasts, real-time cash flow analysis and long-range enterprise planning models that provide "what if" scenarios. The new system will hold key sales, forecasting and customer information integrated with human resources and capital expenditure data in a controlled environment where changes are quickly highlighted, complete with a documented audit trail.

Mapletree is one of the leading real estate companies in Singapore with an asset base of more than $1.9 billion (comprising office, logistics, industrial and retail/lifestyle properties). With its focus on Asia, it has established an extensive network and presence across key cities in the region to better harness the increased global capital allocation to Asian real estate.

This rapid growth and expansion of Mapletree in the region has resulted in a much bigger and more complex group structure. To better manage its consolidation process and its financial information platform, Mapletree is in the process of upgrading its current system with the help of Cognos. The Cognos solution will interface with Mapletree's database architecture, allowing easy integration of new data sources as well as providing analytical capabilities. Upon the successful implementation of Cognos Controller, Mapletree will be able to consolidate its corporate results more efficiently, and also to achieve more effective and insightful analysis on the group's performance.

"The task of financial reporting and consolidation coupled with emerging compliance requirements is becoming too complex and time consuming to do manually," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Cognos. "With Cognos Controller, leading companies such as Johnson Electric and Mapletree Investments, are able to organize their increasingly complex businesses to easily provide a single view of the global business. Companies are easily able to combine financial consolidation with business intelligence capabilities to provide staff with more reliable, timely and complete performance information. For finance, the ability to compress the time to close and enable business stakeholders to make decisions and report with confidence in spite of the fast-changing business environment and regulatory scrutiny is key to continued growth plans."

Organizations are looking to improve their closing process made difficult by business changes, new compliance requirements and disparate systems. Cognos Controller automates and structures the financial consolidation process, supports the improvement of the internal control environment and helps deliver valid, financial performance information for internal and external reporting.

Cognos performance management solutions provide a single line of sight across all time horizons. Planning and consolidation combine the forward management view of the business (planning, budgeting and forecasting) with the current and historical view of the business (consolidations, reporting, and financial analytics.) This integrated operational and financial view lets customers proactively address business challenges for greater operational effectiveness.

About Mapletree

Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd is a leading real estate company in Singapore. It has an asset base of approximately S$3 billion comprising office, logistics, industrial and retail/lifestyle properties. Its mission is to be a real estate company with an Asian focus and an ability to structure innovative products to intermediate the need and supply of capital for specialized real estate in Asia. Its business philosophy is to shape new ways to deliver value to its stakeholders from real estate and related investments. It aims to be a strategic real estate partner providing real estate solutions, including capital management and quality property-related services and products, to its business partners.

About Johnson Electric

Established in 1959, Johnson Electric is a world leader in motors for automotive and commercial markets. Exporting its products to over 30 countries with more than 100 different applications, Johnson Electric has an annual turnover of more than US$2 billion. Johnson Electric employs more than 40,000 employees in more than 20 countries. The organization is structured into 4 business unit groups, the Commercial Motor Group (CMG), the Automotive Motor Group (AMG), the Components & Services Group (C&S) and the JE Capital Croup.

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.

Source: Cognos