14 January 2003 Business intelligence software supplier Cognos has said it will replace its own financial planning product with that of Adaytum, the enterprise performance planning software vendor it acquired for $157 million (€148.2m) in December.
The company also said that it plans to stop using the reporting software of French business intelligence software company Business Objects – which Adaytum sold with its E.Planning software – in favour of its own PowerPlay data-analysis tool.
Cognos will provide its PowerPlay software to Adaytum’s 1,500 worldwide customers free of charge in a bid to swap out its competitor’s products as quickly as possible.
An increasing number of companies are using financial planning applications, such as budget forecasting and financial analysis balanced scorecards software, to monitor business processes and reduce costs, say analysts.
The decision by Cognos to adopt Adaytum’s software is an implicit admission that it own Cognos Planning financial planning software, which it only released in spring 2002, has failed to live up to expectations. However, some of the software code from Cognos Planning will be added to future releases of Adaytum’s planning software.
Most analysts welcomed Cognos’ purchase of Adaytum. “Cognos has lacklustre budgeting and planning offerings, but has a very promising new performance metrics application and strong reporting and BI technology,” said Paul Hamerman at Giga Information Group.
The combined products sets, when fully integrated, will enable Cognos to compete effectively against Hyperion Solutions and the large comprehensive enterprise application vendors in financial planning, budgeting and performance management,” he added.
