Cognos Inc. has built a framework that unites its planning and business-intelligence software into a comprehensive performance- management system. Speaking before 2,000 customers at the Cognos Forum user conference in Orlando, Fla., last week, president and CEO Rob Ashe unveiled the Cognos Performance Management System, as well as best-practices blueprints and a certification program for business partners that develop software for the Cognos platform.

CEO Ashe shows off Cognos' new performance-management system.

Cognos has been marketing its business-intelligence and financial-planning, forecasting, and budgeting software for performance management--the methodologies and technologies used to translate business strategy into plans and monitor their execution. But the Performance Management System offers a framework that unites Cognos' software, says Mark Smith, CEO and senior VP of research at Ventana, a market-research firm.

"There are only a handful of vendors that bring these capabilities into one platform and set of applications and tools," Smith says in an E-mail. "While previously, Cognos had a distinct set of applications, it wasn't integrated on the back end and didn't have an ecosystem of partners behind it."

The Performance Management System integrates the company's applications for query and reporting, analysis, metrics management, dashboarding, planning, and event management and notification. Services built into the platform include security, administration, portal, information and business modeling, and data integration.

The three new Plan-to-Perform Blueprints, which Cognos bases on its customers' best practices, are for risk analysis, allocations, and sales compensation. They join existing blueprints for strategic financial planning and forecasting, sales planning and forecasting, expense planning and control, and others.