CF Future

Tom O’Brien

Cognos Finance Product Manager

What do I Want?

Give/Take

Give

• Education about CF direction

• Education about features

CF Roadmap

• Cognos 7.4 MR2 - planned for early 2008 - Including rolling bug fixes, Vista conformance, and Auditing capability

• Cognos 7.4 MR3 - planned for late 2008 - With a focus on Quality and Audit capability

• Cognos Finance 7.5 - planned for early 2009 - Continuing focus on audit capability and SOX compliance with additional customer enhancements

CF Support Statement

Support Statement• There is no plan to discontinue Cognos Finance support or

development. • Additional releases are planned, aimed at Customer value

enhancement.• Upgrades and new licenses for Cognos Finance continue to be

sold.Continued Areas of Value:– “All-in-One” Generalized Financial Management solution

for Mid-Market & Departmental Finance - Consolidations, Budgeting, Reporting

– Financial OLAP for Analysis & Reporting, Metrics & Allocations

– Custom OEM solutions

Conference synopsis

• Eric – Myth busting, CF has a future

• Aimee – Look Deeper and recent product enhancements

• Bill - Product convergence, how CF fits into the future vision

• Brian – allocations are not scary

What I’ve Heard

• Excel vs. CF Reporting• Training is key• Web reporting• Import attributes• Integration with C8• Integration with planning• Drill through to the transaction level• Set Administrative Order

Future Wish List

• Database back end.• Improving and distributing Calcs.• Expanded integration with Cognos products• Open architecture for 3rd party enhancements.• Reporting improvements - • File Processing from Planning• Undo• Report from multiple systems

MR2 enhancements

• Audit Trail for Define Items – working toward an ability to track, store and report on all changes made within define items.

• CSV Mapfiles• Batch reporting from Windows folders

Sox compliance/ Audit Trail

Three areas of concern• Tracking changes to the metadata through define

items. Adding changing dimension items, altering calculations.

• Tracking changes to data from Input and File Processing.

• Tracking changes to the system such as Security and changes to allocation tables or currency translation tables.

Take

• Audience participation discussing future direction.

Cognos Finance, moving forward.

Q & A