The Defense Travel System Standardizes on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence

WASHINGTON--(EON:Enhanced Online News)--Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions, has extended its leadership in the U.S. government market, announcing today that The Defense Travel System (DTS) has standardized on Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI).

“In standardizing on Cognos 8 BI, DTS is enabling its decision makers with the information platform they need to make the best decisions and accomplish its mission.”

DTS provides a fully-integrated, electronic financial management and travel system for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that automates authorizations, reservations, voucher processing, expense payment, reconciliation, accounting and archiving for all DoD temporary duty (TDY) travel transactions. Previously, DTS deployed Cognos ReportNet and Cognos PowerPlay to track travel and logistics metrics, improve reporting processes and perform in-depth analysis on personnel and administrative data.

By standardizing on Cognos 8 BI, DTS will benefit from the complete range of BI capabilities – including analysis, scorecarding, and reporting – on a single, proven architecture. Specifically, DTS selected Cognos 8 BI because of its ability to adapt to their demand for a fully flexible reporting solution that can deliver static reports, create ad-hoc queries and perform comparative analysis. In addition to reporting against DTS data sources, DTS staff will now be able to report against OLAP cubes that have been developed using Cognos PowerPlay, thereby enhancing the overall interactive, multi-dimensional reporting capability that will be provided within the system.

“By migrating and standardizing on Cognos 8 BI, our users will now be able to apply high fidelity reporting and charting to their PowerCube data, enabling them to easily drill down to the specific level of information required for critical decision-making,” said Mike Simon, deputy program director of the Program Management Office for DTS (PMO-DTS).

Cognos 8 BI is a groundbreaking product that provides decision makers at all levels of the enterprise with a consistent, accurate view of information to better manage performance. As a single product that easily integrates into existing infrastructures with multiple systems and data sources, Cognos 8 BI is a robust technology foundation for BI standardization and performance management.

“Defense is a challenging environment, where the speed and accuracy of decision-making have a profound impact on achieving mission objectives. Obtaining consistent, accurate and timely visibility into business data is vital,” said Terence Atkinson, director of government and education solutions at Cognos. “In standardizing on Cognos 8 BI, DTS is enabling its decision makers with the information platform they need to make the best decisions and accomplish its mission.”

Cognos is one of the leading providers of performance management solutions for government agencies worldwide. Specifically, Cognos has helped numerous defense agencies increase organizational performance, enhance operational readiness and improve mission effectiveness. In addition to The Defense Travel System, Cognos can be found in such leading defense agencies as U.S. Army Reserve, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, German Army Logistics Command, The Royal Netherlands Army and the U.K. Defence Communications Services Agency. For more information about Cognos solutions for Government, please visit http://www.cognos.com/solutions/industry/government/index.html.

ABOUT THE DEFENSE TRAVEL SYSTEM:

The Defense Travel System (DTS) is a fully integrated financial management system, of which travel procurement is only a small part. DTS is a seamless, end-to-end, two-way, Web-based, high-speed, secure, user-friendly and continuously evolving system that manages accounting and disbursing of funds while providing an automated travel service. DTS is currently linked to 41 DoD partner systems, 30 of which are financial. DTS automates authorizations, travel arrangements and reservations, voucher processing, payment and archiving for DoD travel transactions.

DTS operates at 280 DoD high-travel-volume sites and over 9,450 total sites worldwide. DTS has processed over 4.0 million approved authorizations, over 3.35 million approved vouchers, and processes over 20,000 transactions daily. From the end of FY2005 to the end of FY2006, the monthly average rate of approved authorizations (70k to 136k) and vouchers (60k to 118K) almost doubled. Approximately 69,000 unique users access DTS daily. For more information, please visit the DTS Web site at http://www.defensetravel.osd.mil/dts/site/index.jsp.

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

View All Releases from This Organization