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ASPECT MEDICAL SYSTEMS MONITORS COMPANY PULSE WITH COGNOS BI

Aspect Medical Systems, a pioneer and global leader in brain monitoring, has implemented a business intelligence solution from Cognos. Cognos, a world leader in business intelligence (BI), is delivering a unified, accurate view of corporate performance across the organization, while maximizing the company's existing data warehouse and Siebel CRM investments. The solution was implemented by Cognos Premier Business Partner Creative Computing, using a top-down deployment strategy that allowed senior executives to guide the implementation for the entire organization.

The key objective of this deployment is to gain Web-based access to consistent, accurate business data enabling executives at Aspect to better manage corporate performance and make better, more informed decisions. Using Cognos DecisionStream, Aspect unites disparate data sources across the organization, including financial and manufacturing databases, as well as a Siebel CRM application. With Cognos Impromptu Web Reports and PowerPlay, users are able to spot trends and make proactive, informed business decisions.

"With Cognos we have given our users real-time visibility into business operations. From manufacturing to finance to customer operations, users have been empowered to customize and distribute their own reports, meaning less strain on IT resources," said George Papamitrou Director of Information Services for Aspect. "The powerful analytical capabilities in PowerPlay provide an entirely new way of viewing and working with data, allowing Aspect to maximize investments we have already made in our data warehousing."

Cognos is being used to create a demand plan for the vice president of manufacturing. "We used to spend hours each week mining data for alignment of actual shipments versus forecast and build plan requirements," said John Coolidge, vice president, manufacturing, Aspect Medical Systems. "Cognos has enabled us to completely eliminate this process. Within two days of the request, we have a working report that is current and used by all users."

With Cognos, the user has the ability to see what product is in demand versus what is in production. This insight enables Aspect to improve scheduling for specific locations and product lines, and attain insight into inventory status. "The power of Cognos is the ability to produce real business results. With just a few clicks of a mouse, users can see not only what is going on, but can see the business driver behind it. The bottom line is better decision making," said Jeff Barrett, vice president, corporate operations, Aspect Medical Systems.

"Cognos business intelligence has given Aspect visibility into the business and into the relationships found between united data sources," said Dave Laverty, senior vice president, global marketing, Cognos. "Using Cognos' powerful reporting and analysis capabilities, companies are driving coordinated and collaborative decision-making by ensuring consistent information is shared across the enterprise."

About Aspect Medical

Aspect Medical Systems is a global market leader in brain monitoring technology. To date, the company's Bispectral Index (BIS) technology has been used to assess more than four million patients and has been the subject of more than 850 published articles and abstracts. BIS is currently in use in the ORs and ICUs of more than 60 percent of the best-ranked hospitals in the U.S. (based on a U.S. News & World Report ranking of best hospitals) and is available in more than 160 countries. Aspect Medical Systems has secured OEM agreements with the six largest manufacturers of patient monitoring systems and partnerships with six of the largest group purchasing organizations in the United States. Based in Newton, Mass., Aspect employs more than 220 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.aspectmedical.com.

About Creative Computing Inc

Creative Computing Inc, a leading Cognos Services Partner, has been designing, building and deploying business intelligence solutions based on Cognos software products for over 10 years. By following a Best Practices approach Creative Computing has successfully partnered with hundreds of Cognos customers, allowing them to build environments designed to enable key business users to access relevant business information. Creative Computing is headquartered in Lincoln, RI, with offices in Boston, MA, Cleveland, OH, and Washington, DC. www.creatcomp.com.

About Cognos

Cognos, a world leader in business intelligence (BI), delivers software that helps companies improve business performance by enabling effective decision-making at all levels of the organization. A forerunner in defining the BI software category, Cognos delivers the next level of competitive advantage -- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) -- achieved through the strategic application of BI on an enterprise scale.

CPM lets organizations measure execution against business strategy to ensure the two are aligned at all levels across the enterprise. Cognos provides a framework for CPM that links people, information, and decision-making processes throughout the organization, and enables the complete management cycle with integrated software for planning, budgeting, reporting, analysis, and scorecarding.

Cognos' framework for CPM includes:

• Cognos Series 7, which provides an enterprise-scale BI framework supporting a full suite of BI tools that deliver query and reporting, analysis, scorecarding, visualization, and event detection capabilities.
• A common CPM data foundation model that encapsulates business best practices, integrates a company's business performance measures, and leverages enterprise data sources.
• Enterprise analytic applications that deliver out-of-the-box, predefined, integrated reporting and analysis across major business functions.
• Cognos Finance, a strategic enterprise planning and budgeting application that supports the management cycle and enables finance professionals to manage all core financial processes within one environment.

Cognos serves more than 19,000 customers in over 120 countries. Cognos business intelligence solutions and services are also available from more than 3,000 worldwide partners and resellers. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at www.cognos.com.