Israel's Largest Bank Strengthens Customer Relationships With Cognos BI

- Cognos provides Bank Hapoalim with a comprehensive view of its customer base -

BURLINGTON, Mass., Jan. 15, 2003 -- Managing customer relationships is an ongoing challenge in the worldwide banking industry. Although Bank Hapoalim is Israel's largest bank - with nearly two million customers - it faced the same challenge: how to offer superior customer care and unique financial services to maintain and expand its customer base. Bank Hapoalim looked to Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; TSX: CSN), the world leader in business intelligence (BI), to provide a BI solution that would allow sales and marketing to analyze and report on customer-driven strategies.

"We continue to devote our resources and energy to the individual customer in our quest to be more efficient and better suited to banking in the 21st century. Using an industry-leading solution like Cognos, we are doing just that," said Tal Shlasky, data warehouse project manager at Bank Hapoalim. "Cognos gives us an integrated view of the enterprise, allowing us to target customers based on their individual needs. Without a doubt, that capability gives us a competitive edge in the market."

To move the bank's customer-relationship goals forward, Bank Hapoalim needed to customize its marketing campaigns to specific segments. Viewing operational and customer data contained in a Teradata data warehouse, Cognos business users can slice and dice this information to offer new products, packages and services, targeting the specific requirements of its unique client base.

"Critical customer information is at the fingertips of each one of our departments," continued Shlasky. "Users can ask their own business questions, build their own reports, and get the information they need within minutes compared to days or weeks under the previous environment."

"Financial organizations like Bank Hapoalim that have millions of customers require a business intelligence solution that will allow them to perform in-depth scrutiny of gigabytes of customer and operational data," said Dave Laverty, Cognos senior vice president of global marketing. "By utilizing Cognos' industry-leading solutions, Bank Hapoalim is given an immediate, real- time grasp of ongoing business performance. That gives them a market strength that is second to none."

About Bank Hapoalim

Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank, serves the nation's corporate community and retail market in virtually every area of banking through a customer-driven strategy focused on market segments. While a powerhouse domestically, Bank Hapoalim serves as first among equals in the international financial community through its global network. The Bank's full service capabilities, highly personal approach, andinternational reach promote Israel's growing, active participation in the global economy.

About Cognos

Cognos, the 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 serves more than 20,000 customers in over 135 countries. Cognos enterprise 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 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.

NCR and Teradata are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries.

Note to Editors: Copies of previous Cognos press releases and Corporate and product information are available on Cognos' Web site atwww.cognos.com, and at PR Newswire's site at http://www.prnewswire.

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SOURCE Cognos
Web Site: http://www.cognos.com