Cognos is launching a new performance solution designed to help retail executives and managers standardize and coordinate company-wide operational plans and track performance against objectives. The Cognos Retail Financial Workbench & Scorecard Blueprint provides a mechanism for consolidating multiple operational plans into a single high-level financial plan. Cognos Blueprints are targeted, prebuilt data, process, and policy models based on best practices in manufacturing planning, budgeting, and forecasting. With the new solution, users can conduct what-if analysis and scenario modeling, generate financial statements, and monitor key performance metrics with prebuilt scorecards and intuitive dashboards. With the scorecard component, managers can also set alerts in the event of a metric status change.