Cognos 2000 News Release: Cognos Business Intelligence is Hot in Southeastern United States

ATLANTA, GA, August 2, 2000—Eastman Chemical Co., Harrah's Entertainment, BellSouth Corporation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are among industry leaders in the Southeastern United States that are choosing Cognos^® (Nasdaq:COGN; TSE:CSN), the world's largest and most successful business intelligence company, to cut costs, improve business efficiency and heighten job performance.

To honor the success of its customers in this region, Cognos is today showcasing several organizations that have redefined the ways in which both private and public sector organizations use information.

Some of the businesses in the Southeastern U.S. that have selected or deployed Cognos business intelligence include:

"Cognos enables today's e-businesses to slash their 'time to decision,' empower customers, partners and employees with business-critical information, and radically improve top and bottom line results. The organizations featured today are e-business groundbreakers and industry leaders moving at e-speed," said Joanne K. Masingill, Cognos' senior vice president of marketing. "We are proud to showcase those companies that are seizing the competitive advantage and opportunity offered by Cognos enterprise business intelligence."

SCANA Corporation
SCANA Corporation is an energy-based holding company which, through its subsidiaries, is engaged in electric and natural gas utility operations, telecommunications, and other energy related businesses. SCANA has deployed the Cognos business intelligence solution to improve their financial data management. The company needed to ensure that its several business units—including a Fossil-Hydro Generation Unit, a Nuclear Generation Unit, Gas Distribution Unit, and an Electric Transmission & Distribution Unit—had access to a consistent and readily accessible view of key business information.

"The Cognos solution is a vast improvement over the arduous reporting system SCANA once depended on," said Randy Senn, SCANA's director of enterprise information technology. "Previously, employees had to wait over a month for access to financial information. With Cognos, they have access to up-to-the-minute information 24 hours a day. Cognos' BI solution allows us to receive greater value from our information, as well as accelerate the speed at which we work."

SCANA's various business units are now able to manage their finances autonomously, while still maintaining the ability to consolidate all data centrally on a monthly basis.

Orlando Sentinel Communications
Orlando Sentinel Communications (OSC) is the publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Orlando Sentinel and Central Florida's leading information provider via newspaper, Internet, cable and niche channels. OSC is using Cognos business intelligence in the company's marketing department to support analysis of business to customer sales and business to business sales.

"Competition in the multimedia industry is tough, and the Cognos solution provides us with a distinct, competitive edge," said Chuck Farraj, OSC's marketing information manager. "Users now have the ability to view and analyze data in the data warehouse multi-dimensionally, are able to spot trends in the market and proactively plan to act on those trends as they occur."

OSC rolled out Cognos to approximately 100 users. The company is using business intelligence to track and analyze customer satisfaction, sales, and customer service measures. As a result, OSC has been able to better target its marketing efforts and improve the return on investment on its marketing campaigns.

MEDAC Inc.
Based in Augusta, Georgia, MEDAC is the fastest growing full-service anesthesia practice management firm in the United States. The firm adopted Cognos business intelligence to provide their customers with more insightful views into their billing information. The advanced analysis component of this solution allows clients to break down billing information by such factors as time, procedure, location or insurance company. They can uncover hidden trends in their billing data, therefore significantly reducing the time, money, and confusion usually spent wading through paper-based billing information.

"The Cognos solution allows MEDAC customers to gain information and understanding about the billing process, in ways that just weren't possible before," said John Memar, president of MEDAC. "This new application allows us to monitor and analyze the up-to-the-minute billing status of specific patients and as many as 2,000 different insurance companies."

About SCANA Corporation
Headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, SCANA Corporation is an energy-based holding company whose businesses include regulated electric and natural gas utility operations, telecommunications and other non-regulated energy-related businesses. SCANA's subsidiaries serve 525,000 electric customers in South Carolina and more than 675,000 natural gas customers in South Carolina and Georgia. Information about SCANA Corporation and its businesses can be found on the World Wide Web at www.scana.com.

About Orlando Sentinel Communications
Orlando Sentinel Communications, publisher of The Orlando Sentinel, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tribune Co. of Chicago, a leading information and entertainment company. Tribune owns and operates 10 television and five radio stations, publishes four daily newspapers, produces and syndicates programming and information, and provides educational products and services for the school and consumer markets.

Financial data and general information may be found on Tribune's World Wide Web site: http://www.tribune.com.

About MEDAC Inc.
In just seven years, MEDAC has grown to become a national leader in the anesthesia billing industry. MEDAC is on the cutting edge of technology with its proprietary "KAM2000" anesthesia billing software.

MEDAC, Inc. was founded in 1992 by the late Kam Memar and his brother, John Memar, who serves as company president. The company is headquartered in Augusta, Georgia.

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.