Board vs. IBM Cognos Analytics

Board is a useful tool with a great set of features. We migrated from human apps to board and we find it relatively fast in search results and better-managed threads and forums. There are some areas, such as UI and interactions which could be improved but overall a great product. The learning section is also pretty good.

Well suited: Financial reporting - It can handle complex, pixel perfect, muti-page reports with scheduled delivery to stakeholders (like sales report by region on quarterly periodicity) Operational dashboard across departments - It can combine multiple data sources (ERP, CRM, excels etc) with filters, and embedded AI insights Less appropriate: Live dashboards - As stated earlier as well, IBM Cognos Analytics doesn't suit well for live dashboards or event driven data. For ex: live web traffic data or IOT device data, etc Data science - Although IBM Cognos Analytics is great tool for data exploration but it should not be used as a substitute for Python or R, which has edge over advanced modelling and stats based workflows like predictive modelling or clustering

Incentivized

• The user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate
• You don't need programming knowledge to create dashboards which is a great flex for non-technical users
• You can seamlessly convert large, raw, and complex data to meaningful reports to visualize better and plan to act accordingly
• The financial forecasting that Board provides post-analysis is truly reliable

• We can make dozens of dispatchers all focusing on different types of workloads.
• Friendly user interface, without the need for coding or complicated editing.
• Highly functionality reporting tools.
• We can easily create trigger when a certain threshold are met sending reports or alerts to needed parties.

Incentivized

• Board BI tool has a steep learning curve and can be challenging for a new user to reach to board's full capacity.
• We have to use a windows scheduler to schedule data import tasks; it would be great if Board could provide its own scheduler.

• IBM Cognos Analytics enables customer data segmentation, which is essential for marketing, improving and streamlining purchasing behavior and preferences. This helps companies create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
• Our clients Through data analysis, we can identify and observe trends in the behavior of other clients, allowing us to anticipate needs and adjust strategies to avoid consequences.

Incentivized

Board is a fantastic product for swift BI solution delivery when compared with its peers. Ease of use, support and integration with Microsoft Office Addin open a wide horizon of opportunities for further enhancements to solutions. Easy bespoke app development capabilities make it a winner for us. BOARD is just like a white canvas, it lets you explore your creative side while designing and delivering a solution

Incentivized

For an existing solution, renewing licenses does provide a good return on investment. Additionally, while rolling out scorecards and dashboards with little adhoc capabilities, to end users, cognos is very easily scalable. It also allows to create a solution that has a mix of OLAP and relational data-sources, which is a limitation with other tools. Synchronizing with existing security setup is easy too.

From a user perspective, Board is quite simple to use. You
can evaluate the presentation of the data, the navigation, the configuration of
the users, the selection of the data etc ... It would have a better rating if
it were even more intuitive as regards the construction of a project, starting
from the database, to the info-cubes, to entities, to data acquisition
procedures from other servers.

Incentivized

We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.

Reports can typically be viewed through any browser that can access the server, so the availability is ultimately up to what the company utilizing it is comfortable with allowing, though report development tends to be more picky about browsers and settings as mentioned above. It also has an optional iPad app and general mobile browsing support, but dashboards lack the mobile compatibility. What keeps it from getting a higher score is the desktop tools that are vital to the development process. The compatibility with only Windows when the server has a wide range of compatibility can be a real sore point for a company that outfits its employees exclusively with Mac or Linux machines. Of course, if they are planning on outsourcing the development anyways, it's a rather moot point

very fast and no integration problems

Incentivized

Overall no major complaints but it doesn't handle DMR (Dimensionally Modeled for Relational) very well. DMR modelling is a capability that IBM Cognos Framework Manager provides allowing you to specify dimensional information for relational metadata and allows for OLAP-style queries. However, the capability is not very efficient and, for example, if I'm using only 2 columns on a 20-column model, the software is not smart enough to exclude 18 columns and the query side gets progressively larger and larger until it's effectively unusable.

The only time I needed assistance was due to a problem in
the prints: the colors of the brochures as they were on the screen were not
reproduced in the print, but a series of standard colors were reproduced. This
fact made colored numbers on a colored background illegible. From the
assistance they confirmed that it was a problem of version 10.2 that occurred
when leaving the brochures with the default colors proposed by Board. To obtain
the desired colors, they had to be personalized ... I didn't like the solution
very much and the technician who recommended it didn't like me either, but they
would have solved the problem with the following versions. In any case, the
assistance was quick and effective even if not exactly efficient.

Incentivized

Why is their web application not working as fast as you think it should? They never know, and it is always a a bunch of shots in the dark to find out. Trying to download software from them is like trying to find a book at the library before computers were invented.

Incentivized

Board is fairly simple and straight forward. Advance training on workflows and procedures is a good one but the training content only touches through the interesting areas. training content needs to cover a few areas more in-depth

Incentivized

Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.

The online courses they offer are thorough and presented in such a way that someone who isn't already familiar with the general design methodologies used in this field will be capable of making a good design. The training environments are provided as a fully self contained virtual machine with everything needed already to create the environments. We've had some persisting issues with the environments becoming unavailable, but support has been responsive when these issues arise and straightening them out for us

The problem of user profiling in our context is certainly
quite complex. The complexity is given by the fact that the company is divided
territorially into logistic points of sale, but at the same time they are
virtually divided into divisions (or specific implementation areas) and points
of sale of competence. The same operator can have access to data at different
logistic sales points, sales points of competence and divisions.

Incentivized

Make sure that any custom tables that you have, are built into your metadata packages. You can still access them via SQL queries in Cognos, but it is much easier to have them as a part of the available metadata packages.

Board has been more complete when compared to Anaplan. Although I didn't participate in the buying decision of any of those products I have used both and by far Board just has more features. It's more than a CPM, it's BI and CPM put together. If I had to make a choice now it would be Board.

Power BI is stronger for quick ad-hoc analysis and dashboards, but IBM Cognos Analytics is better when consistency, precision, and mass distribution matter. Tableau is best for interactive analysis, while IBM Cognos Analytics is better for standardized, repeatable enterprise reporting. Sigma shines for customizable dashboards and drill-down analysis while IBM Cognos Analytics holds an edge in data discovery and visualization.

Incentivized

The Cognos architecture is well suited for scalability. However, the architecture must be designed with scalability in mind from day one of the implementation. We recently upgraded from 10.1 to 10.2.1 and took the opportunity to revamp our architecture. It is now poised for future growth and scalability.

• Board facilitates proactive decision making - it gives all the insights of the company's needs, which includes predictive analytics and manipulation of data to make different types of reports.
• Easy to use for non-programmer and integration with other software is seamless. It has [the] ability to handle large amounts of data.
• It facilitates advanced decision-making.

Incentivized

• We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very similar to real-life scenarios.
• Options of customizing & scheduling reports as per our requirements basis.
• Has mobile application which works seamless.
• API integration is not upto the mark with very limited options.
• Licensing & Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.

Incentivized