Brandwatch vs. IBM Cognos Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Brandwatch
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Brandwatch, from Cision (acquired February 2021) is an enterprise social intelligence platform that is designed to allow brands to listen and analyze online conversation to extract meaningful insights, inform their business decisions and understand more about the return on their marketing spend.
$800
10k mentions
IBM Cognos Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Editions & Modules
Pro
$800
10k mentions
Enterprise
3000+
Unlimited mentions or Queries
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
$40.00
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.9
102 Ratings
4% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.593 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings7.8100 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings7.497 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
104 Ratings
0% below category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.1102 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.1103 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings7.872 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.4100 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
104 Ratings
1% below category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.327 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.798 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.0101 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.112 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
94 Ratings
0% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.089 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.286 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.182 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.021 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
99 Ratings
4% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.496 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.395 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.295 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.377 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.3
83 Ratings
8% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings7.977 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.368 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.174 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.5
62 Ratings
5% below category average
REST API00 Ratings7.359 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.658 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.39 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.911 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.110 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.87 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mention
Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
4.3
(65 ratings)
8.1
(127 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.8
(27 ratings)
Usability
6.1
(7 ratings)
8.0
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
4.1
(13 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
7.0
(7 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrandwatchIBM Cognos Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
Cision
The user interface is great and is easy to use for social media marketers of all ranges. In regard to planning and scheduling content, it allows all users with access to the capability to view all upcoming on an actual calendar. For organizational purposes, this is great and mitigates any confusion that other team members may have. The tool seems to always be updating which has its pros and cons because once you figure something out, there's a switch and you'll need to relearn how things are positioned but overall, it's not a heavy lift.
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IBM
Our first and most basic scenario was to automatize the creation and publication/sharing of business reports that used to be created manually by employees throughout our organization. Using Cognos for that first use case worked well. The advanced analytics functionalities we used on the aggregated data were also as expected. However, the user interface is not always intuitive, and there is a steep learning curve, so I would recommend Cognos only to large organizations where there is a need for the most advanced functionalities (AI analysis/prediction).
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Pros
Cision
  • Clean, beautiful visuals that can be easily incorporated into reports to be used internally and externally.
  • Customization-- anywhere from the queries you create to adjusting individual report widget/components this tool is very flexible.
  • Excellent Customer Service and support. My Brandwatch rep is always open to hearing from me for questions and often reaches out to me to check in on my status or see if I would like to participate in beta programs.
  • Constant innovation. It seems like Brandwatch is constantly updating and adding improvements to their platform--especially with their 2019 acquisition of Crimson Hexagon.
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IBM
  • 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.
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Cons
Cision
  • Very steep learning curve- good luck training casual users on the difference between a query, a rule, a category etc
  • Lack of access to FULL historic data is a serious drawback- populating that data takes a minimum of 24 hours and incurs additional costs
  • Volume limits mean you may have to build your query to exclude mentions that may be useful in getting the full context of the situation
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IBM
  • Sometimes there might be performance issues when dealing with large and complex data.
  • Although IBM provides full documentation but sometimes it's difficult to find answers to questions and connect with their customer support.
  • It relies on external tools for data cleaning, transformation and also for some integration tasks. It can also improve on providing wider range of data sources for integration.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cision
Brandwatch is a simple tool that is easy to learn and understand. Without any rigorous training, the team can learn to use it and interpret the results in an efficient manner. It saves a lot of work and helps the team to focus on other important time consuming tasks. I would like to continue using Brandwatch.
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IBM
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.
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Usability
Cision
I've invited quite a few of my colleagues to try Brandwatch, and all of them were able to use its features with no assistance, and most of these had never used a social listening/monitoring tool before, or even a digital analytics tool! Brandwatch is not only easy to use, but filters, widgets, menus and other options are in intuitive places - it just works
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IBM
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Cision
No answers on this topic
IBM
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
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Performance
Cision
Brandwatch craps out sometimes. Pages freeze, data doesn't populate for hours. It's fine if you're not in a hurry but something to keep in mind if you're working in real-time. It's not as bad as Talkwalker but it's impacted timely delivery of work for me, and one of the first things I teach when introducing the platform is the process for closing out and re-logging in to see if it unfreezes
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IBM
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.
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Support Rating
Cision
The Brandwatch Consumer Research customer success team is outstanding. Every member of their team has been wildly helpful and remarkably pleasant. These people go above and beyond to ensure you have all the tools and help you need to find success on their platform. I had several calls where we discussed difficulties users where having on the platform that resulted in an overall improvement in reporting across the board. They didn't just answer our questions, they dug deeper to find root problems and helped us build out dashboards to alleviate them.
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IBM
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.
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In-Person Training
Cision
No answers on this topic
IBM
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.
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Online Training
Cision
good knowledge, great tips, although the program seems a bit disconnected. It could improve it they create more free webinars and a good content calendar and tackle little topics in each webinar. Their trainers are top notch and they know a lot about the tool but they fall a bit low on technical level understanding of how the tool actually works
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IBM
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
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Implementation Rating
Cision
Not that I can think of.
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IBM
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Cision
If you're using it to monitor your brand's social presence only, or if you're in an agency and using it to monitor existing clients and provide reports to them, then this is a great tool and you're hard-pressed to find something better. But if you're wanting it more for new business and discovery, there are tools that do this much better, including Sysomos and Crimson Hexagon. So it depends on what specifically you're trying to do. My agency was already using this product when I arrived, so I did not have a choice in the matter, but I've evaluated both of these other tools. Crimson is similar enough that the slight increase in cost doesn't justify switching. Synthesio is the most expensive competitor in the market (no matter what they tell you), but you get what you pay for. If you can afford it, go with Synthesio.
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IBM
In the past Management had used Excel and Workiva capabilities to create the reporting dashboards that were being used to make decisions. Since switching to IBM Cognos Analytics the Company has been much more efficient and decision making has been streamlined. IBM Cognos Analytics was chosen due to its reputation and data visualization capabilities and neither have been wrong.
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Scalability
Cision
No answers on this topic
IBM
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.
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Return on Investment
Cision
  • At a high level, the biggest impact the Brandwatch Analytics has had is giving us the ability to quantify the impact of social media for our clients. In the world of social, ROI is defined and interpreted differently across clients (particularly where it's more difficult to apply traditional ROI) - so this may mean reporting on earned media for some, while for others it's measuring increasing engagements or social mentions over time.
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IBM
  • High ROI with well designed solutions. Supported by scalable deployment, robust security model and ability to create valuable content.
  • High ROI where well designed data models can be deployed with a common metadata layer to a variety of users and use cases.
  • High ROI in an environment that includes a variety of vendors and best of breed products within the overall platform
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ScreenShots

Brandwatch Screenshots

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