D&B Hoovers delivers sales intelligence data for millions of companies globally.
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IBM Cognos Analytics
Score 7.4 out of 10
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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
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
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IBM InfoSphere Information Server is a data integration platform used to understand, cleanse, monitor and transform data. The offerings provide massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.
IBM Cognos Analytics is catching up to Tableau Desktop in the only area that Tableau Desktop had an advantage (visualizations). IBM Cognos Analytics can do a lot more than what Tableau Desktop does with its advanced pixel perfect tools, ease of use, and delivery options to …
In my opinion, MicroStrategy has a better product architecture. As a reporting and analysis platform, MicroStrategy allows developers to build reports and dashboards using an integrated development tool for all capabilities. It also has a more powerful and easy to use …
MS BI: A lot of times we meet customers who are dealing with an MS BI maintenance nightmare and we try to ease their pain by implementing Cognos BI and their reporting and analysis system. Cognos BI is better than MS BI from ease of implementation to production support and …
Prospecting corporate accounts near a hotel location. Our sales manager wants to generate a list of companies within a 5 mile radius that may need regular lodging for employees or contractors. D&B Hoovers will allow her to filer by geography, industry, company size and employee count. Then she can view detailed company profiles and contact decision-makers.
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
Information Server is extremely useful to replace manual developments that require a lot of coding effort. It significantly increases the productivity of the initial development and the future maintenance of the processes since it has a visual development environment with self-documentation.
The D&B Hoovers platform enables our team to customize, giving us the ability to fine-tune our searches
D&B Hoovers integrates very well Salesforce, our CRM system, streamlining the workflows of sales teams and ensuring the verified transfer of data between platforms
D&B Hoovers provides highly accurate and reliable business data
I think maybe if they vetted the contacts that they're providing for those companies, it would be beneficial because I do use other avenues to vet the contacts because a lot of times I found that it is outdated information in D&B Hoovers, so that would be beneficial to us.
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.
I use D&B Hoovers very frequently and could not do my job as efficiently without it. I think there is room for improvement, but it is effective enough that I feel as though I will continue renewing by subscription. I highly recommend D&B Hoovers and find it very accurate and easy to use.
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.
Whenever I had to use D&B hoovers, I never had a hard time with getting what I need. Additionally, when I show the tool to others, they tend to understand the platform quite quickly. The tool itself is very good and straightforward when I use it to help me put analyses together.
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.
The platform is generally reliable and accessible when needed, with minimal application errors or unplanned outages. There may be occasional maintenance or minor disruptions, but these are usually communicated in advance and handled efficiently. Overall, it offers a high level of availability, ensuring that you can count on it for your daily operations.
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
While the platform generally functions well, with pages loading in a reasonable time and reports completing within a satisfactory timeframe, there is room for improvement. Performance can sometimes lag with more complex queries or during peak usage times. Additionally, when integrated with other software or systems, there can be occasional slowdowns. Overall, while it performs adequately, optimizing speed and integration efficiency could enhance the user experience.
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.
I think it could be better, easier and faster. Whenever I chat with someone it takes so long to get to an actual agent, and then when I finally get to one, they oftentimes don't have the answers for me or do not understand what I am asking, which is very frustrating.
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.
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 training sessions were well-structured and covered the key functionalities of the platform, making it easy to get up to speed. The trainers were knowledgeable and responsive to questions, which added value to the learning experience. However, a bit more in-depth coverage of advanced features and use cases would have made the training even more beneficial.
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
for our use case, the implementation was minimal and we did not need a lot of help. The D&B Hoovers platform is pretty intuitive and our account manager was ready for any questions that came up when we use the D&B Hoovers platform
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.
Finance Analytics provides a more thorough company credit report and is more in-depth than Hoovers. However, I use Hoovers for instances where I do not need that information because it allows unlimited queries, whereas you pay for a limited number of reports from Finance Analytics. Hoovers provides a better link between corporate family trees and finance analytics.
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.
The pricing model is generally clear and competitive, but there could be more flexibility in terms of unit pricing or billing frequency to better accommodate varying needs. While the contract terms are straightforward, exploring more options or customizable plans might enhance the overall value.
D&B Hoovers is quite effective at adapting to the needs of different departments and locations, allowing for flexible deployment and integration across various parts of an organization. While it scales well and supports a broad range of users and functions, there might be some limitations depending on the size and complexity of the organization’s requirements. Overall, it provides a robust solution that can grow with your needs.4o mini
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.
D&B Hoovers allows me to make the most of my time when searching for companies within specific industries. Once I find a company and examine their profile, I can then generate a list of employees in the purchasing and engineering departments. The profiles for each listed employee contain cell phone, Email address and LinkedIn profile. This information helps me to bypass the companies front desk and get directly to the people I need to speak with.
By knowing the specific job title for the people that I am contacting and then being able to click on their LinkedIn link to learn a little about them before I make the call, I come across as a sales professional instead of an impersonal cold-caller.
In cases where I do need to go through a front desk receptionist whose primary mission is to screen out sales people, I find that three out of four times the receptionist will connect me to the specific employee because I know their name, department, and job title. The Intel provided by D&B Hoovers makes it possible for me to get to the people I need to speak with.
