Likelihood to Recommend 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).
Read full review In scenarios requiring highly specialized technical support, where deep domain expertise is necessary, a virtual assistant may lack the specific knowledge needed to address complex technical issues, It's important to note that the effectiveness of virtual assistants depends on factors such as the quality of training data, customization, and ongoing improvement efforts.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Provides fast and accurate responses to our customers. Learns and adapts, continually improving its responses and recommendations as it interacts with customers. Integrates seamlessly with our internal systems and databases. We can customize and adjust the virtual assistant's responses and recommendations to suit our customers' specific needs. It provides valuable information about our customers' needs and preferences. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Watson Assistant requires some improvement in the way it deals with multimedia content when displayed on the assistant. As of now, IBM Watson Assistant has issues displaying technical diagrams on a small chat window. This is definitely something that needs some improvement. It is sometimes hard and time-consuming to create some advanced actions while creating the virtual assistant so I suggest that the IBM Watson Assistant development team would work on creating sample templates for some simple to advanced actions according to industry to help kick-start the process of creating the initial virtual assistant. IBM Watson Assistant is great, but it is not magic on its own; it requires more extensions which, in my opinion, are very limited to a few possibilities. Enhancing the extensions with other products, including open-source solutions, ought to be a priority for the Watson Assistant development team. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Currently we are using to develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review IBM Watson assistant has come a long way in last few years, and is handling the generative AI chatbot building really well. It is of immense importance to sales strategists like me who are average in coding but have real world cases of lead qualification for sales. IBM Watson is also very intuitively designed with the amazing drag and drop feature. Testing is easy, deployment is pretty straightforward. I could have worked with a little more sales support, but then the whole point of making a conversational AI chatbot is to reduce the sales support intervention - so I guess I will live with that
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review To develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. IBM Watson library anyone can easily learn and develop chatbots.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review We've rarely had to engage support, but they've always been prompt in responding and very attentive. Support experiences have been extremely positive (but we're mostly happy that we just don't have any cause to routinely need support in the first place!).
Read full review In-Person Training 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.
Read full review Online Training 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
Read full review Excellent course material.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Overall the implementation was simple.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review IBM Watson Assistant provides a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible to non-technical users to easily create and deploy conversational agents. Additionally, being a cloud-based platform, it eliminates the need for manual retraining of the bot after each modification, saving time and resources for businesses. This combination of user-friendliness and automation makes watsonx Assistant an ideal choice for building conversational agents at scale.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model To develop chatbots based on client provided flow what kind chatbot required for client either button or free text chatbots. we will decided accordingly flow and develop chatbot using IBM Watson. We will integrated custom components if required which is not present in library. IBM Watson library anyone can easily learn and develop chatbots.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Over All good
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review Setting up automated tasks has helped my team to have a cut on time leading in a dynamic change and this service has taken it down by 30% Chatbots are a way forward, using this product we receive more queries most of which lead to qualification The data provided based on user interactions is so valuable that now we easily know what the intents are and where we can improve with our pitches Read full review ScreenShots