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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Cognos Analytics

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/AIBM 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.

    $11.25

    per month per user

    Looker Studio

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/ALooker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.

    $9

    per month per user per project

    Pricing
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    Editions & Modules
    On Demand - Standard
    USD 11.25
    per month per user
    On Demand - Premium
    USD 44.90
    per month per user
    Looker Studio Pro
    $9
    per month per user per project
    Looker Studio
    No charge
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    We chose IBM Cognos Analytics because, in our opinion, IBM Cognos Analytics has Better enterprise integration
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    IBM Cognos Analytics was more matured enterprise modeling-based tool. Our power Bi struggled against large ERP data sets, which IBM didn't after few initial days.

    IBM had much better scalability and security when comes to user reports distribution. The schedule feature worked …
    Incentivized
    Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
    Compared to other tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Google studio, IBM Cognos Analytics is better for the companies who looks strong control on detailed reports. Power BI and Tableau are easy to use and good for quick presentation, but Cognos has more options for security, such …
    Incentivized
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    92 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    38 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    91 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    40 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    64 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    33 Answers
    Features
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.7
    138 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Looker Studio
    7.0
    62 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.6129 Ratings6.643 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.0136 Ratings7.361 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5131 Ratings7.259 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.9
    138 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Looker Studio
    7.7
    61 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Drill-down analysis7.4136 Ratings6.851 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.3139 Ratings7.057 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages7.397 Ratings7.129 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6133 Ratings9.759 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    136 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Looker Studio
    8.1
    60 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Publish to Web9.836 Ratings8.453 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2132 Ratings8.753 Ratings
    Report Versioning9.833 Ratings8.139 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2134 Ratings7.942 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers9.918 Ratings7.524 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.4
    124 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Looker Studio
    6.6
    60 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9121 Ratings7.160 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.0114 Ratings7.757 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics6.7110 Ratings5.330 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.947 Ratings6.36 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    7.8
    130 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Looker Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5129 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.5127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.4127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control8.257 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)8.6111 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    6.3
    109 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Looker Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access6.8104 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application6.390 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.696 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of IBM Cognos Analytics and Looker Studio
    Feature
    IBM Cognos Analytics
    9.2
    87 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Looker Studio
    -
    Ratings
    REST API7.683 Ratings00 Ratings
    Javascript API7.779 Ratings00 Ratings
    iFrames9.912 Ratings00 Ratings
    Java API10.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)9.915 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.99 Ratings00 Ratings
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    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
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    Cyfe
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    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
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    Score9.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    Kibana
    Score8.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (158 ratings)
    8.3
    (63 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.4
    (31 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (10 ratings)
    8.4
    (14 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (9 ratings)
    6.7
    (10 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.3
    (40 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.4
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Cognos AnalyticsLooker Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    For Transaction monitoring, we build reports for executive management, providing insights into the number of alerts, the types or categories of detection scenarios, the risk profile, and a snapshot of high- or urgent-priority cases to be reported to AUSTRAC. Congos helps to build the report by ingesting alert data exported from SAS datasets. It joins with other data from Teradata and Customer Hub (Oracle).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Visualizing cross-channel campaign performance can blend data from a few different sources to compare performance metrics like spend, clicks, and conversions side-by-side in a single view, which helps in quick budget reallocation decisions. When dealing with massive volumes of data (millions of rows) or highly complex queries, Looker Studio dashboards can become slow, laggy, or even crash. Performance issues are a frequent complaint when working with large datasets, making it unsuitable for enterprise-level companies
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • Enterprise reporting - Create, customise, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, etc.
    • Dashboard creation and data exploration & analysis - Using drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualisation. Additionally, using AI powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input (formation of pie, bar, line charts). It's useful for no-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheet data to get quick answers.
    • Building insights for accurate decision making - Package reports with data backed insights for stakeholders in pdf, and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting and strategic recommendations on relevant asks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Breath of data - the number of ways to interrogate the data is endless, and the options to view metrics alongside each other make for comprehensive datasets.
    • Data visualisation and customisation - the options for presenting data and separating out across pages allow for clean visuals and segmented information.
    • Easy shareability/usability - a quick and simple tool to introduce colleagues to, and easy to grant access for them to be able to view the data, without having to understand the setup itself.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • 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
    Read full review
    Google
    • It needs better handling of complex logic. We often need workarounds to perform complex custom calculations, and it can be really unpleasant at times.
    • Felt it got slow with a larger data set, and in one minor report, we had to set up time filters so that calculations during spikes could be traced more quickly.
    • Compare to competition they need to improve with notification things.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    It is the simplest and least expensive way for us to automate our reporting at this time. I like the ability to customize literally everything about each report, and the ability to send out reports automatically in emails. The only issue we have been having recently is a technical glitch in the automatic email report. Sadly, there is almost no support for this tool from Google, but is also free, so that is important to take into consideration
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    Looker Studio is easy to use, and it offers a sufficient variety of predefined visualizations to choose from. It's easy for us, and anyone can set up basic reporting without extensive data visualization skills. The interface layout is easy to understand, and it doesn't take long to get used to.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    I give it a lower support rating because it seems like our Dev team hasn't gotten the support they need to set up our database to connect. Seems like we hit a roadblock and the project got put on pause for dev. That sucks for me because it is harder to get the dev team to focus on it if they don't get the help they need to set it up.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    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
    Read full review
    Google
    Looker Studio is far easier to implement, stand up, and learn. The interface is simpler and user-friendly for various levels of data visualization/analysis knowledge and experience. The biggest benefit of Looker Studio, however, is its ease of connection to GA data and speed. Furthermore, since it is an online program/tool, it requires less CPU/battery/storage on the user's device.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    IBM
    We rate IBM Cognos Analytics a 9 out of 10 for overall scalability. The platform handles large numbers of users, reports, and analytical workloads very reliably. We have experienced strong performance even in demanding enterprise environments with substantial data volumes. Its architecture provides sufficient flexibility to scale resources according to demand, making it well suited for large, business-critical deployments.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • The platform can be pretty pricey.
    • Convoluted contracts and they fine you for any breach during audits.
    • Things are changed between releases without any warning and break.
    • It is second to none at being able to customize list and crosstab type reports.
    • You can easily set up a report to be emailed out every day and even have it export the report to a shared folder.
    • On-prem environments can be scaled up pretty much as much as you would like.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Free, so the only investment is time
    • Because it doesn't have native support of non-Google sources, it can cost more money than Tableau
    • The time spent formatting the templates or building connectors can have a negative impact on ROI
    • As a agency, charging for the reporting service is profitable after the first month or two after building the dashboard.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

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