IBM Cognos Analytics vs. Oracle Hyperion

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Oracle Hyperion
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Oracle's Corporate Performance Management suite was acquired from Hyperion in 2007. Hyperion customers are encouraged to migrate to Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM.N/A
Pricing
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
$10.00
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
$40.00
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Considered Both Products
IBM Cognos Analytics
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
It was cost prohibitive to switch platforms we have a huge investment in our Cognos implementation. There was retooling costs for our resources training costs for our users as well as a million $ plus investment in licensing costs. We could have considered a move to the cloud …
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
There are a number of reporting systems, but these other systems are really data visualization systems that lack the ability deliver information through an enterprise on their own. IBM Cognos is well suited to be the delivery system for an enterprise's analytics and the …
Oracle Hyperion
Chose Oracle Hyperion
Oracle has led the charge on the development of true EPM reporting. The development of rudimentary KPIs to much more complex models all can be housed and managed by Hyperion. Integrates with Office through Smartview, which provides flexibility in creating Word documents, board …
Chose Oracle Hyperion
Pricing is one factor and the features offered by the Oracle EPM and IBM Cognos shifted the favour in terms of Oracle EPM.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.9
103 Ratings
4% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports8.594 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.8101 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.498 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
105 Ratings
0% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis8.1103 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.1104 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.873 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.4101 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
105 Ratings
1% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Publish to Web8.327 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.799 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.0102 Ratings00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.112 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.1
95 Ratings
0% above category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.090 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.287 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.183 Ratings00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.022 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
8.3
100 Ratings
4% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)8.497 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.396 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.296 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.425 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.378 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.3
83 Ratings
9% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access7.977 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application7.368 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.174 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
7.5
62 Ratings
5% below category average
Oracle Hyperion
-
Ratings
REST API7.359 Ratings00 Ratings
Javascript API7.658 Ratings00 Ratings
iFrames8.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API6.911 Ratings00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.110 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.87 Ratings00 Ratings
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
-
Ratings
Oracle Hyperion
10.0
22 Ratings
7% above category average
Long-term financial planning00 Ratings10.017 Ratings
Financial budgeting00 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Forecasting00 Ratings10.021 Ratings
Scenario modeling00 Ratings10.016 Ratings
Management reporting00 Ratings10.021 Ratings
Analytics and Reporting
Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cognos Analytics
-
Ratings
Oracle Hyperion
8.2
20 Ratings
0% above category average
Personalized dashboards00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Color-coded scorecards00 Ratings7.115 Ratings
KPIs00 Ratings9.917 Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis00 Ratings9.917 Ratings
Key Performance Indicator setting00 Ratings8.015 Ratings
Benchmarking with external data00 Ratings6.013 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
MIP Fund Accounting
MIP Fund Accounting
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Centage
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 8.2 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM Cognos AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(128 ratings)
10.0
(23 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(27 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(8 ratings)
8.0
(1 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
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(3 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 AnalyticsOracle Hyperion
Likelihood to Recommend
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).
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Well suited: For use in multiple offices around the world. I was able to obtain financial reporting data from 5 foreign offices and then consolidate their data with 3 domestic USA offices to prepare a consolidated financial statement. Less Appropriate: Translating the financial value for consulting services could be a bit challenging because that required human interaction and judgement. It would have been great to be able to set up some software to be able to interpret this and let it run for all future project work revenue projection.
Read full review
Pros
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • This product handles budgeting by Employee and/or Position very well. It is highly flexible and allows Hyperion administrators the ability to develop a planning application that fits a variety of different business needs.
  • It is great at calculating benefits using business rules to automate the population of these fringe costs in the overall budget planning process. This greatly reduces user error.
  • It allows you to seed the operating budget based on changes to key drivers, such as percentage increases, flat dollar increases and more detailed changes using business rules.
  • Allows visibility into the plans for each unit across the organization, rolled up into an overall budget for the campus.
  • It handles the creation of budgets with multiple chartfield segments or dimensions, which most other budgeting systems cannot handle well. It can aggregate these very quickly.
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • One pain point for us is the consolidation and translation process. Needing to translate the data over and over again is frustrating and there is no visibility into how many users are running a translation. If multiple users attempt to translate the same data set, say goodbye to your performance but you have no way of knowing! (Unless you want to pull up a task audit which is not a very realistic expectation). It has the been the quickest way for us to bring the system to it's knees. The consolidation process performs in direct correlation to the complexity of the calculation/consolidation rules. So, while the product is extremely flexible, you still have to be careful how you design your rules and calculations to make sure that you do it on the smallest subset of data as possible to avoid large processing times. This makes sense, but requires some significant expertise that most organizations do not have in-house.
  • The Hyperion Financial Reporting product is ridiculously outdated and clunky to use. The interface for designing reports is not intuitive, and not easy to modify once a report is built. I think there must be a strategic decision to move away from it and go to something more like Oracle BI because I just can't understand why in the world they don't update the reporting product. It also requires a significant level of expertise to be able to use. Not a great solution at all if you want multiple end-users to create reports in something other than Excel. Nobody except the HFM admin (which I used to be) in our company even touches this module.
  • Another pain point is the amount of IT support that is required to run this thing, and again, specialized knowledge of Hyperion products and how they work is required for IT to adequately support it. This goes for application servers and the Oracle database that the applications are running on.
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
Discontinued Products
We're in the middle of the road because we are not sure that other products on the market fit the bill for what we need yet. Hyperion is expensive and burdensome from an administrator and maintenance standpoint, but it still seems to be the best solution for what we need. Show us an equally capable SaaS consolidation product and we'll talk again.
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
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
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
Discontinued Products
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.
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Discontinued Products
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.
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Discontinued Products
The premium support team provides much needed dedicated customer service which we are after for what we have paid for this service. We are satisfied with the service and support and do not have any instance where there was an issue that requires escalation to get the right support team. Though the incidence of major issues that requires the premium support are less, we prefer to keep this as a safety net.
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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.
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Discontinued Products
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
Discontinued Products
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.
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Discontinued Products
I use Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Mangement because the company I work at requires me to use it in the Financial Planning sector as most of their data is stored in it. I am open minded and ready to use other performance management tools created by Oracle if my work permits.
Read full review
Scalability
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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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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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Discontinued Products
  • Oracle Hyperion allows us to automate and consolidate financial data that used to be performed manually in spreadsheets. From that perspective the ROI is huge.
  • Oracle Hyperion functionality is extensive and allows us to perform most functions for planning, consolidating and reporting on our financial data.
  • One negative with Oracle Hyperion is that it is complicated to implement and maintain. It takes expertise at all levels (infrastructure and management) to realize the benefits from it.
Read full review
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