IBM Cognos Analytics vs. Qlik Sense

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).

Incentivized

Qlik Sense is a program whose purpose is to greatly improve all your operations and use of all data in an organic way. The mission will always be to increase the economic and commercial processes of the company in a short time. I recommended it for its high technology, which was Created for this area, the results are successful. We have noticed how it has increased relationships with our clients thanks to the credibility and security that we provide.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Flexibility in data recording, from the app, as well as in handling them. Allowing you to view reports quickly and effectively.
• Easy to generate dynamic graphics according to our needs.
• It is very easy to use, intuitive, so it does not generate costs in the learning process compared to the tool with collaborators

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Scalability is RAM limited, all data is associative and in-memory so server's RAM is directly proportional to performance
• Limitation on advanced analytics capabilities in the form of R integration to perform complex statistical and analytical calculations
• Can have more intuitive interface

Incentivized

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.

Qlik Sense is a constantly improving it's software and working with its' users to make it better. They are great at keeping their users informed of progress and care about delivering a quality product

Incentivized

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.

Standard user interface and powerful analytic functions is GREAT. As technical person working in the background there are more things to do to make this a completely great tool. Some functions that should be standard requires consult scripting and hours. Now we are using it quite advanced and with many servers and in combination with QlikView. So overall I love the tool. But it could be better and user friendly and powerful in the background

Incentivized

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

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.

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

Not only can you ask the support team for help, but you can also ask the community. Also with the community there is a vast amount of problems that have already been solved. The problem you are encountering has a likely chance of already being discussed and even solved in the community section saving you time from reaching out.

Incentivized

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 instructor was very knowledgeable.

Incentivized

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

The online instructor was very knowledgeable.

Incentivized

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.

Hire Qlik consultants. It's better done by them or with their aid.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The customization of the platform opens up plenty of other options depending on the use cases. The API layer is incredibly rich and makes integration of Qlik based visualization into web pages a simple and effective pattern. It's been very easy to use with a great community made up of professionals. Qlik Sense has introduces artificial Intelligence into my data visualization and reporting activity.

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.

• 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

Incentivized

• Once an app is published and running good, we can quickly see the time we save to analyze data.
• It's hard sometimes to realize the money we save by using this system.
• People start understanding the power of data and asking more questions.

Incentivized