IBM Cognos Delivers Value for Small-Medium Sized Businesses
We use IBM Cognos Analytics across our company. We use to do ad hoc reporting and automated reporting on our core system.
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson
Top Rated
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson
Overview
Reviews
Popular Features
View all 29 featuresReport Delivery Scheduling (52)
8.9
89%
Report sharing and collaboration (52)
8.5
85%
Drill-down analysis (52)
8.1
81%
Formatting capabilities (53)
7.9
79%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
View all pros & consPricing
View all pricingOn Demand Standard
$15.00
On Premise
Per User/Per Month
On Demand Plus
$35.00
On Premise
Per User/Per Month
On Demand Premium
$70.00
On Premise
Per User/Per Month
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/products/cognos…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $15 per month
Features Scorecard
BI Standard Reporting
7.6
76%
Ad-hoc Reporting
8.1
81%
Report Output and Scheduling
8.6
86%
Data Discovery and Visualization
7.3
73%
Access Control and Security
8.4
84%
Mobile Capabilities
6.5
65%
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
7.5
75%
Product Details
What is IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson?
Cognos Analytics is an AI-fueled business intelligence platform that supports the entire analytics cycle, from discovery to operationalization. Cognos Analytics gives every user — whether data scientist, business analyst or non-specialist — more power to perform relevant analysis in a way that ties back to organizational objectives. It shortens each user’s journey from simple to sophisticated analytics, allowing them to harness data to explore the unknown, identify new relationships, get a deeper understanding of outcomes and challenge the status quo. Visualize, analyze and share actionable insights about data with anyone in the organization.
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson Features
BI Platform Features
- Supported: Administration via Web Interface
- Supported: Live Connection to External Data
- Supported: Snapshot of External Data
- Supported: In-memory data model
- Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
- Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
- Supported: ETL Capability
- Supported: ETL Scheduler
Supported Data Sources Features
- Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
- Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
- Supported: Oracle
- Supported: MS SQL Server
- Supported: IBM DB2
- Supported: MySQL
- Supported: ODBC
- Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
- Supported: IBM Netezza
- Supported: SAP Hana
- Supported: Salesforce
- Supported: SAP
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
- Supported: Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Predictive modeling
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
- Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
- Supported: Predictive Analytics
- Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
- Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities Features
- Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
- Supported: Dedicated iOS Application
- Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features
- Supported: REST API
- Supported: Javascript API
Additional Features
- Supported: AI Forecasting
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson Integrations
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson Competitors
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | Global |
| Supported Languages | English, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi |
Alternatives
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson?
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.
How much does IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson cost?
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson starts at $15.
What are IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson's top competitors?
SAS Cost and Profitability Management, Tableau Public, and Tableau Server are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson.
What is IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson's best feature?
Reviewers rate Publish to PDF highest, with a score of 9.
Who uses IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson?
The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson are from Enterprises and the Information Technology & Services industry.
Reviews and Ratings
(470)
Ratings
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August 23, 2021
IBM Cognos Delivers Value for Small-Medium Sized Businesses
We use IBM Cognos Analytics across our company. We use to do ad hoc reporting and automated reporting on our core system.
- Automates reporting
- Enables precise reporting from database
- Enables users to share reports easily
- The user interface is slow to move from screen to screen.
- I wish there was a search function to find our data elements in the data warehouse.
- It would be helpful to have more clear error messages that you could better use to determine what needs to be changed.
We have not used these features.
August 29, 2021
We've been using it for years for [a] good reason
Our company has been using IBM Cognos Analytics for reporting purposes for many years and it has been pretty stable. The newer version of IBM Cognos Analytics has so many new features, like data sets and data modules, that have been helpful to build interactive dashboards that can be used to paint a clear picture of many reports.
- Data modules
- Data sets
- Event studio
- Dashboard
- More visualizations
We haven't yet used the self-service capabilities
August 24, 2021
Cognos Analytics - Versatile and delivers
Used enterprise wide to create and automate statistical and analytical reports and dashboard. Reports that provide insight and show trends on which business decisions are made.<br>
- Reporting
- Automating
- Dashboarding
- Event Studio needs to be supported by modern browsers.
- Embedding custom map layers
- Predictive analytics
Data has to be clean and in specific formal for AI Assistant to be useful. In many situations that is not the case.
January 13, 2022
Good business analyst tool to connect datasets and visualization
IBM Cognos Analytics is widely used by business analysts as a way to build dashboards and for data-analytic work. While other job families such as data scientists are using Python and Jupyter Notebook to connect data and visualization. The tools make easy connections with your database if your work scope is within the services that it provides.
- Connection.
- Prebuilt.
- Visualization.
- Fixed.
- Community support.
- Documentation.
Under the condition that the data cleansing and data analysis/visualization are very standard, the tool does speed up the data processing data. However, for important and inconsistent data cleansing, it requires lots of manual processing, and using the tool might lead to some serious damage to the data and bad business decisions.
September 16, 2021
Affordable BI solution for small businesses
IBM Cognos Analytics is an AI-powered BI solution made for more reliable data preparations and reporting. Their main target is to provide an all-in-one BI solution that connects your data relations, generating attractive and convenient graphical representations, and makes your predictions about what's going to happen to your business tomorrow. Every business is making its predictions with or without AI help these days, but IBM Cognos Analytics will show you why you should move to an AI-powered BI solution in the future. As a small business, it was a great opportunity for us to experience such a technically advanced solution for an affordable price.
- Advanced graphical representations of your data.
- Supports multiple raw data formats such as CSV files and spreadsheets, SQL databases, Google BigQuery and AWS related data formats.
- Able to create interactive dashboards with Drag and drop facility to create auto generated graphical representations.
- Android, iOS Support and proper cross browsing performances
- Would be great to see auto modeling support for data filtering, data discovering, and workflow collaboration.
- Custom Reporting, support for better forecasting.
IBM Cognos Analytics automatically creates interactive visualizations from your data using an online library, makes them available so you'll use them whenever you would like. Also, you can choose recommendations of the visualizations that the majority effectively illustrate your points. IBM Cognos Analytics is designed to enable consistent and cohesive decision-making in terms you understand. Workflow capabilities structure and automate processes behind the scenes. Once you got to share information and track progress, others will see what you are able to see. And, if you're online on your desktop or on your tablet, the user experience will basically be equivalent on all platforms.
It [IBM Cognos Analytics] is used for report-building purposes and creating dashboards with data that could be crucial for decision-making. It is used by the IT department and serves across the whole organization. The business problems that it addresses are it helps in the process of automation and reduce redundant tasks and also improves report readiness.
- It is really fast, execution is smooth.
- User friendly, easy to navigate and encourages 'do it yourself'.
- Improves decision making by providing useful insights into data in a never visualized before way.
- Sorting results are not accurate sometimes.
- Multiple data points are mapped to a single location on a map.
- The forecasting functions could be improved.
These additional features have enhanced the viability of Cognos, but we are yet to use these features more aggressively. At the moment we are focusing on the automation of existing manual prepared reports by automating them using Cognos and creating schedules to automate, report delivery processes in order not to miss timelines and be more efficient.
April 01, 2021
Eliminate data silos with IBM Cognos Analytics
We implement IBM Cognos Analytics to other companies. We mostly implement it in the financial department because of the users' needs: daily report generation and distribution and easy access to accounts information. One of the major problems that we solved using IBM Cognos Analytics was the automatic generation of the profit and loss report depending on the selected subsidiary.
- Great customization capacity
- Fits the needs of all departments
- Easy-to-use end-user tools
- Visualizations--more personalization capabilities (like graphs)
- In the latest version (11.1.5), the colors of the data source model are the same for all the elements (hierarchies, dimensions, etc.)
From our experience with users, no one uses AI Assistant. All that they want is to have the correct information in their email every morning. Most of them do not spend time formatting reports; they just make their lists and sometimes add a title.
March 02, 2021
High Quality Enterprise Analytics Platform
We use IBM Cognos Analytics internally to provide reporting, dashboarding, and analytical insights about our business. We also implement the solution in conjunction with our clients to help gain more effective business insights. It provides our clients and users with up-to-date dashboards and reports connecting to a wide variety of data sources.
- Enterprise reporting
- Interactive dashboarding
- Data exploration
- Data connectivity
- Dashboard performance
- Data visualization
IBM Cognos Analytics' data modules allow for basic data prep tasks and continue to evolve. They provide a good web-based environment to manage metadata and build out calculations and filters, which help improve self-service analytics for end users. The AI assistant is a nice enhancement in recent releases.
My organization is using the toolset of IBM Cognos Analytics that provides incredibly professional analytics, reporting, score carding, events, and metrics reporting. Our company is using the different components that designed by the software for different purposes. Data visualization is so easy for my company now and we can see where is our business today.
- You can create powerful and professional visualizations that explain the story of your data.
- This can also protect your data from misuse.
- Web-based data modeling allows you to uploading and joining your data.
- The software can take a lot of space.
- Sometimes you can get stuck due to troubleshooting messages as a beginner.
- At the beginning creating reports is difficult but with the passage of time you can learn more.
These self-service capabilities have enabled our reporting and analytics activities so we can share now the reports with colleagues. Now it's so easy to collaborate with other people. This has been proved as a complete solution for my company especially. Even automated dashboard creation and analysis are also so good in this software.
April 20, 2021
IBM Cognos analytics 10.2 - Admin review.
IBM [Cognos] Analytics help us to create reports, analysis across various data [departments].
We have created packages and cubes using the tools.
Matching source and target difference, generating balance reports.
We have created packages and cubes using the tools.
Matching source and target difference, generating balance reports.
- Easy to generate reports
- User friendly
- Training user to analyses, running queries
- User based licensing.
- IBM service restart taking more time.
- Various error when deploying SSO
Self service capabilties help end user to create their own report depend on the their requirement, which does not require burden for developer to create one for them & attending meeting
Help them to run their own job with schedule and automate it, not supported by IT anymore. they own [it] themselves.
Analytics help use to analyze data across various data sources, framework which we created for them help user to make their own data analyzes
Help them to run their own job with schedule and automate it, not supported by IT anymore. they own [it] themselves.
Analytics help use to analyze data across various data sources, framework which we created for them help user to make their own data analyzes
March 30, 2021
Cognos is a fantastic tool with plenty of possibilities
IBM Cognos Analytics is used in the whole organisation for Tactical and Strategical purposes. I am in the Business Intelligence Team and we produce Reports and Dashboards. We also use Jobs and Events to launch it when the ETL jobs finish to load the target tables. [With] the product we can report on activities and financials data.
- Creating Reports
- Creating Dashboards
- Drill throught from one report or dashboard to a detailed report
- Add extension to add new reporting possibilities to the product
- Some earlier versions comes with bugs more than before with Cognos 10
- Advanced reporting need experienced user
- Dashboards are difficult to be correctly sized into a page
Cognos has an easy reporting scheduler with possibility to send report to a folder or by email.
For advanced reporting, we can also add directly an SQL statement using the defined connection to our datawarehouse.
For advanced reporting, we can also add directly an SQL statement using the defined connection to our datawarehouse.
it's being used to report information about the whole organization. Resolves automation of enterprise-level reporting and self-service analytics.
- Automated report distribution
- Governed data
- Self-service
- Data modelling
- Reporting & dashboards
- Consistency of use in the extensive set of available visualisations.
- Software quality control to prevent bugs when upgrading.
- Administration tools (need 3rd party software for batch admin tasks).
80% of the reporting needs are covered by reporting from existing framework manager models. These new features work really well when we need to ingest new data and run the AI assistant to identify connections. Since 11.1.R7 with the improvements to datasets, the options to work with data are unlimited.
February 22, 2021
IBM Cognos Analytics: A new way of data analysis
IBM Cognos is being widely used as a web-based business intelligence tool to solve the real business problem of monitoring.
- Report Studio for the management reports.
- OLAP functionality using the analysis module.
- Interactive dashboards.
- State-of-the-art technologies like AI-based features.
- Monitoring related features.
- Machine learning.
It helps improve efficiency in the process and saves time by auto data cleansing, joins, and other data-related assistance.
October 20, 2020
IBM Cognos Analytics has evolved
I have been working with multiple clients that have Cognos Analytics in-house to deliver reports to multiple departments within the organization. Some clients have standardized on Cognos across the entire organization. Every use case is unique, but the main strengths of Cognos are its enterprise reporting capabilities. Professional report authors typically develop sophisticated reports that are automated and delivered across large groups of consumers. The goal is to encourage a self-service model, and Cognos also supports that, but adoption of self-service is not consistent across different companies.
- Standardized reporting.
- Enterprise data governance.
- AI-infused data discovery.
- OLAP data exploration.
- Dashboarding.
- Visualization.
- Data cleansing.
- Data preparation.
The AI Assistant does enable these automated tasks, but most developers will build models and dashboards manually. The opportunity to leverage these features to achieve broader self-service is there, but it requires a culture shift more than anything. Mostly, the AI features are valuable because they eliminate certain steps, such as recognizing data types, inferring usage, and matching columns when joining data sources. It is also very useful in suggesting visualizations and other ways of looking at data when using the Explore feature.
We use IBM Cognos Analytics across many departments. We use the product because it offers robustness and enterprise-level security to the data we present. No more working in silos as the datamarts we report off of are used widely. Single source of truth.
Adhoc module is separate from the advanced report studio so it becomes easier to start using the tool.
Ease of use and integration with excel and data modules are a winner as we can merge data from packages with external data without having to include it in the datamart.
Adhoc module is separate from the advanced report studio so it becomes easier to start using the tool.
Ease of use and integration with excel and data modules are a winner as we can merge data from packages with external data without having to include it in the datamart.
- Integration with Excel
- Enterprise level security
- Ease of use for Adhoc reporting needs
- Rendering speed of reports - sometimes the cognos server doesnt respond in time
- Graphical user interface not as user friendly as other BI tools in the market
- Commentary and Annotations on data points lagging behind in Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics has made it easier to integrate data from packages (which have been developed using framework manager) with external sources of data without having to go back and re-design in the package. So it offers on-the-fly modeling which is essential. Data modules introduced recently is a cool feature. Dashboarding is completely new with Cognos Analytics and integration with AI Assistant has helped build dashboards within seconds. Natural Language processing has made it easier to build dashboards for business users. It has made the overall end user experience much better.
November 03, 2020
How we use IBM Cognos Analytics at Office Depot
IBM Cognos Analytics is being used across our whole organization, from the stores that access links to previously executed reports that are saved as outputs to our headquarters and field users who connect to IBM Cognos Analytics to execute, on demand, any canned report. Users have the ability to self service by creating their own ad-hoc reports. We have a group of IT employees that creates all model/packages needed for this to be possible. We also run batch process every morning and schedule a set of reports that are used by executives and different users across multiple departments like finance, supply chain, store operations.
- Schedules and delivery of reports
- Visualizations in the latest version 11.1.7
- Ease of use for end users
- Ability to allow users ad-hoc reporting
- Active reports (disconnected/portable reports)
- More up-to-date functions available with recent RDBS technologies like Snowflake
- Better handling of in memory capabilities (cache, datasets)
The main reporting tools (reports and dashboard) are intuitive and allow users with minimal experience to create their own ad-hoc reports, slice and dice the company's data, and find answers to questions they have. The ability to then share those same reports with colleagues (so they can do their own customizations) very quickly has helped a lot in the decision making about specific business needs.
January 15, 2021
IBM Cognos Analytics Review
Used across the whole organization.
Addresses practically all our important, and most of our less important business questions.
Addresses practically all our important, and most of our less important business questions.
- Ad hoc combination of attributes to select data (in order to analyze data).
- Range of front-ends (cubes, standard reports, query- and report-studio for power-users).
- Integration of diagram-functionality in cubes.
- Downloading in different formats (csv, xls, pdf,...).
- OLAP-cubes MUST IMMEDIATELY be upgraded to 64-bit-technology (if not, we are lost as Cognos/IBM-customer).
- Easier integration of complex authorisation systems (concepts) into cubes (vertical as well as horizontal authorisation).
- Much more statistics-functionality in cubes! (IBM bought SPSS 10 years ago!! where is the benefit of Cognos-users!!)!!!
Not really. Because our users stick to Cognos OLAP-Cubes. No interest in using fancy dashboards. Management not interested in dashboards (just in numbers). The real enablement was, many many years ago, cubes over standard-reports.
October 20, 2020
Rich and scalable platform for Analytics
Our company provides banking solutions to many financial institutes in Europe. IBM Cognos Analytics is the primary platform we provide to this institutes for analyzing their business and clients. With a large number of standard Reports many areas are addressed. Additionally we provide packages for building individual Reports. We also use IBM Cognos Analytics for internal Reporting solutions.
- Powerful Report Authoring solution.
- Debugging is not easy or at least cumbersome.
Self-service BI is an integral part of the overall Analytics solution we provide to our customers. Providing access to all relevant data through packages allows building individual reports for a wide range of business issues.
April 22, 2020
IBM Cognos - BI system of choice
We use Cognos Analytics across our Sales and Finance to provide reporting across the company and solve all our analytics needs.
- Self-service report authoring
- Great visualization for dashboard
- Data security
- Enterprise portal
- Dynamic default prompts
- Excel + and - options when exporting report for summary view
- Better data-driven subscription
February 05, 2020
IBM Cognos Report Studio works great for distributing data
We use Cognos to send PDF, Excel, HTML reports to individuals emails or have users run their reports manually that they would like to have exported as a PDF, Excel, or HTML format. We also utilize Cognos bursting to send individuals their appropriate reports without having to make several reports based on a burst key. We use Cognos to help provide insight into historical data for uses throughout business areas of the company.
- List/Table Reporting. It is awesome at providing detailed table lists of rows and provides it in multiple pages of a PDF based on the size of the table being exported.
- Bursting to the appropriate individuals what they want to see/ have privileges to see.
- Being able to email reports, whether that is HTML, PDF, or Excel formats.
- With the upgrade from Cognos 10 to Cognos 11, there were a lot of features, like run schedule once, weren't brought over to the newest version of Report Studio.
- I felt like they were trying to chase Tableau and Qlik with dashboarding rather than focusing on their bread and butter of Report Studio or which other Business Intelligence tools don't do very well.
We are a software reseller and consulting company. A few of our clients use IBM Cognos Analytics as their platform of choice for Enterprise reporting and business intelligence. A few of them are cloud users.
- Single source of truth enterprise-wide
- Most secure BI platforms available for reporting, dashboards, and analytical analysis
- Software POD availability across Asia Pacific
- Seamless integration with other IBM Business Analytics software suite
January 21, 2020
Give me a 60th of an hour and I’ll give you sales!!
- Cognos is used company wide to analyze sales. The convenience it provides for drilling down into different metrics is terrific. It can be used to send out last year sales by department and sub class so the management team can have the ability to plan for future business based off of last year’s numbers.
- Amount of historical data.
- Ease of navigation.
- Ability to run multiple window within a subset.
- When backtracking data can remain filled from last interaction.
September 06, 2019
IBM Cognos Analytics Review
IBM Cognos Analytics was used to make an Interactive dashboard. Wanted to show sales for ATG travel expenses.
- It is extremely quick!
- Really accurate!
- It can be shared with anyone that has access.
- Visually can be improved.
- Although easy to use, it does feel slow sometimes when there is a lag.
January 17, 2019
IBM Cognos is a powerful tool to have in your organization
IBM Cognos is being utilized in our organization to conduct back end corporate reporting tied to our accounting software. It is being used in a wide variety of departments including HR, Finance, IT and many others. By using IBM Cognos, our organization is attempting to achieve work efficiency by getting tailored reports and better organization of our data.
- What IBM Cognos does really well is provide precise data that may otherwise be hard to retrieve from your primary accounting software. While doing so, it organizes this data such that it becomes much more meaningful to analyze.
- IBM Cognos also does a fantastic job through the Query Studio module to give certain users the ability to create simple reports and modify existing reports, this allows the flexibility a user needs in getting the intended data.
- IBM Cognos also provides the ability to utilize a BI tool for complicated reporting requirements or in cases when there are many data dependencies that exist. This BI tool enables Cognos to tackle many organizational and data challenges that companies face in the industry.
- IBM Cognos can improve on the way certain modules like Query Studio work where pulling various data feilds and merging them together is not as simple as it seems. In order to effectively use Query Studio, a user needs to be well trained and it's not a module that simply anyone can pick up.
- IBM Cognos can also improve on the way it interfaces with other non-IBM software. It struggles to offer the same level of efficiency that it offers when interfacing with CostPoint, Deltek T&E when compared to non-IBM software like Unanet.
- IBM Cognos needs to develop other modules further and need to offer greater applicability to these modules for those to be as widely used as the popularly used modules.
May 10, 2019
Cognos today review
It is being used as a report engine for an HR and fiance data warehouse. It is also being used for planning and budgeting for all of Hennepin county. It addresses our ability to report on our financial data as well as working to bring our HR data into the warehouse as well. The planning and budgeting has been an efficiency boom for our budgeting.
- Reporting
- Drill throughs
- Planning and budgeting
- Forecasting
- CAFR book reporting
- License costs
- License monitoring