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IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics

Overview

What is IBM Cognos Analytics?

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.

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Recent Reviews

IBM Cognos Analytics

8 out of 10
March 20, 2024
Incentivized
This technology is a great way for our business to see the scope of the work we are doing in one large dashboard. The data driven insights …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 30 features
  • Formatting capabilities (103)
    8.1
    81%
  • Drill-down analysis (102)
    8.1
    81%
  • Report Delivery Scheduling (101)
    8.0
    80%
  • Customizable dashboards (100)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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On Demand - Standard

$10.00

Cloud
per month per user

On Demand - Premium

$40.00

On Premise
per month per user

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)

  • $10 per month per user
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Product Demos

IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour

Walnut.io
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.9
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.1
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.3
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.1
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.3
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.3
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.5
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is IBM Cognos Analytics?

Cognos Analytics is an AI-fueled business intelligence platform that supports the entire analytics cycle, from discovery to operationalization. Cognos Analytics gives users — whether data scientist, business analyst or non-specialist — more power to perform relevant analysis in a way that ties back to organizational objectives. It aims to shorten 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. Users can visualize, analyze and share actionable insights about data with anyone in the organization.


IBM Cognos Analytics 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: Mobile 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 Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Urdu, Farsi

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

IBM Cognos Analytics starts at $10.

Tableau Public, Tableau Server, and Microsoft Power BI are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.

Reviewers rate Publish to PDF highest, with a score of 8.7.

The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(580)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 128)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence and analytics platform to gather and aggregate data from multiple parts of our organization, then analyze and visualize data to make business decisions (mainly to improve B2B sales and customer satisfaction, but also as a hint for developing new products/solutions for our clients).
  • Data Visualization: Plenty of options exist for multiple use cases, and dashboards are easy to implement and customize.
  • Integration with IBM Watson: makes it easy to use Watson AI features (NLP etc.) on your data.
  • Its advanced analytics functionalities with powerful pattern detection/prediction models.
  • Steep learning curve for beginners. It takes time to understand what can be done and how.
  • The user interface feels old and not easy to use, especially compared to recent solutions.
  • Limited options for user identification (LDAP only).
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).
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our marketing agency, we primarily use IBM Cognos Analytics to dive deep into customer and non-customer data for a major financial bank brand we're working with. Our main goal is to gauge the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns and track the performance of financial products and services, like how many new credit card subscriptions or account openings we're getting. Basically, Cognos Analytics is our go-to for everything data-related. It helps us pull together all kinds of data, make sense of it, and then present it in a way that’s easy for both our team and our client to understand. We're talking detailed reports, dashboards full of insights, and really clear visualizations that show us what's working and what's not. It's been a really helpful tool in terms of making data-driven decisions to fine-tune our strategies and boost sales performance for the bank. It's like having a superpower for data analytics in our toolkit.
  • The user-friendly dashboards lets us create custom dashboards super quickly. It's great at visualizing data in a way that's easy to grasp, which means we can spot trends at a glance without getting lost in the numbers.
  • AI-powered Insights are a lifesaver. It automatically highlights patterns and insights we might miss, making our analysis more thorough without extra effort on our part.
  • Data integration is a breeze. Merging data from various sources is very simple to implement. Whether it's customer feedback or sales figures, Cognos handles it seamlessly, giving us a complete view without the headache of manual merging.
  • We love the report automation. Generating reports is no longer a time-consuming task. We set up what we need once, and Cognos does the rest, automating our weekly or monthly reports and saving us a ton of time.
  • The learning curve can be a bit of a challenge. Getting the hang of Cognos Analytics was a bit of a challenge at first. It's packed with features, which is great, but it can be overwhelming. A simplified introductory mode for new users would be a huge help.
  • The mobile experience could be a lot better. Accessing reports on the go is a bit clunky. The mobile interface could definitely use some polishing to make it as smooth and intuitive as the desktop experience.
  • Performance with large datasets sometimes lages. When we're working with really big data sets, things can slow down a bit. Improving the efficiency and speed for these situations would make our data analysis tasks even smoother.
Cognos is fantastic for businesses like ours that need to dive deep into customer data to evaluate marketing strategies. It's especially good when you're dealing with multiple data sources and need to bring everything together in a coherent, visual format for analysis and decision-making. Also, if your team values data-driven insights to guide your strategies, Cognos Analytics is a powerful ally. Where it might be less appropriate is for small startups or teams with very basic data analysis needs. The complexity and cost could be overkill when simpler, less expensive solutions like Power Bi, or Tableau would do. Additionally, if quick, on-the-fly mobile access to data is critical for your team, you might find the mobile experience a bit lacking.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I work in an industry which is completely data driven, using IBM Cognos Analytics we can easily schedule reports that could be sent out to stake holders without any manual interference.

The data driven analytics is very helpfull in generating graph reports and also generate predictions
  • Scheduled report generational and email
  • Very good for customising reports and creating accurate reports
  • It can easily integrate with multiple ERP's
  • Pricing is a bit higher
  • You cannot share report to users who do not have a license
  • Very difficult to implement it for the first time without admin support
The IBM Cognos Analytics is well suited in places where is there is a lot of data to be processed, using this tool all the data can be split it to multiple reports. Our BA team was complaining about raw data being given to them and the time it was taking time to extract this data however with IBM Cognos Analytics tool this was done within no time , which actually helped the team to work on the data
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. It offers options for customizing and scheduling reports as per our requirements. It has a mobile application that works seamlessly. Depending on the scope, licensing, and maintenance can go from cheap to expensive.
  • 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.
  • API integration is not upto the mark with very limited options.
  • Laptops get overheated when the tool is used from moderate to heavy use. Also, there is a lag in the tool times.
  • Licensing & Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
  • Lot of scope to improve the customer support & its not upto the industry standards.
Well suited: 1. We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. 2. Options of customizing & scheduling reports as per our requirements basis. 3. Has a mobile application that works seamlessly. Less Appropriate: 1. API integration with minimal options is not up to the mark. Laptops get overheated when using the tool, from moderate to heavy use. 2. Also, there is a lag in the tool times. 3. There is a lot of scope to improve customer support & it's not up to industry standards. 4. Licensing & Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
Shelby Kolb | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is used by some of the teams for modeling, predictive analysis using historical data, and deep insights on overall Business Intelligence.
  • advanced modeling
  • reporting and dashboarding
  • integration with engineer toolsets
  • admin access
  • re-running reports
  • user experience (modernization)
IBM Cognos Analytics is great for deep-level stakeholder Business Intelligence and performance, but not as appropriate for quick, ad-hoc analysis and dashboarding for junior level, non-technical stakeholders and partners in my opinion. We have not been able to sync the data with newer data streams, such as Digital Communications, marketing, etc.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is business intelligence platform which enables organizations to make insights from their data and also provides informed decisions. Few business problems and how my organization addresses it: It allows organization to create interactive dashboards and reports, and can get AI powered insights too which helps in analyze trends and metrics. Through this user can explore data from multiple sources to cover insights, patterns. It also provides ad hoc querying and predictive analytics. It performs operational analytics which helps organization to improve productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction. we can analyze the data in real time which enhances performance and business growth.
Use Case:
Supply Chain Optimization
Sales and marketing analytics
Customer segmentation and analysis
  • It provides statistical analysis and predictive modeling which helps to forecast sales trends based on data and other factors.
  • It provides user friendly interface which helps users to explore data without extensive IT support. Like sales and marketing teams can use self service BI to analyze customer data and personalize campaigns for marketing.
  • It integrates well with IBM products and also with third party which enables organization to integrate with different products for better results and growth.
  • It provides security and governance features which maintains confidentiality, and compliance of data. It impose HIPAA compliance by providing role based access and encryption to protect sensitive data.
  • 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.
Well Suited Scenarios:
When it comes to financial planning processes, Cognos Analytics is suitable as it provides budgeting, forecasting capabilities. It helps in creating, analyzing forecasts and budgets.
When organization need to manage and monitor performances across different departments and teams Cognos Analytics is used to track KPIs, set targets and measure performance against thresholds.
Less Appropriate Scenarios:
For small stakeholders with limited resources, it might be concerning as it takes investment in cost, training and infrastructure. For them, it is cost effective to use simpler analytics tool.
For simpler and easier visualization, Cognos Analytics is not appropriate as it offers advanced analytics options and might be difficult to use and navigate through the platform.
It is not suited for those use cases, where high volume of data is streamed on real time as it offers near real time data integration.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos Analytics is a powerful tool that we use in our business to generate comprehensive reports and analytical insights from our financial information. Not only do we generate reports, but we also use it to create dynamic dashboards that our management team can use to monitor performance in real-time and identify emerging trends. This tool is not limited to a specific department. In fact, it is used across the entire business, especially when it comes to meeting our end-of-year reporting needs.
  • Cognos Analytics integrates with data sources like databases and spreadsheets, as well as cloud storage platforms, so you can view and analyze data across multiple sources in a single interface.
  • Advanced Analytics Cognos Analytics provides advanced analytics capabilities such as predictive analytics, statistical modeling, and more, so you can discover hidden trends, predict future events, and make decisions based on data.
  • Interactive visualization The platform offers a wide range of visualizations, from charts and graphs to interactive maps, so you can present your data in a way that is visually appealing and easy to understand. You can also customize the visualizations to fit your specific needs and preferences.
  • Optimizing Natural Language Processing (NLP): While NLP is a powerful tool, it doesn’t always deliver accurate or relevant outcomes. Optimizing NLP to increase precision and responsiveness would improve user experience and productivity.
IBM Cognos Analytics is great for data integration, but for organizations with very complex data transformation needs, its capabilities may be lacking. In these cases, you may need other data preparation tools to preprocess your data prior to analysis.
Raflesia Pequeno | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used to carry out real-time BI, to monitor the use of licenses and services from third-party suppliers, looking for opportunities to reduce expenses.
  • More intuitive than classic bi, with basic training you can create basic dashboards.
  • More variety of customization
  • Improved interface and layout, it looks like a Windows 98 program
Excel reports are good, we can use our SQL query directly in BI and translate it to your language easily.
Dean Jones | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The business urgently required a consolidated repository of data, serving as the single source of truth. Such a platform would facilitate better decision making as now data can provide more accurate and comprehensive planning, budgeting, and forecasting, customizable to suit our distinct requirements, ensuring streamlined operations and informed decision-making across the different organisational units.
  • The solution takes all inputs natively into the system — no data validation is required.
  • Staff can rely on data accuracy, leading to more confidence and better business decision-making
  • Forecasts that had previously taken three merchandise team members up to five days could now be produced within hours, yielding far greater visibility on long-term projections.
  • Better visualization tools
  • Sometimes a bit too complex, takes bit of time to understand it
  • Some parts of the system are complex to maintain like Anaylsis studio
IBM's developer network provides lots of resources for learning this tool and has a supportive community. It's important to have good people to support, implement and maintain the system. IBM Cognos has come a long way and have done a lot of good features with dashboarding, still some way to go though.
Hemant Chaturvedi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Cognos Analytics suite for developing Analytics solutions and consuming visualization reports and dashboards to get incredible insights from the collected application data.
Our clients appreciate the intuitive look and feel of the reporting solutions generated using this suite. It is an ideal choice among various enterprise grade business intelligence solutions like QlikSense, Tableau, Informatica etc.
  • Handling enormous amounts of data for analytics development.
  • Highly responsive end to end solutions built leveraging the ever-reliable IBM cloud.
  • Efficient collaboration among team members and reduced dependency on isolated developers.
  • Could extend the integration capabilities for many third party platforms which are already being supported by its competitors for quite some time now.
  • Could be made a little more citizen developer friendly against its current approach of being more understandable by developers. One good example is Power BI which is highly usable even by non-developers who are proficient in using excel formulas, for a lot, if not all of the requirements.
  • Resource consumption needs to be optimized to handle loads even with lower specifications based platforms considering it has capability to run on browsers as well.
Well suited for:
Huge workloads handling in a highly analytics process demanding job.
Highly responsive and nearly live reporting is needed for more active analytics modelling.
Need evergreen automation capabilities on top of analytical solutions.

Less suited for:
Low specifications based infrastructure. It consumes high specs resources for running.
For a citizen development/non-development business team designers.
March 20, 2024

Best Business AI Tool

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Cognos Analytics extensively in our data research. Our research is primarily based on the data input of demographics of our customers / potential customers, and what kind of services can be best offered to them. We have a bulk of data from the customers using our portfolio management and investment banking services, and IBM Cognos Analytics helps us get meaningful information out of that data
  • Charts!
  • Dashboard reporting
  • Assigning of roles and rights to users
  • Speed
  • User interface
It is very well suited for us when we have a lot of data which we need to present into a meaningful information. It also helps junior resources in the company to also play an important role in data analytics - plain English commands help in that.
I guess it would be less appropriate for smaller organisations with less quantum of data.
March 20, 2024

IBM Cognos Analytics

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This technology is a great way for our business to see the scope of the work we are doing in one large dashboard. The data driven insights help us reach our goals and make more informed decisions. The software integrates reporting, modeling, analysis, dashboards, stories, and event management so that you can understand your organization's data, and make effective business decisions.
  • User friendly
  • Strong graphics
  • Data visualization could be improved-more variety in graphics
IBM Cognos Analytics gives users formatted and interactive dashboards with custom visualizations for users to make anywhere, anytime from any device. A great way to understand our business landscape and to gain business intelligence about our clients and partners. Data driven decisions help us make better informed business decisions for customers and our business year round.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mostly use it for data analytics and business intelligence. With the data provided IBM Cognos Analytics provide comprehensive reports and insights in our organisation data. It helps us create KPI's with all the proper metrics. Overall its powerful data analytics helps us create and generate reports regarding our organizations sales and business operations.
  • Data Analytics
  • Business Intelligence
  • Data security
  • User Interface is old and it should be updated
  • Performance is not same everytime
We use it for various purposes such as its great for creating reports as it keeps factoring all the key indicators. its data analytics capabilities are also unmatched we run many ads and it provides us deep insights about that like which ad is performing the best. Its also great for predictive analysis as well.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Being in the video production industry, we have a lot of bulky data relating to audience engagement of a video on a particular digital platform. IBM Cognos Analytics provides us AI driven data analytics which helps us identify which category of audience has engaged the most, and also helps us bucket the audiences into age groups, demographics, etc. It helps us extract useful information out of the bulky data that is scraped.
  • Great dashboard
  • Understands prompts reasonably well
  • Amazing charts
  • Decent speed
  • Procedure to add data import file can be confusing at times
  • UI feels outdated
IBM Cognos Analytics is pretty well suited to work on bulky data set, from which a specific set of information needs to be extracted.
Works really well for us for assessing and analysing audience engagement on various social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, X, etc. and helps us guide our clients on efficient marketing strategy.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Cognos Analytics as our primary Business Intelligence tool for our risk and business reporting needs. We use it to produce customized reports for specific user/entitlement groups.
We also use it for Data exploration/cleansing efforts in initial stages of our Machine Learning projects and to run statistical analytics on various data sets.
  • AI assistant is handy and speeds up intial setup
  • Data exploration and discovery
  • Excel charting
  • Integrates with wide range of data sources
  • Clunky UI
  • Not as widely used as Qlik & Tableau and hence lacks community
  • Lots of minor bugs
  • Needs initial training as its not as intuitive.
  • Support is lacking compared to competitors
IBM Cognos Analytics is well suited for use cases where you have to present reporting and tell story using data to a non-technical audience. The charting features are good and helps combine and analyze various datasets easily.

It's less suited for use by Machine Learning engineers/developers to probe data and derive statistical insights from datasets.
Thomas Baker, CFE, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos Analytics is used in the organization for reporting and analytics trends that come from the financial aspects of the company. Additionally, IBM Cognos Analytics is used to create dashboards for Management to monitor real-time performance and trends. The scope of this use case is the entire organization as it is used for period end reporting purposes.
  • Easy to use "out of the box"
  • Easily adaptive user interface
  • Automation solutions are very efficient
  • Uses a lot of the CPU of PC and can be only item running on computer sometimes
  • The error descriptions could be worded differently to help users find out what is exactly wrong with the report they are trying to write
  • Missing third party integration functionality that works succinctly
IBM Cognos Analytics is very well suited for a large company that has users who are well versed in business intelligence and know how to create reports and monitor their necessary data to create a visually appetizing summary. This may be less appropriate for a smaller company that does not need the necessary computing power to bring together mass amount of data to report results/analyze trends and run analytics.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Throughout the organization, we fully use this tool for the control of administration automation, mainly reports and data models, which allows us to improve through what the tool analyzes; also for the development of queries. IBM Cognos Analytics collaborates with us efficiently, saving all the necessary time that we use for other things for the financial well-being of the organization since it has an Artificial Intelligence capable of identifying itself with any activity that is needed in the company quickly and perfect, among other things the automation of the boards.
  • It can be connected to multiple data sources.
  • Easily integrates with any other tool.
  • Combination of data sources.
  • Favorable technical service, always attentive.
  • It is fully scalable.
  • After configured, learning is a bit difficult, although later, one takes it until one understands it.
  • The administration interface needs to be improved a bit.
  • Everything works without a hitch, from its implementation to its general use.
Being a stable and robust tool, it has been very useful for managing all the data in report and content management, allowing you to be connected from any device or data source or on the web. We use it in all the departments of the organization, offering us excellent functions that help us to have good visualizations automatically, therefore, quickly, of the data to keep everything in order. We recommend it mainly for large companies that have data silos. IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson will keep each piece of data unified by the department.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is an essential tool in all departments of the organization; due to its Artificial Intelligence capacity, it is capable of keeping everything in order from the beginning to the end. At all times, the tool creates a report of all the data in a structured way, knowing exactly the result that you want to evaluate and be fully resolved, which allows us to be connected to your control panel. This product integrates easily with different tools, making the whole process easier.; It also has a great team of technicians to help.
  • Full data reporting and analysis all the time.
  • Artificial Intelligence of great help for business performance.
  • Easily integrates with other tools.
  • You can count on this scalable platform.
  • Fast in data recovery.
  • It has a good price.
  • Quality technical team.
  • Many times the view of the videos on the web is not good, it needs to improve.
  • Graph more, for better understanding.
Despite some drawbacks, such as visualizations, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson has been quite beneficial for the company; the data reports are constantly analyzed in a concise and precise manner, extracting the most specific ones for better control. Everything is simpler since its implementation since everything is systematized and, therefore, processes are accelerated. Something extremely important is productivity is higher, maintaining a good work environment and with customers.
Nick Waters | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
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 is well suited for organisations that need both mode 1 and mode 2 analytics. It provides enterprise reporting capability combined with interactive dashboarding capabilities for self service analysis of data. It supports both on premise and cloud based deployments and connects well to other IBM solutions for example IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Cognos Analytics is an Enterprise Reporting and Analytics platform supporting a wide range of use cases and business value. Cognos Analytics supports a centralized semantic layer that enables broad access to governed data in a way that makes content creation easy for a variety of user abilities and content types.
  • Common metadata platform that enables reporting, dashboards, ad hoc access and advanced capabilities
  • integrates well with a broad range of databases, authentication providers
  • provides content creation capabilities at different levels of complexity to make more people with a range of skills productive.
  • metadata modelling capabilities could provide greater capabilities to do common data engineering tasks.
  • integration with modern data stack tech like Fivetran, dbt and Snowflake could and should go much deeper
  • mapping and visualization capabilities could be improved.
  • cloud deployment could be more advanced.
Where governed enterprise reporting is important, where IT skills are mature and capable, where well designed, highly formatted and advanced reports are important, where data modelling skills are well developed, where data analysts and data engineers work well together.
September 12, 2023

Congrats on Cognos

Ah Hassan Rayon Hussain Mohammed | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Cognos for my reporting and dashboarding to create, modify, delete for different teams and applications within the organization. The clients were mostly insurance based and required scheduling and troubleshooting services with respect to Cognos. Query studio was used for ad hoc reporting or one time use reports, while Report Studio was used for complex and demanding reports that will be used for a long duration.
  • Reporting Tabular Format
  • Arrangement and Alignment
  • Ad Hoc Reporting.
  • Access to multiple datasets and restrictions based control
  • Dashboarding and multiple charts
  • Performance
  • Involvement of statistics
  • Easy to use functions
Reporting whose demands are not too high but simple tabulated format which can be used for over several years. Also adhoc reporting using Query Studio is better in making short time reports. Other options where it lacks is Dashboarding where I would prefer Tableau or PowerBI
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use IBM Cognos Analytics to analyse user data and customer trends to make forecasts and data-driven decisions. We use the builtin AI Chatbot to get better insights from data using plain english.
  • AI chatbot provides an excellent user experience for the researcher
  • Very good looking reports
  • Forecasting
  • Security
  • Kind of expensive and a lot of extras that require additional pay
  • Rather scary for the first time users, maybe you can improve the learning curve needed
  • Reports need to be easier to setup, maybe more starting templates
Well suited for complex businesses with a lot of data: financial sector, healthcare, etc. Can generate comprehensive reports and forecasts.

Less apropiate in a scenario where you want to use it for a small startup that lacks a significant amount of data to analyse.
Rajeev Bagra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For visualizing and forecasting our in-house data as well clients' data. Earlier we use to rely on only Excel. Now, we find that Cognos Analytics blends nicely with Excel and has powerful AI features including AI Chatbot that can answer queries from the proprietary data raised in simple English. Powerful security features mean peace of mind.
  • Forecasting after eliminating random bias
  • AI chatbot can answer any query raised in simple English from the data, perform calculations.
  • Reports are visually appealing
  • Reports can be made more easier to create.
  • Speed of performing operations within dashboard can be increased as at times it is slow.
  • There is a steep learning curve at the beginning. Make it more easier.
Without writing a single piece of code, IBM Cognos Analytics can answer queries, generate reports, and forecast. The code source of the output can be tracked. Even for a freelancer/one-person company, IBM Cognos Analytics can be a great investment with their monthly subscription of 10$ or so. This is despite the fact that IBM Cognos Analytics is an enterprise software meant for large teams.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use CA for analyis as well as operational reporting and support an extranet for group and provider utilization reporting.
  • emailed delivery
  • operational reporting
  • dashboarding
  • dashboarding
  • data modules
  • modeling
For users who are not tech savy, having reporting emailed to them is a nice touch. However these same users need a better/less complicated way to design their own adhoc reports (ie, Query Studio). The new Reporting interface is too complex for casual users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We encourage all users of our EHS platform to use Cognos and we provide base reports, dashboards, and training for every user that wants it. Our Cognos implementation gives a holistic Organization-wide view to the Executive team and also provides granular, real-time data to managers etc.
  • Subscribe reports via email
  • Manage users and security
  • Provide governed data via packages
  • Publish non-sensitive data to websites, url, etc
  • Provide drill-through in Dashboards
  • Provide robust architecture rather than just fail-over
Comparing the "Big 3", Cognos has the bases covered. No other solution provides *all* of the benefits. User adoption/training is key, once users can build or even just modify reports and dashboards, merging their own datasets to governed corporate data, and setting subscriptions (via email) they are thrilled. Implementing Cognos has satisfied 99% of requests/complaints from our customers regarding access to their data!
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