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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 …
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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 (104)
    8.1
    81%
  • Drill-down analysis (103)
    8.1
    81%
  • Report Delivery Scheduling (102)
    8.0
    80%
  • Customizable dashboards (101)
    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 8.0

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 27)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
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 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.
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
Federico Alvarez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We started using Cognos because we were looking for a tool to data mining, report and build dashboards, have been using for a couple of years and really helped our company. Our operations everyday transactions are processed effortlessly which allow valid, clean, and real data into our tool and producing great reports and dashboards.
  • Clean data
  • Produce ad-hoc reports
  • Dashboards
  • Data analysis
  • Marketing
  • Better Excel integration
  • Price
Working in a financial consulting industry where different clients with many data challenges such as length, structure, validity, cleanliness, and time arise, IBM Cognos have allowed the company to integrate, extract and use data with minimum effort resulting in potent reports and clear dashboards. That is a great advantage to other solutions in the market.
Damith Low | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This platform offers a full range of BI software to address business goals. It helps to create easy-to-use and run detailed reports for data analysis, provides the ability to edit current data along with alerts, schedules, etc. in real-time. Also, there is flexibility in data import and reporting in this tool, it can manage large data sets, it also offers an option to export reports in XML or PDF format.IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson also gives us the ability to use interactive dashboards, create business reports, explore data, etc. very easily.
  • It is a reliable and scalable platform.
  • It offers data connectors including SQL Server, CSV, Excel, and more.
  • Multiple integrations.
  • Flexible deployment options.
  • Does not provide a free trial.
  • It is difficult to learn.
  • It is not easy to use and implement for non-technical users.
IBM is a reporting tool that focuses on data analysis. It is the most robust digital BI platform that I have used for years, with IBM I can get detailed information through a variety of reports/dashboards. I can send my colleagues by email reports in PDF or XML format, it also allows easy integration with third-party tools for more fluid communication.
Paul Mendelson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
As an IBM business partner, I implement IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson for various IBM customers. These customers span almost every industry, from manufacturing to government, research to finance, and everything in between.

My current client is a large pharmaceutical company who uses IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson across multiple divisions. I've been brought in to help with the finance team.

IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is flexible enough to make their reporting do everything they want. A major focus was ensuring high visibility reports work on mobile devices. Because IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson allows JavaScript and lets authors directly define HTML, I can make responsive reports that behave perfectly for any sized screen.

Another focus was expanding the default functionality in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson through a series of JavaScript controls. Writing back directly to TM1, sending users emails from a button inside the report, or exporting reports to PowerPoint, the API available in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson makes writing these controls quick and easy.
  • Pixel perfect reports. If a client can provide a pixel-perfect mockup, I can make the report indistinguishable from the mockup.
  • Data security. It doesn't matter who the user is; when they log in and run a report, they will only see the data they are permitted to see.
  • Performant reports on large data. Many tools have issues running on tables containing only a few million rows. Cognos can consistently run reports on multi-billion row tables without issue.
  • Embedding reports in third-party tools. With Cognos Mashup Services, it is possible to build a report in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson and call it programmatically. Need straight HTML? No problem. JSON? Atom? All good.
  • Data modules still can't match the flexibility of the framework manager. When dealing with large data models, or multi-grain, FM still wins.
  • The new native graphs, while pretty, still can't match the version 10 graphs in terms of flexibility or options. It is possible to import third-party graphs, but it's a pain.
  • Some functionality, like version control, is only available through third parties. Motio or BSP.
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is especially good with any type of pixel-perfect reporting. While it's most commonly used for financial reports, I've used it for building models for plenty of other purposes. The one that sticks out was a road safety organization that used IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson to research road accidents. The ETL process merged data from police, hospitals, insurance companies, high management, and several other sources. The combination of canned reporting and ad-hoc querying tools allowed researchers to find insights and possible causes of accidents that weren't previously considered. On the flip side, IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson is often used for things it's not really perfectly suited for. Data entry is a big one. You can write back to a database through it, but it's always a bit hacky. In the latest version, Query Studio is being deprecated. The dashboarding tool is significantly more complex. Sometimes you just want a quick and dirty query, and QS was perfect for it. Finally, there is a learning curve. You absolutely must learn how to use the tool, or you will have a miserable time. Once you get past that curve, you'll find it powerful and capable of meeting almost any need (even the hacky write-back requirements that people love to throw at me).
Nicholas Maeda | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson helps us understand our data. It is adaptable to different data processing scenarios and environments support various tools for back-end tasks such as data warehousing, data integration, data management, query language, ETL process, etc. Easily integrates with MS Excel and spreadsheets. Its amazing reporting feature helps to create very attractive custom dashboards. It allows powerful visualizations from our computer in a few seconds.
  • Integrated ETL tools.
  • Data export in multiple formats (PDF, Excel and CSV)
  • Fast and accurate data recovery.
  • Less expensive.
  • Scalability and flexibility to work.
  • Does not support multidimensional analysis.
IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson offers the best performance with its features. It is a stable tool, it facilitates the storage and processing of data in companies. It is compatible with the popular RDBMS to handle data related to reporting and content management. It allows you to connect to any type of data source and also allows you to retrieve data from data sources.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
IBM Cognos Analytics works best when a user is very comfortable with SQL databases and queries. It doesn't require you to know how to code SQL but it is very helpful to know the concepts well. If you aren't familiar with SQL, Cognos is harder.
karthikeyan Thangaraju | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.

  • 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
I have used various reporting and analytics tool like SSRS, SAP
[IBM Cognos Analytics] is good among these, can able to connect all the data sources without issue like ODBC, JDBC.
I don't think it is less appropriate. it is highly recommended to use from my [perspective].
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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).
It's well suited for an environment where customized reports need to be distributed to multiple users. It's also great to produce pixel-perfect reports required in different formats (excel, pdf, online). Quick and simple dashboards like the ones in PowerBI. Ad hoc data modeling using data modules.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used across the whole organization.
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!!)!!!
Well suited:
* simple reports for simple users ("big button-users", mostly managers or CEOs)
* analyze date in cubes (finding "most important customer-group", finding "outliers" / "exceptions"; seeing historical development of...)

Less appropriate:
* beautiful reports for the general public! Be it paper, be it in electronic form (online)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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)
IBM Cognos Analytics is well suited for ad-hoc reporting as well as delivery of reports via email in multiple formats. Combining data from multiple data sources. Our company has Oracle, Sql Server Snowflake, and data files that are accessed through Cognos.
I can't think of a scenario where IBM Cognos Analytics is less appropriate. A lot of times it depends a lot on the way the back-end data is stored. I've heard users and companies complain about IBM Cognos Analytics' performance, but again, I think this has to be with different data sources to access the company's data. I've also heard that compared to Tableau Desktop, IBM Cognos Analytics is still "not there" in regard to visualizations.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos is being used by our organization across multiple applications and teams. It is used by the whole organization. We use it to capture customer information, our team performance in handling customers' belongings and performance as a whole across different departments.
  • IBM cognos is great as an enterprise tool.
  • Being able to create cubes and packages that can be used to pull exactly what you want to see specific to your group.
  • IBM Cognos allows multiple users to go in and change the report in a way that they want to see without changing the data that is provided to everyone as a whole.
  • IBM Cognos has room for improvement in its charts and graphs. They are awesome on their own but compared to Tableau fall a little short.
  • The speed of IBM Cognos could run faster, however considering the amount of data it is able to pull without slowing down makes up for the overall slower processing.
  • The ease of setup and usage has a bigger learning curve compared to similar reporting products but once again the return on effort makes it worth that steep curve.
Scenarios where IBM Cognos is well suited, are when you have large amounts of data that need to be pulled and processed as metadata. A time or scenarios where it is less appropriate is when you just want to take an Excel sheet and produce a dashboard off of that information. A desktop tool could be used in that scenario.
December 11, 2018

Cognos too Powerful?

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cognos as the primary business intelligence tool to ongoing and ad-hoc reporting. We are however transitioning to another BI tool
  • Self Service
  • Alerting
  • Scalability
  • Better visuals
  • Lower cost
  • Increased speed and performance
Cognos would be best suited for a large enterprise that can have clear reporting requirements alongside engagement from the end business users. It is a fantastic tool that has most of everything a business user might need. But there is a steep ramp up period.
May 20, 2016

What, son?

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am testing out a variety of analytics platforms to get a better understanding of which product is best to use. I typically input ad campaign data and focus on a variety of metrics to see causation and correlation between the marketing efforts and the client company's performance (website, revenue, etc.). This is a great way to verify whether or not advertising is working towards improving KPIs and figure out where to focus the spend on.
  • Great for visualizing data in an appealing way.
  • Makes analytics and the process of "asking questions" very easy for people.
  • Learning how to work the product is easy as well.
  • Ability to link to a variety of data sources.
  • Shortcuts are great, but sometimes provide a roadblock when trying to dive deeper into the data.
  • Customizing the look of charts would be great.
Watson makes it easy to do analysis. A good scenario to use it would be when trying to analyze a set of data and find insights that normally wouldn't be so easy to find when looking at the original data as a whole. When someone needs to ask a question about how a set of data points relate to each other, Watson is the way to go.
February 29, 2016

Review of Cognos BI

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We sell IBM Cognos BI to our customers, it's used for analysis, reporting, dashboards, and scorecards, etc.
  • It's very easy to implement Cognos BI in an organization, easy to learn and maintain the system.
  • Framework Manager packages provide central metadata management of underlying database or data warehouse to be used in reports. Unlike SSRS or other reporting tools where updating a single column in 1000 reports means 1000 manual changes, in Cognos you just update the framework model and it's done.
  • Cognos Workspace is amazing at giving consumer level users the power to manage the presentation of a dashboard from colors to layout format to what data they want to see. They have the power and capability to customize any dashboard to their needs.
  • Ad hoc Analysis capability of Cognos for enterprise level application is very easy to use, user friendly, and easy to maintain. Power users can get help from professional developers where needed and still can go back to using the ad hoc studio without any issues. This means the ad hoc analysis tools give you the power of professional reporting/analysis tools when needed and still be simple in interface and easy to use.
  • Charting and visualization in Cognos 10 version was not best of the best available. But with the new release of Cognos Analytics (Cognos 11) IBM have improved it quite a bit.
  • Map Analysis/Reporting and geospatial capabilities needs to be improved.
IBM Cognos BI is an enterprise level BI/reporting tool. it lacks the fancy visualizations which other tools are better at but at the same time those tools are not well suited for anenterprise reporting application. If any organization has a large volume of data analysis/reports then you have to consider maintenance costs and overhead. With IBM Cognos BI maintenance is easy as compared to other tools on large set of reports.
February 19, 2016

Cognos feedback

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cognos was used as a BI tool for intelligence reports.
  • You can develop a very nice report in a short time frame.
  • Cognos Query is a very powerful tool for ad-hoc reports.
  • Dimensional model can replace cube building - less steps in development process.
  • Query Studio can be improved further, so users can create a nice printable version.
  • Analysis Studio is a great tool for ad-hoc analysis, but it doesn't allow you to create a report with a header and footer and can't be used for aa printable version.
  • I don't like Cognos graphs very much. It is difficult to control the graph's appearance.
For small companies IBM Cognos is a heavy and expensive tool.
March 16, 2015

Meghdeep

Meghdeep Raval, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Framework Manager (metadata modeling tool) is a pretty flexible tool for any complex data modeling.
  • With use of Report Studio you can handle any business logic for reporting.
  • Event studio is used for event based scheduling.
  • Business Insight advanced is used for ad-hoc reporting.
  • Query studio out-of-the-box is a bit primitive. It is used for ad-hoc reporting, but if something is changed in Query Studio by and end user, it's not possible to see what exactly was changed without going into Report Studio. This is problematic as it means that end users need licenses for Report Studio which is not feasible.
  • Metric studio we have not used at all, and don't know exact purpose of it.
Cognos needs to reduce the number of studios and try to consolidate everything into one or two studios. It's currently very confusing from a licensing standpoint, but it's also a training issue: It's quite difficult to explain which Studio does what and which one people should be using for which task.

Need better performance monitoring tool.
Gerrit Goewey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Dynamic Query Mode with a large number of Relational and OLAP database compatibility such as Oracle and Essbase, Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services, SAP BW, IBM DB2, Teradata, etc. makes for efficient backend queries no matter if the front end metadata is relational or multidimensional.
  • Compatibility mode queries allow for custom ODBC and JDBC connection to made, so even if there is no native compatibility other databases can still be used as a source if needed.
  • Dynamic Cubes are capable of querying against millions of rows in seconds when properly set up with sufficient hardware resources.
  • Standard Reports are snappy, returning data and rendering quickly, as long as the pagination is kept to reasonable quantities.
  • Active reports can be run offline and incorporate animation and dynamic filters. Keep in mind that the data doesn't refresh until the report is retrieved from the server again.
  • Great interoperability between the different studios in the suite. Something made in Analysis or Query Studio can be converted to Report Studio easily. Workspace Advanced natively creates and opens Report Studio reports as well.
  • Report Studio can convert a regular report into an active report. The reverse is not possible though.
  • Workspace can take in individual charts or whole reports from other tools as widgets and even customize them for the specific dashboard being built.
  • End users can make their own copies of a pre-built dashboard and adjust things such as changing conditional color labels or adding new calculated members.
  • Interoperability with other IBM Cognos tools allows TM1 and SPSS to be used as data sources for reports, as well as directly used as widgets in Workspace dashboards.
  • Centralized content store allows the different desktop tools to use the same logins and access the same shared resources as the server, such as data sources.
  • Framework Manager is a very powerful tool that can create both dimensional and relational models simultaneously from the same underlying database.
  • Framework Manager can work on any database design, it does not have to be a Kimball star schema.
  • Framework Manager has built in tools for validating a model without having to do a complete publish
  • Security for roles, users, etc. can be built directly into the model without any need for extra programming
  • Framework Manager is a visual tool, and only requires rudimentary SQL knowledge to use effectively.
  • Localization is supported natively and can be added to any model.
  • Dynamic Query Manager can automatically create aggregation for Dynamic Cubes to optimize runtime.
  • Reporting Bursting can be set up to send prefiltered reports via mail or some other means on regular intervals or when triggered by certain events, such as a particular number being too low.
  • Administration for Multi-tenanted environments is built directly into Cognos
  • Connecting multiple LDAP and AD systems simultaneously is supported, allowing users to use their normal company usernames and passwords
  • Mobile support add on allows standard and Active reports to be displayed with a mobile device friendly interface automatically without requiring creating a separate version.
  • Cognos Mashup Service can be used to embed reports in outside applications or provide data for external visualizations and tools.
  • All tool interfaces are designed with the standard IBM patterns, so users already familiar with other IBM tools should be able to pick it up quickly..
  • The server can run in most typical server environments such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc.
  • Clustering across multiple machines is supported.
  • Real Time Monitoring add on allows for visualization of up to the second data feeds.
  • Drill down/up can be automatically implemented on reports using a Dimensional data model
  • Drill through definitions can be set up to allow users to find related reports and automatically open them on the highlighted data.
  • Reports and models made for the more lightweight Cognos Express can be fully utilized by the full Cognos server if upgraded later.
  • Cognos Insight can be deployed via the server and individual Insight dashboards can be stored on the server. Insight may even be included as part of the particular licenses purchased.
  • Initial setup isn't as simple as running the installer and turning it on. Adjustments to the server setup may be necessary before it is up and running.
  • Browser support can be touchy. Compatibility is best with Internet Explorer, but certain browser setting changes can cause issues. Other browsers' compatibility can be questionable due to their significantly more regular updates.
  • The technology that allows active reports to be packaged into .mht files is a proprietary Microsoft format, so other browsers cannot natively open them. There are 3rd party extensions for firefox and chrome.
  • Standard reports are rather flat and bland to look at to keep them efficient and clear. It makes it hard to really "Wow" someone when presenting it compared to other products.
  • Due to Active Reports packaging all of the data in the file and prerendering charts, file size can get quite large (easily several megabytes) and the initial load time can be quite long when opening it. It is best used for basic overviews and other times when some "flash" is needed, but not a large amount of data.
  • Configuring the interoperability with TM1 and SPSS is a little more on the technical side than most other tasks.
  • You could call the development process "Front heavy" meaning most of the development will be modeling. This means that it will take longer to end up with visualized data than other tools.
  • It works best with actual databases, and not so well with csv or other file formats. Using an ODBC or JDBC driver can be used to treat files like databases, but native support is rather limited.
  • The desktop tools such as Framework Manager that are part of the suite are all built for 32-bit windows only, despite the availability of 64-bit and other operating systems for the actual server.
  • Using external ODBC drivers can be done with 32-bit drivers only.
  • Because of the way Cognos installs on a system, trying to keep a sandbox environment on a developer's personal machine isn't feasible.
  • Dynamic Cubes are very hardware intensive, so when dealing with large data sets (millions of rows and up) the amount of memory and resources that need to be dedicated to a single cube to keep the query time within seconds can get high (possibly hundreds of GB of memory).
If your company has a steady stream of data and aspires to have a sophisticated analytics infrastructure, the Cognos suite provides an excellent set of tools for handling any amount of data or scenarios at a competitive price.

Of course, smaller companies that don't have heavy reporting needs will probably find the suite to be beyond their current needs, so something more lightweight like Cognos Express might be a better choice, or even the stand-alone Cognos Insight if their needs don't currently go beyond a few users manipulating their spreadsheets.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used as a front end analytical tool for many organizations. I cannot speak to other organizations but in my organization we develop the reports mostly as canned reports with limited ad-hoc ability. I cannot even begin to say what problems it addresses because it is used so much. One example is a traceability tool for vehicle components.
  • I very rarely find something it cannot do. There is always a way to get around a problem you are facing, it may just take some critical thinking to get there.
  • Framework manager is excellent. I prefer it over Tableau extracts.
  • The exporting options has been used a lot by my team. The business users we deal with are still very much in favor of Excel and this allows the data to be in a familiar format should they chose to do that.
  • Cognos is not the prettiest BI tool. It is very old-school in my opinion. This is not bad for all people, but I think the next generation of users will want something "prettier"
  • Very steep learning curve, but that comes along with the complexity of the tool
  • When developing a report, the way everything (tools, pages, etc) are laid out is confusing. It took me months to get it down. Again, this tool is very complex and good at what it does, so that it to be expected.
For non-technical, business oriented users, I only turn to Cognos if other BI tools cannot get the job done. It is definitely the most capable BI tool I use, but others are much more user friendly.
Robert Goodman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos is a comprehensive reporting tool. It is being used by almost all central offices at Georgetown (HR, Finance, Student, Advancement, etc.). The Report and Query Studio tools are sophisticated and support our talented user base. They provide flexibility and the ability to query the packages in an ad-hoc way. We've also seen some adoption of the Cognos Mobile tools which is really neat. We're working with end-users to make the mobile features more apparent so that they can access data on-the-go.
  • The Report and Query Studio tools are nice for sophisticated power users. This allows power users to query and report on data which has already been modeled.
  • The architecture of the application can be tiered nicely for performance. This allows us to scale the application to support our growing user base.
  • Mobile features are more mature than other comparable products
  • Licensing for Cognos is difficult to understand. It is based upon a proprietary 'PVU' or Processor Value Unit calculation which has been created by IBM. This effectively licenses each server by the number of processing cores.
  • The software licensing is expensive.
  • The product requires very technical staff to maintain and support. This adds greatly to the TCO of IBM Cognos that many overlook.
  • Even with version 10.2.1 - browser compatibility is an issue for Report and Query Studio users. For example, they still don't work in Google Chrome. This causes a lot of confusion.
After upgrading to 10.2.1, I am upgrading my overall rating. We have been pleased with the ability to publish 64-bit packages, IBM added new visualizations, a nice Workspace feature, and several new Excel output options. Plan to budget a 5-7% increase annually to continue to support this tool.
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