IBM Cognos Analytics, in my opinion, legacy leader modern laggard
Primarily used for Dashboard and Report development with some level of self service capabilities.
Starting at $10 per month per user
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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.
Recent Reviews
How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors
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Popular Features
- Formatting capabilities (102)8.181%
- Drill-down analysis (101)8.181%
- Report Delivery Scheduling (100)8.080%
- Customizable dashboards (99)7.878%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
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
Product Demos
IBM Cognos Analytics Product Tour
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Product Details
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- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
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 Integrations
IBM Cognos Analytics Competitors
IBM Cognos Analytics Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| 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 |
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).
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(577)Attribute Ratings
- 9.7Likelihood to Renew
- 8.6Availability
- 9Performance
- 8Usability
- 10Support Rating
- 8Online Training
- 8.7In-Person Training
- 7Implementation Rating
- 8Configurability
- 8.3Product Scalability
- 7.3Ease of integration
- 7Vendor pre-sale
- 7Vendor post-sale
- 2.5Data Visualization
- 8.3Data Sources
- 8.6Data Sharing and Collaboration
- 8.7IBM Cognos Reporting 4.14.21
- 8.3IBM Cognos Data Modeling 4.14.21
Reviews
(1-10 of 10)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 13, 2024
IBM Cognos Analytics Review
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
It is a software with a good and simple user interface, it has artificial intelligence that provides a good and precise predictive analysis, since the implementation we improved our productivity, the creation of reports is adequate, we achieved better data analysis, which allowed us to make the best decisions based on the data obtained through this platform, achieving better results that could not be obtained before.
- Predictive data analysis is intuitive and with real-time results.
- Easy obtaining and customization of reports.
- Better decision making, is a software capable of simplifying our work and improving our productivity, since errors are minimized.
- It's not a very flashy looking piece of software, but it ticks the boxes for functionality, and for first-time users, just a quick workout is easy to pick up.
- Expert help should be sought for configuration.
July 26, 2022
The Real AI and automation in Data Analytics Market
I use IIBM Cognos Analyticss for pulling reports on a daily basis like Missing Pages Report, Query Report which helps the business or the study team to know the current status of the study and by that data creating a structured outline of actions that need to be done to resolve that data. It really helps to reach the outcomes that we need and by anaylzing the data we can know where we are lacking. I think it is most advance system and easy to use system in my deliverables.
- Extracting huge amount of data in a precise manner.
- The time taken to get a report is pretty less compares to other
- And the automation and the AI is really advanced the system knows what I really want
- If a report got malfunctioned it need so much time to resolve that issue.
- Server Log out issue if using two study at a time
- Sometimes the data analytics part stuck in between
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.
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
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
March 28, 2018
IBM Watson Analytics: A Rockstar of Data
We use IBM Watson analytics to replace our data science roles – primarily within social media. I started using it as a recommendation from a client, to get better insight (they're shifting all their software over to IBM. I'm sorry I cannot elaborate further on that). This program is basically a smart data/visual analysis that helps its clients discover patterns within data they upload, for their research. In this case, with our clients, we use it to determine their traffic through their Twitter and Facebook marketing/advertising. It helps us discover what ads are the most responsive and what content resonates best with customers.
- Implementation of the data is fairly easy, all it requires is registration and uploading data from a spreadsheet – it's little more than copy/pasting which is pretty manageable on time
- It's affordable – it offers a $30 plan for its "Plus" services, and $80/month for its Professional services. With a small markup, this is profitable for both us and our clients
- Their customer support has been great – they have live personal available by phone or chat during regular business hours, and their Customer Support forums are always available 24/7. They're always quick to address an issue.
- The accuracy of the reporting from the program relies solely on the data the user sources. There can be errors in reporting due to...well, human error, which can kind of mess up your entire data sheet
- When you're working with a program that is a cloud-based service, decentralized reporting can mislead organizations when you're not properly balanced with the traditional checks of a governed system – again, this is a human-error issue
- IBM advertises this as a program that can work for any user, but unless you have experience working with data analytics, it can be difficult to determine where to start. I had to look up a few tutorials online before I was able to properly get my data rolling through
February 28, 2018
Powerful Data Sharing and Automation Tool
We use Cognos Report Studio to meet all of our reporting needs- create and distribute automated reports to internal data users across the entire organization, data integration files sent to other systems and external vendors as well as generate reports with data visualization such as charts and graphs that can also be exported in Excel. We also use event studio to push out a great deal of time sensitive information in a very user-friendly format such as reminder emails and data audit alerts to key stakeholders.
- The best part about Cognos Report Studio is that you do not need to have access or know how to use the tool in order to be the recipient of the information. Cognos allows you to schedule automated reports that can be sent to any internal or external email address you type in the recipient line. You can use Cognos Report Studio to create customized and automated reports by applying data filters, conditional formatting, formulas, and calculations in a way very similar to Excel. Anything that you could do in Excel you can pretty much build into the parameters of your report in Cognos and manipulate the data before it comes out in the report. This becomes very handy, especially when automating reports that are sent to users who may not be very Excel savvy or when you just want to pass nuggets of information.
- Cognos Event Studio is definitely my favorite. Amongst many things, I have found it to be a powerful data auditing tool. I use it to set up search engines that check our database for the incorrect combination of values across a set of data fields and thus minimize data entry errors in a time sensitive manner. For example, I can create a search engine that checks for any employees in "Part Time" status who have been assigned a schedule of 40hrs or more. The search engine would send an email to the HRIS team within an hour from the time the incorrect combination of values was entered into the system.
- Another way to use Cognos Event Studio in a way that your entire organization can benefit from and appreciate is by sending managers email reminders days in advance of their direct reports' birthdays or work anniversaries. In a similar fashion, I am also able to send email alerts to our IT department's ticketing system immediately following an employee termination, which automatically creates a ticket for them to shut off access to email and other systems.
- There is definitely a lot of room for improvement when it comes to Cognos. Sometimes it can take you a while to find a particular data field that you may want to pull into your report. Unfortunately, there is no option where you can search all tables in order to figure out where a particular data field is located or how pulling the same data field from one table vs another may impact your report results. This makes it a lot harder for new users to adopt the tool and quickly gain proficiency. Eventually, things starts make sense but it just takes a lot of practice.
- One major challenge for me is the inability to be able to run a report on all the scheduled reports set up in Cognos. If you want to clean up or streamline any of your report schedules or distribution lists, there is no good way to do so except for going into each individual report and checking/modifying the schedule and the recipient list. Granted that Cognos is such a great tool for automating data output, I wish there was a better way to manage all your report schedules and recipient lists.
January 27, 2016
Cognos works mostly
IBM Cognos is being used for operations, business analytics, planning, business improvement, and budget forecasting to name a few.
- Cognos scheduler works pretty well by sending out reports to groups of users successfully and reliably.
- Cognos framework is pretty effective for modeling data for us.
- Report Studio is fairly reliable and works most of the time.
- There are missing DB2 functions in Cognos that would be useful to have but most of the time I can program around it.
- Event studio could be better, it takes forever to load and crashes frequently.
- Error reporting in Cognos is notoriously non descriptive and very useless. I don't even count on them for much of the troubleshooting I do.
June 06, 2014
Cognos - An Integral Component of Workbrain Solution
We are using IBM Cognos as the reporting tool for the Workbrain Time and Attendance solution at WB.
Cognos integrates with workbrain and serves as the reporting engine for the system.
It is currently used by the several departments within WB, but planned to be rolled out to all the departments.
Cognos integrates with workbrain and serves as the reporting engine for the system.
It is currently used by the several departments within WB, but planned to be rolled out to all the departments.
- It is fairly easy to create reports using Cognos.
- It integrates well with other applications.
- It maintains its own DB schema.
- It could be hard to understand and navigate through for a novice. (not very intuitive)
- It is sensitive to changes in the hosting environment (java change on the host may cause for the need to re-configure Cognos for example)
- The error messages are not very descriptive or helpful. You might see errors such as: "The server did something wrong..." or "the client did something wrong"