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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 (102)
    8.1
    81%
  • Drill-down analysis (101)
    8.1
    81%
  • Report Delivery Scheduling (100)
    8.0
    80%
  • Customizable dashboards (99)
    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

(579)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 27)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence and analytics platform that helps organizations gather, analyze, and visualize data to make informed business decisions. Watson, on the other hand, is IBM's AI technology that provides advanced capabilities such as natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive computing.
  • reporting
  • dashboard
  • ai assistent
  • burtsting report management
  • re-schedule reports with failed
There is no need to physically share the data with developers/users. They can create/run/develop everything from the web, no need to send data to local computers
September 13, 2022

Great Reporting Software

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos is a tool that is used across my whole organization. I work at a University so we have a lot of data and a lot of departments who are using data. IBM Cognos allows us to view and analyze data across departments. IBM offers a lot of great resources for learning how to use the tool.
  • Good for combining data sources
  • Good data visulizations
  • Easy to manage permissions
  • You have to really understand the underlying data structure before you use it
  • It can be hard to learn at first
  • It can be glitchy sometimes
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).
Mohammed Younus Siddiqui | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos is used for meeting the reporting needs of the university. It is used to display data from the data warehouse. It is the single destination for the user to get data in a simple, clear, easy to read, and quick way. It is also used to generate timely reports on a schedule for a group of users.
  • Importing and modifying metadata
  • Create queries for use in GUI
  • Print Friendly Report
  • The new UI requires more clicks compared to previous version
  • Dashboards require more color options
  • Learning curve to use is still high compared to other products
If you require pixel-perfect reports and you have to share these reports with users in an enterprise. Then it is the best BI tool for you. Other competitors are missing many features that are needed for enterprise users. The ability to use data sources with no relation inside a report is a GOD send. You will not find this anywhere.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos is being widely used as a web-based business intelligence tool to solve the real business problem of monitoring.
  • Report Studio for the management reports.
  • OLAP functionality using the analysis module.
  • Interactive dashboards.
  • State-of-the-art technologies like AI-based features.
  • Monitoring related features.
  • Machine learning.
IBM Cognos is well suited when the individual wants to start with analytics with very low knowledge of the domain. The tool is very helpful in creating interactive dashboards and helps monitor data.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company provides banking solutions to many financial institutes in Europe. IBM Cognos Analytics is the primary platform we provide to this institutes for analyzing their business and clients. With a large number of standard Reports many areas are addressed. Additionally we provide packages for building individual Reports. We also use IBM Cognos Analytics for internal Reporting solutions.
  • Powerful Report Authoring solution.
  • Debugging is not easy or at least cumbersome.
IBM Cognos Analytics works well for intermediate to expert users.
Report consumption is easy for less experienced users as well, but for building individual reports some learning efforts are required.
January 14, 2020

Great product!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire organization uses IBM Cognos and we love it. It does have a large learning curve, but it is such a powerful analytics and reporting tool. This tool allows you to manipulate and report off of large amounts of data. Personally, I like being able to extract it to Excel so that you can manipulate the data via pivot tables.
  • Handles big data well.
  • Provides the end-user with the data.
  • Allows for management to get the data they need.
  • Large learning curve.
  • Requires a lot of IT support.
IBM Cognos is a wonderful tool for reporting and analytics. It works best when you are working with large data. We use it as the reporting tool for our ERP system, Banner. Cognos works well to be able to deliver reports that cannot be obtained through Banner. We have several users that never access Banner, they only use Cognos to obtain their data.
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.
Miguel Angel Merino Vega | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We provide BI modules for our clients. Sometimes we create the module (if the requirement is not very demanding). Sometimes we leave the work to the experts in the field. And the pioneer and high visionary in the field is without a doubt IBM with IBM Cognos. IBM Cognos provide an immersion to BI for technical users (query studio, report studio) and managers (analysis studio, event studio).
  • All in one Platform, with IBM integration capacities
  • Easy to use for directors and managers
  • Large user base
  • Relativity lower prices than the competition
  • The limited complexity of data analysis
  • Lower customer experience
  • Slow upgrades compared to competitors
For non-technical users like managers or directors, IBM Cognos is beautiful, easy to learn and use. But if you want complex cubes or data analysis outside the box, you could prefer Tableau or Microsoft Power BI. QlikView is also good for non-technical users but the decision can be made according to the experience and use of IBM products. In general, if your client is familiar with the IBM ecosystem, Cognos will be very well seen for directors and managers.
Gos Yao | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Cognos is widely used here as a BI tool to deliver the values to service provider customers with one of our biggest product lines. My company has developed the packages which are more tied to the target market - telecom customers, so they have the visibility to access the data with multiple dimensions. It's powerful and insightful. The Active Reports can offer customers a more interactive way to access the network KPIs. The report studio helps customers to get access to all purpose-built reports so they will have a better understanding towards the network performance.
  • It's powerful. As long as you have all the components setup, you will have the query studio to access more granular data, while using the report studio to set up something for good and deliver them via email or whatsoever fits your environment.
  • We have implemented Cognos for a lot of telco customers and they have attained much insight into network performance by creating the reports based on all different dimensions.
  • The functions are very rich and filters are very powerful and helpful to define all sorts of conditions up to your expectation.
  • It's a little bit cumbersome. Not very friendly to the new users. In particular here in Telco market, the users are not used to the heavy tool. Learning curve takes a little bit more time compared to other tools. However, once you set your foot in and get used to it, it's not difficult to set up the reports or do whatever.
  • The presentation (charts or tables) can be more modernized if possible to make the reports more presentable.
IBM Cognos is very well fit to the system analyst for big markets - Telco, big retailer chains, financial institutions etc. It offers great capability to access the data with multiple dimensions. For the small business, the implementation could be lengthy and cumbersome.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cognos is currently being used by senior management across all department.
  • Report Analysis
  • Integrates well with Microsoft Office especially the ability to create presentations with PowerPoint.
  • Easy integration with Deltek Costpoint as well as Microsoft SQL server.
  • Troubleshooting technical problems can be difficult.
  • IT Support is not easy to reach.
IBM Cognos is well suited for report analysis and the presentations are excellent.
Lori Lambert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cognos across the university for reporting and some dashboards. This includes student data, financial data, and human resources data. It allows us to create robust reports from a variety of data fields from multiple data packages and provides the reporting we need for both day to day operations as well as for yearly requirements, such as audited financial statements.
  • Very robust functionality that allows for a variety of report types as well as reporting structures.
  • Report prompts make reports easy to run for end users even when reports are very complex.
  • Ability to set up security classes that restrict access to end users based on their need to know and use the data.
  • The learning curve for Cognos is fairly high due to the high level of functionality available. It would be helpful to have some less expensive training options available.
  • Instructions for using Cognos could be more robust, but I realize that's partially dependent on how it's used and documentation writers would not necessarily be able to anticipate all uses.
  • Instructions for creating a cross tab report with formatting and subtotals could be better.
If simplified reports are needed - mainly drag and drop fields without much formatting or specific subtotals, then Cognos may be too complicated for that type of reporting. However, if the data requires joins between data sets and views or specific formatting is required, then Cognos is a very robust option for creating such reports. I've rarely found a report that was not possible in Cognos, and when that has happened, it's more due to the data field structure than Cognos itself.
Jonathan Kyrlach | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When I was using IBM Cognos, it was the primary reporting solution for the enterprise, both at HIll-Rom and at Ethicon Endo-Surgery. It was the official tool for users to consume information from the enterprise data warehouse. I've also used it as a third-party integrator.
  • The strength of Cognos has always been their data modeling layer. Both in Framework Manager and in Transformer, very sophisticated data models could be applied to any database-housed source data.
  • Very easy to implement security on data access.
  • The ability to control what queries/operations were handled by Cognos, versus those that would be passed off to the database.
  • Having both the Framework models and the report studio specs be xml documents made third-party integration quite nice.
  • Printing reports is very easy.
  • Drilling up/down/through very easy to do.
  • The data models aren't available to anything besides Cognos Reports. So if a custom application or an analysis tool from another vendor wants to access the data, they can't take advantage of any of the modeling work done in Framework Manager, they have to do it all over again. This is a travesty. The modeling should be presented as a federated database layer that any application can take advantage of.
  • The data modeling environment doesn't lend itself to good development practices: You can't tell easily what the impact will be to making a change (Will this break report? cubes?), there's no built-in version control, only one person can work on a model at a single time, large files become unwieldy.
  • The general level of graphics is behind other vendors. The maps in particular are terrible.
  • The tool is expensive, and locks you in.
  • Working with a performant, dimensional source like a cube requires learning and using archaic mdx, and is very difficult to do in Report Studio.
When money is no object, vendor lock-in isn't a problem, and users don't care how good the reports look -- IBM Cognos is a good fit for that.
September 30, 2015

God Knows or Cognos

Sachin Karkun | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos BI suite has been deployed across enterprise and end customers, for one of the customers at my previous company. They are at version 10.2.2 which consists of dashboards and daily data snapshots. The target users are mostly mid-level and top-management but external users such as dealers and vendors have access to the environment when it comes to scorecards. It is easily integrated with other websites. It has a good API that allows seamless integration. However, the main challenge includes extensive learning, frequent service restarts and proper documentation of troubleshooting information. Additionally, visualization and query engine still require improvements in terms of creating simpler queries.
It consists of Analysis Studio, Query Studio, Workspace, Workspace Advanced as Adhoc Analysis tools, which provides alternate for OLAP and relational database, but it poses a challenge while educating users to uses the right tool for analysis. Report Studio is widely used for preparing canned reports, but if the components are not structured properly within a report then it can lead to unstable environment. Dynamic Cubes is one of the client tools which allows analysis on large set of data but has a lot of dependency on materialized views created in database. As per IBM's roadmap, dynamic cube would be the future but IBM needs to improve or enhance the tool in terms of supporting aggregate awareness and less dependency on database materialized views.
  • IBM cognos can create reports against transactional as well as data marts. It has the capability of combining results of multiple databases too.
  • Integrating with external websites is easy and seamless. It provides SDK for Java and C# which extends the report functionality.
  • Administrators have easy access to stop/start a particular service through administrator page. It also simplifies the code migration. Modelling tools like framework manager and transformer are quite intutive.
  • Zero footprint architecture allows an end user to author and publish reports through an internet browser.
  • Bursting option eliminates the requirement of storing multiple copies of report which each user or user group.
  • Visualization and charting engines are still elementary. IBM Cognos has introduced RAVE charts but the capabilities are limited and customization is still tricky.
  • Cognos Insight is one of the self-learning BI tools, but it is not at par with the Tableau or Qlik. It needs a lot of improvements.
  • Aggregate awareness has to be extended further to other tools like framework manager or transformer. Similarly, active reports have to be more robust in terms of complying to the wide range of use-cases.
  • Lack of offline reporting puts an unnecessary dependency on the internet.
  • Since, the environment is centralized, a bad query can shutdown development of reports.
  • Client tools such as framework manager, transformer GUI, dynamic cube designer, Cognos Insight are restricted to windows. It would be better if they are extended to Ubuntu, Mac or Linux too.
  • Support for Chrome browser is minimal.
  • Training materials need to be improved.
  • Plugin for R is good to have.
IBM Cognos provides a stack for enterprise-wide reporting. It can be deployed, managed, updated and migrated very easily. Worth an investment for medium and large capital investment companies. Once learned, it has alternatives for most of the report navigation requirements. However, if one is looking for remarkable dashboards, then it Tableau and QlikView are better options at present. Licensing rules are bit tricky. Otherwise, overall a good experience but has a steep learning curve.
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.
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