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.
I have used IBM Cognos Analytics previously for reporting retail data. It has good data modeling capability. Very robust system to handle good volume of data. It has good scop...
I use IBM Cognos Analytics mainly for reporting and data visualization, and it makes it easier for me to produce thorough reports and mix several data sources. Predictive anal...
We use IBM Cognos Analytics as our main platform for company analytics. It is our main source for aggregated information regarding our business. Also there is the main source ...
IBM Cognos is used for Reporting and decision-making. Creating dashboards and providing financial planning and analysis functions saves time and increases organization product...
Cognos' self-service capabilities have been a game-changer for our team. Before, data analysis felt like you needed a degree in wizardry. Now, with AI-assisted data prep and the AI Assistant, it's like having a data expert by your side, translating our plain English questions into deep insights …
For us, working with a major financial brand, data security isn't just important—it's everything. Cognos Analytics' security controls are a big deal for us. They let us manage who sees what, ensuring only the right eyes are on sensitive data. This is crucial in a big agency like ours, where …
It offers certain features, for example, simulated intelligence helped information arrangement, robotized dashboards, and the AI intelligence Collaborator which permits clients to pose inquiries in plain language and get suggested representations. These self-administration abilities are …
The execution of safety controls in IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson has empowered us to keep up with the most elevated levels of information quality and trustworthiness. These controls permit us to guarantee that main approved work force approach delicate information, and that all information is …
They've helped our middle office and back office non technical users to be able to probe data and come up with informed analysis on past trades. This has dramatically reduced the number of support requests for ad-hoc reporting raised with our technical teams. The reporting tool has helped …
In a bank, these controls are critical as we need row and column level data protection. In addition, we need to prove to compliance on a regular basis that our controls are working correctly and this tool helps us provide the data in accordance with user permissions.
Self-service has without a doubt improved our productivity and reduce complexity as a data platform. Our staff can easily generate reports with little assistance from the IT team unless it's on complex ODBC.
Because we are in finance, confidential data is shared all the time which means data security is a priority. With a secure licensed governance system, data is handled by a trusted source.
The main reporting tools (reports and dashboard) are intuitive and allow users with minimal experience to create their own ad-hoc reports, slice and dice the company's data, and find answers to questions they have. The ability to then share those same reports with colleagues (so they can do their …
Data governance is very important to our company. Especially with new laws like the CCPA and others, protection of data is very important and critical for sensitive data. With IBM Cognos Analytics we have been able to secure this data at different levels and across the different tools that IBM …
The self-service analytics have immensely contributed to independent data handling. It has fully enabled the organization to own and control data that is processed within the enterprise without assistance from third parties. Efficient reporting capabilities have enhanced comprehensive decision …
The system has fully customized security system that detects data threats. The platform does not breach set enterprise security policies that keeps each data under unique protocols. Effective data governance has maintained data integrity aligned with set regulatory requirements. I have experienced …
They are the key as we have different branch office data reports and we need to limit the access of each report to only show data from their branch--this is working pretty well for us.
IBM Cognos Analytics is very easy to learn and implement , the self service capabilities of it is very easy to learn for a beginner level of skilled person which helps to fast-pace the learning and get more out of the tool. The ai powered assistant is also a good utility.
IBM Cognos Analytics provides a rich set of security features and also provides a very isolated level of data handling and access permission and this helps to control the level of access granted to users and their permissions. the quality of data collected and their usage is already communicated …
We regularly use plain English commands to generate a lot of data report, to categorise those reports and to derive business strategies through it.<br>The self-service capabilities also make the learning curve much smoother.<br>The best feature is its chart creation, which can create really …
We are a team of about 12 people who use this tool on a regular basis - ranging from management to junior data analyst. Its individual-level security controls help us assign specific roles and access to each user.
Extremely! As we are a healthcare insurance company, we are driven by mandates from the government and have strict policies to follow. CA allows permissions to be set at most of the levels we require.
These self-service capabilities are easy to use and allow business users to create their own reporting content for their business requirements. It has tremendously reduced work for developers and application administrators to engage with other productivities.
Data cleasing has provided quality data to enable effective decisions which in turn has saved money on CSR calls, AI assistants have introduced automation to ease the burden on manual call handling, visualization has helped marketing to launch new products which are more customer focused and have …
Ours a heavily regulated industry. Any leaks in controls can violate regulations and lead to a hefty fine. Enabling efficient governance has not only help to implement layered security in terms of data classification but also to maintain access, transparency and quality of data needed to make …
80% of the reporting needs are covered by reporting from existing framework manager models. These new features work really well when we need to ingest new data and run the AI assistant to identify connections. Since 11.1.R7 with the improvements to datasets, the options to work with data are …
Having a governed source of data is key to the success of any analytics initiative. There is complete confidence in the quality of the data generated from Cognos. The only issues with accuracy are generated by data entry in the source system and Cognos helps to correct them by automating data …
Cognos has an easy reporting scheduler with possibility to send report to a folder or by email. For advanced reporting, we can also add directly an SQL statement using the defined connection to our datawarehouse.
With Cognos, we can create groups and roles to grant access for users to folders or reports in the portal. So you can activate some data for specific people.
It provides effective solutions, including being able to easily consult and process analytical data. Being able to work through compelling, fully visual charts and dashboards is exceptional.
This tool provides many features to improve work efficiency, it is one of the BI capabilities in all BI products. Provides interactive dashboards, business reporting, data exploration, etc.
The self-service capabilities of this platform allow users to build their own dashboards, reports and scorecards in a simple, intuitive and secure way. It also provides ease of use for advanced data analysis.
1. We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. 2. Options
of customizing & scheduling reports as per our
requirements basis. 3. With limited options, API integration is not up to the mark.
1. We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. 2. Options
of customizing & scheduling reports as per our
requirements basis. 3. Has a mobile application that works seamlessly. 4. Laptops gets
…
This is always what characterizes this software; it is possible to link tools that help to work with different data sources and AI, and it is also possible to visualize the data in a personalized control panel with a direct or indirect classification to all the obtaining system Automated data …
There are more than ten groups with central administrative permissions that are working with this software only in my department; in other areas, different permissions have also been established for each job according to each data source; this significantly helps the individual performance of each …
Under the condition that the data cleansing and data analysis/visualization are very standard, the tool does speed up the data processing data. However, for important and inconsistent data cleansing, it requires lots of manual processing, and using the tool might lead to some serious damage to the …
This functionality definitely helps us to understand the data and perform data governance controls but it requires manual effort to check the data for monitoring. However, using python to do the data transformation in the first place, we need to spend much more time but save lots of time by …
AI assisted data cleansing and connecting data have helped in the process of preparing and transforming data for analysis. Automated dashboard creation supports users to quickly generate interactive dashboard without the need of technical support. Self service feature in cognos analytics helped …
It helps in defining and imposing security policies for different levels, be it groups or individual levels. It implements data governance controls which helps in data quality management and also helps in improving accuracy, and consistency of data. When user know their data is secured and their …
The AI Assistant does enable these automated tasks, but most developers will build models and dashboards manually. The opportunity to leverage these features to achieve broader self-service is there, but it requires a culture shift more than anything. Mostly, the AI features are valuable because …
Data governance is a core element of the IBM Cognos platform, and it is extremely important to any organization. The ability to tightly control access to data at the row and object level as well as security of content is a major benefit of Cognos. It is easy to setup a single-sign-on environment …
While there are claims for the AI integration and other aspects, the implementation of these are not easy and I have seen few success stories of the same. Data cleansing in a reporting tool is rather not recommended and should be done at data source or in data quality tools.
Security and access control based on department, role and user types is one of the key requirements for me. This is something IBM Cognos Analytics does quite well and easyly integrates with windows AD.
IBM Cognos Analytics' data modules allow for basic data prep tasks and continue to evolve. They provide a good web-based environment to manage metadata and build out calculations and filters, which help improve self-service analytics for end users. The AI assistant is a nice enhancement in recent …
Data governance and controls are vital when rolling out an enterprise reporting, dashboarding, and analytics platform. IBM Cognos Analytics has always provided good and effective controls in this respect, which continue to be supported in newer releases. Security control also remains a strong …
I am an end-user, so I don't really get to touch all of this. I get to make reports and publish them. I actually took pleasure in building reports and dashboards because of the very well-built interface. It also makes my co-workers more interested in the data when it's presented in some of these …
Allowing business users the ability to build their own reports reduces the burden on the developers within the IT department and demonstrates how Cognos provides a fantastic return on investment.
Security of the reports and platform is critical when rolling out any reporting solution. With Cognos seamlessly integrating with Active Directory and having Single Signon, security can be handled in one location and modified accordingly as part of the joiners, movers and leavers process.
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Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
7.2
Avg 8.1
7.4
Pixel Perfect reports
(98) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
7.4
Customizable dashboards
(106) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
6.8
Report Formatting Templates
(103) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
7.4
Avg 8.0
7.2
Drill-down analysis
(108) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
7.2
Formatting capabilities
(109) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
7.4
Integration with R or other statistical packages
(76) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
7.8
Report sharing and collaboration
(105) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
7.9
Avg 8.3
8.3
Publish to Web
(27) Ratings
7.5
Publish to PDF
(103) Ratings
8.6
Report Versioning
(26) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
7.1
Report Delivery Scheduling
(106) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
8.1
Delivery to Remote Servers
(12) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers
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.
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 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.
The IBM Cognos BI Suite provides a full-service set of reporting and tracking capabilities.
The UI was attractive and easy-to-use for a wide variety of user levels.
For the costs involved, it provided the best reporting capabilities for the money that we could find.
The upgrade process was relatively easy given the pervasiveness of our integration with the product. The zero-client footprint meant that we didn't have to upgrade 200 users separately. We upgraded the servers, tested the implementation and then ported over the new product version to production with minimal hiccups.
Cons
The transition to IBM was a bit rough. The IBM site was very difficult to navigate. It wasn't user-friendly. Finding information on support took much longer than it did before.
While upgrading was relatively easy, the way they structured the upgrade cost, we were almost forced to pay a cost to upgrade or else face having our implementation be completely unsupported (and still forced to upgrade anyway).
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.
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.
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.
Cons
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.
You can use IBM Cognos report studio to set up reports that you can either manually run on demand or automate to be sent to users on a regular cadence who don't have access to Cognos. For example on the first of every month, I have a number of Headcount reports scheduled to go out to our Finance department for the monthly FPA reconciliation processes.
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.
Cons
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.
5 years of experience
