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.
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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
(579)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
(1-25 of 60)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Primarily used for Dashboard and Report development with some level of self service capabilities.
- Tabular reports
- Dashboards
- Role based access controls
- AI integration
- Self Service reporting
- Introducing new charts and visuals
- As a question feature
- Collaboration
- Frequent upgrades
March 29, 2024
Good BI tool for advanced analytics.
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).
March 25, 2024
It's like a Swiss Army knife for our data
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.
We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very much in line with real-life scenarios. It offers options for customizing and scheduling reports as per our requirements. It has a mobile application that works seamlessly. Depending on the scope, licensing, and maintenance can go from cheap to expensive.
- We use the tool for data modeling as it helps in predictive data analysis for complex data, which is very similar to real-life scenarios.
- Options of customizing & scheduling reports as per our requirements basis.
- Has mobile application which works seamless.
- API integration is not upto the mark with very limited options.
- Laptops get overheated when the tool is used from moderate to heavy use. Also, there is a lag in the tool times.
- Licensing & Maintenance can go from cheap to expensive depending on the scope.
- Lot of scope to improve the customer support & its not upto the industry standards.
March 22, 2024
Unlocking Business Insights with IBM Cognos Analytics
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
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.
March 20, 2024
Best translation of AI into Business Analytics
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
March 20, 2024
Powerful and reliable BI tool
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.
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
December 17, 2023
Data unification capacity, great help to the end user in the creation of the final report.
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.
November 15, 2023
High Quality Enterprise Analytics Platform
We use IBM Cognos Analytics internally to provide reporting, dashboarding, and analytical insights about our business. We also implement the solution in conjunction with our clients to help gain more effective business insights. It provides our clients and users with up-to-date dashboards and reports connecting to a wide variety of data sources.
- Enterprise reporting
- Interactive dashboarding
- Data exploration
- Data connectivity
- Dashboard performance
- Data visualization
July 22, 2023
Cognos Analytics Is Good
We use CA for analyis as well as operational reporting and support an extranet for group and provider utilization reporting.
- emailed delivery
- operational reporting
- dashboarding
- dashboarding
- data modules
- modeling
IBM Cognos Analytics offers the ability to drive the productive growth of our company, with its versatile features that optimize decision making that positively impact the performance of the company, allowing to adjust plans and forecasts in real time. We use this platform to optimize future actions to be taken, based on accurate and reliable data. It allows us to create visually pleasing dashboards, presenting data that significantly facilitates its analysis, processed with a high level of security. This platform offers real-time information that allows you to adapt strategies based on accurate and reliable data.
- Allows you to easily create interactive and intuitive dashboards
- Its user interface is visually very pleasant and easy to use
- Allows to obtain very complete reports, which improves our planning process
- Provides accurate forecasting powered by artificial intelligence
- Its cost which is significantly high
- It requires training for beginners to handle its full potential
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.
February 10, 2023
Worthy intelligence and analytics tool
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson to dissect huge arrangements of information and reveal bits of knowledge that can help our business. By incorporating this tool, we can foster complex reports and dashboards that empower us to rapidly evaluate our ongoing position and pursue informed choices in light of exact data. The business issues we can address with this innovation expanding productivity for tasks, further developing consumer loyalty, and acquiring a superior comprehension of the market. We are likewise ready to utilize this innovation to distinguish areas of chance, like new business sectors, new items and administrations, or new client portions.
- It utilizes AI and normal language handling to prescribe experiences and activities to clients, assisting us with settling on better choices quicker.
- It consequently identifies examples and patterns in information, so we can rapidly uncover significant experiences with negligible exertion
- It gives a scope of perception choices, so we can rapidly and effectively envision the information and gain bits of knowledge that may somehow be challenging to uncover
- It has a few in-built incorporations, however they are normally restricted to a couple of items and administrations.
- Another region where it could be improved is the versatility of its examination capacities. IBM Cognos Analytics with Watson offers a few strong insightful capacities, yet they are not generally so far reaching as a portion of its rivals
April 30, 2022
Models Optimization in a Robust Approach.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use the IBM Cognos set for data analytics on our multi-cloud architecture to automate AI lifecycles. I have more engagement with the IBM Watson studio and I use it frequently for code-based visual data science, working smoothly with the TensorFlow framework. I'm able to monitor the implemented AI models used across the company in accounting, and customer relations for consistent results/output.
- IBM explainable AI makes it easy to to comprehend the AI models.
- Optimization dashboards allow sharing of the models' results with the team to enhance collaboration.
- Search engine displaying data elements is still not available on version 11.1.7.
March 31, 2022
Powerful BI tool with AI capabilities
I use IBM Cognos Analytics extensively for developing queries, reports, dashboards, visualizations, FM models, data models, and administration and scheduling automations for reporting objects. It's widely used across the business on different levels and helping business users and stack holders with analyzing data, decision making, budgeting, and administrative processes.
- Self Services Reporting.
- Scheduling and automations.
- Reporting and Data Visuals.
- Better compatibility with available browsers.
- Companion applications are restricted to use with Firefox only.
February 12, 2022
Sharing reports is possible, easy and effective.
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.
February 07, 2022
A great tool for end-users with exceptional potential.
Although I'm a beginner in this whole analytics cycle, Cognos made it really simple for me as an end-user. Using the dashboards, reports, and automated stories really made my job easier. I really felt like Cognos with Watson was guiding me in the right direction and it felt very user-friendly.
- Data visualization.
- Predictive analytics.
- Automatically finding relationships.
- The price is a little high from what I've gathered. It's not really an option if you're not at least a mid-sized organization.
February 06, 2022
Pixel Perfect Enterprise Reporting Tool
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
January 28, 2022
Fantastic Enterprise Reporting Platform
Our team works across all industry verticals implementing IBM Cognos Analytics solutions for other companies.
Working with our clients, we design and implement Cognos into their organisation and build the solutions that help them gain more effective business insights. This includes building data models, reports and interactive dashboards to provide users with up-to-date information.
Working with our clients, we design and implement Cognos into their organisation and build the solutions that help them gain more effective business insights. This includes building data models, reports and interactive dashboards to provide users with up-to-date information.
- Advanced reporting
- Scheduling and burst report distribution
- Simplified development for end users with its drag and drop functionality
- Delivery in multiple formats
- Works across multiple databases and flexibility to join data
- License costs. Far too expensive for the small to medium size businesses.
- Visualizations. Lacking when compared to Power BI.
- Stability and bugs. Whilst it's inventible there will be bugs, the fix lists for v11 series contain far too many issues that should really have been detected during their QA testing. This becomes a major issue for clients that have thousands of users and cannot constantly be applying fix pack after fix pack.
- No completely free version for developers. IBM should follow Microsoft's approach with Power BI
January 13, 2022
Good business analyst tool to connect datasets and visualization
IBM Cognos Analytics is widely used by business analysts as a way to build dashboards and for data-analytic work. While other job families such as data scientists are using Python and Jupyter Notebook to connect data and visualization. The tools make easy connections with your database if your work scope is within the services that it provides.
- Connection.
- Prebuilt.
- Visualization.
- Fixed.
- Community support.
- Documentation.
August 29, 2021
We've been using it for years for [a] good reason
Our company has been using IBM Cognos Analytics for reporting purposes for many years and it has been pretty stable. The newer version of IBM Cognos Analytics has so many new features, like data sets and data modules, that have been helpful to build interactive dashboards that can be used to paint a clear picture of many reports.
- Data modules
- Data sets
- Event studio
- Dashboard
- More visualizations
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
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).
November 03, 2020
How we use IBM Cognos Analytics at Office Depot
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)
October 20, 2020
IBM Cognos Analytics has evolved
I have been working with multiple clients that have Cognos Analytics in-house to deliver reports to multiple departments within the organization. Some clients have standardized on Cognos across the entire organization. Every use case is unique, but the main strengths of Cognos are its enterprise reporting capabilities. Professional report authors typically develop sophisticated reports that are automated and delivered across large groups of consumers. The goal is to encourage a self-service model, and Cognos also supports that, but adoption of self-service is not consistent across different companies.
- Standardized reporting.
- Enterprise data governance.
- AI-infused data discovery.
- OLAP data exploration.
- Dashboarding.
- Visualization.
- Data cleansing.
- Data preparation.