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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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Learn from top reviewers

IBM Cognos Analytics is a proven BI Product

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 18, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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...
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Vinit Mahiwal
Analyst - Other
BI Developer
Shorewise
IBM Cognos Analytics2 years of experience

Effortless Data Visualization and Reporting with IBM Cognos Analytics.

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 17, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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...
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Riaz Raza
Director - Engineering
Senior Director of Engineering
AppVerticals
IBM Cognos Analytics6 years of experience

A good tool at a good price

Rating: 9 out of 10
November 26, 2024
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
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 ...
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Cristian Racu
Manager - Information Technology
Deputy CEO
Biroul de Credit
IBM Cognos Analytics2 years of experience

IBM Cognos Analytics get reports the way you need them.

Rating: 7 out of 10
November 20, 2024
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Cognos is used for reporting analytical data from our ERP system that is hosted on OS400 BMI
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Michael O'Riley
Director - Information Technology
Director of Information Technology at Humphrey Companies, LLC.
Humphrey Companies, LLC
IBM Cognos Analytics5 years of experience

Best data representation visualization.

Rating: 9 out of 10
September 23, 2024
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
IBM Cognos is used for Reporting and decision-making. Creating dashboards and providing financial planning and analysis functions saves time and increases organization product...
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Verified user
Analyst
IBM Cognos Analytics2 years of experience
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How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors

Most Valuable Capabilities

I feel confident using Cognos because every stakeholder gets their data version, avoiding accidental overwrites. The security features ensure that access is well-managed across admins, staff, and customers, making it far more reliable than traditional spreadsheets.
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Achievements Enabled

I don’t need to write SQL queries or code, which saves a lot of time. Building reports and dashboards is simple using the drag-and-drop interface, and data preparation driven by artificial intelligence pushes the envelope and simplifies difficult chores greatly.
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Most Valuable Capabilities

access preparee xploreand present information.When using IBM Cognos Analytics you can perform data discovery and then quickly assemble that information into interactive, visually appealing dashboards New Feature - AI Agents Good, Tagents are the future because they can replace all the manual work …
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Self-Service

We deliver reports via email to users. Some reports are pdf or excel format. Also, users are able to log in with their own credentials and run reports manually at any time.
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Data Security and Quality

Data quality is very important ant to our organization. With reporting, we can quickly identify issues or improvements. There is always a chance someone may enter data incorrectly and by the use of reports, we can identify those incorrect entries quickly. Additionally, reporting business …
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Self-Service

With the help of IBM Cognos, users can create faster reports without relying on IT, which reduces wait time and increases organization productivity. With the help of self-service analytics, users can explore data and get answers to questions without requiring extensive technical help. It also …
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Data Security and Quality

Data governance controls are essential for data quality, security, and compliance within the organization; they ensure data quality, accuracy, and consistency. It also provides data security to protect sensitive data from theft and damage. it also protects from regulatory compliances and provides …
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Self-Service

Having the ability to use IBM Cognos Analytics as a self service has really helped me out. I am able to quickly and easily pull data to track my purchase order services/software spend as well as track data for our federal reporting for small business spend. I do not need to wait on anyone, I am …
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Data Security and Quality

It's helpful because only certain areas of the organization has access. It keeps us with the ability to control who can see what data and making sure they come to Procurement and finance to access.
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Self-Service

It's not easy at all. I'm still struggling with some implementation steps. Self-service capabilities are great, but they're not as easy as they sound on a daily basis.
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Self-Service

We have not used the AI assisted data preparation as the amount of the data that we collect is on a larger scale and we are in the very beginning of implementing AI on a broder scope in our organization
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Data Security and Quality

We are very much concerned about our data as we are a global organisation. The data we collect is to make sure we make earth a better place to live hence we go a extra mile to make sure the data is secured and only the authorised persons have access the the data.
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

These features have streamlined some manual work and further advanced automation, but validation and further accuracy-checking is still needed as we gain confidence in the platform and want to ensure confidence.
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Self-Service

Its advanced AI capabilities help us immensely in data analysis as its very fast in analyzing large amounts of data in lower time frame. and as its running with the help of ai it means we can deploy our resources somewhere else.
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Data Security and Quality

By data governance IBM Cognos Analytics ensures our data remains safe. It only allow authorized individuals with access of confidential data. with its accurate data analytics capabilities we are ensured that our data received from it is consistent and accurate. and because of that we are really …
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Self-Service

When used properly, the AI features do provide productivity gains. However, they won't do all the work for you. They alleviate some of the most tedious tasks and help speed things up overall.
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Data Security and Quality

Those functionalities are must-haves in any large organization, where you can not allow everybody to access every data set. However, I wish there were more options for user authentication.
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Self-Service

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.
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

I feel the self-service capabilities are the best part about this tool. Big data usually comes with challenges of cleaning and streamlining the data, which is done easily and mostly automatically by IBM Cognos Analytics. Also, plain English commands make the tool extremely user friendly and very …
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Self-Service

These tools have been incredibly impactful in driving our business activities and spending less time on tedious reports and organization/business decisions.
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Data Security and Quality

I feel much more confident about the quality of the data I'm using since there are numerous AI and data mining tools involved in this process that make data organization and optimization easier. These tools are incredibly important to maintaining data and making informed business decisions for …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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.
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Self-Service

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.
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

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.
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Data Security and Quality

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.
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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.
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Self-Service

These self-service capabilities have enhanced the company's activities by allowing the creators and users of the information the freedom to take an idea they have and run with it. They can use the AI Assistant to take their ideas and create a visualization that helps get their point across and …
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Data Security and Quality

By allowing the enhanced security controls the company has been able to make sure that all relevant data is limited to the users that need it most and it is locked down appropriately. This gives Management peace of mind that the right people are looking at the right data and the risk of the …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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Self-Service

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 …
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Data Security and Quality

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 …
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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

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Pricing

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On Demand - Standard

$10.00

Cloud
per month per user

On Demand - Standard

$10.60

On Premise
per month per user

On Demand - Premium

$42.40

On Premise
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://ibm.biz/Cognos_Analytics_Pricin…

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

How to get started with IBM Cognos Analytics

www.ibm.com

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.

7.2
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7.4
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

7.9
Avg 8.3

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.

7.2
Avg 7.9

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

7.9
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

6.9
Avg 7.8

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 7.8
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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

IBM Cognos Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of a natural language query, used in IBM Cognos Analytics to get AI-powered insights from data.Screenshot of AI-generated insights and forecasts that can be added with just a click of a button.Screenshot of a dashboard that can be generated automatically using IBM Cognos Analytics by uploading or selecting data.Screenshot of an AI-generated dashboard from a spreadsheet that was just uploaded. This offers a great starting point for the creative process.Screenshot of where to import data to IBM Cognos Analytics from CSV files and spreadsheets. Users can connect to cloud or on-premises data sources, including SQL databases, Google BigQuery, Amazon, and Redshift.Screenshot of a sample operational dashboard of a coffee shop created using IBM Cognos Analytics.

IBM Cognos Analytics Video

IBM Cognos Analytics Integrations

IBM Cognos Analytics Competitors

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 Report Versioning highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of IBM Cognos Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 101)

IBM Cognos Analytics is a proven BI Product

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
March 18, 2025
Alternatives Considered
It was due to trust in IBM. Very good support provide by IBM. Response time is pretty good
Product is proven in past & well robust feature
Many good enterprises have used this product

What i like is new improvement its making to adjust as per time
Overall great experience

Best data representation visualization.

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
September 23, 2024
Verified User
Analyst in Finance and Accounting
Financial Services Company, 501-1000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
IBM Cognos Analytics
2 years of experience
Alternatives Considered
My company selected IBM Congos Analytics because of its advanced features and data representation for data analysis. Its row and column features are very effective for creating dashboards and reports to visualize data. It's chart representation and view format are very attractive and useful for representation.
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