IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews & Ratings 2024

Q: What are IBM Cognos Analytics's top competitors?

Tableau Public , Tableau Server , and Microsoft Power BI are common alternatives for IBM Cognos Analytics.

Starting at $10 per month per user

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.

Recent Reviews

IBM Cognos Analytics, in my opinion, legacy leader modern laggard

6 out of 10

March 29, 2024

Incentivized

Primarily used for Dashboard and Report development with some level of self service capabilities.

Good BI tool for advanced analytics.

7 out of 10

March 29, 2024

Incentivized

We use IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence and analytics platform to gather and aggregate data from multiple parts of our …

It's like a Swiss Army knife for our data

9 out of 10

March 25, 2024

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 …

IBM Cognos Analytics Review

8 out of 10

March 25, 2024

Incentivized

I work in an industry which is completely data driven, using IBM Cognos Analytics we can easily schedule reports that could be sent out to …

Great Data Visual tool that's let down by lack of integrations & customer support.

7 out of 10

March 23, 2024

Incentivized

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 …

IBM Cognos for Automation, Business Performance Insights, and Advanced Learning

4 out of 10

March 22, 2024

Incentivized

This is used by some of the teams for modeling, predictive analysis using historical data, and deep insights on overall Business …

Unlocking Business Insights with IBM Cognos Analytics

9 out of 10

March 22, 2024

Incentivized

It is business intelligence platform which enables organizations to make insights from their data and also provides informed decisions. …

Adopting an IBM-based corporate performance management solution

9 out of 10

March 21, 2024

Incentivized

The business urgently required a consolidated repository of data, serving as the single source of truth. Such a platform would facilitate …

IBM Cognos Analytics: The best blend of PowerBI, Tableau & Qlik

9 out of 10

March 20, 2024

Incentivized

We use IBM Cognos Analytics suite for developing Analytics solutions and consuming visualization reports and dashboards to get incredible …

Best Business AI Tool

9 out of 10

March 20, 2024

Incentivized

We use IBM Cognos Analytics extensively in our data research. Our research is primarily based on the data input of demographics of our …

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 …

Great for data analysis

9 out of 10

March 20, 2024

Incentivized

We mostly use it for data analytics and business intelligence. With the data provided IBM Cognos Analytics provide comprehensive reports …

Best translation of AI into Business Analytics

8 out of 10

March 20, 2024

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 …

Powerful and reliable BI tool

6 out of 10

March 20, 2024

Incentivized

We use IBM Cognos Analytics as our primary Business Intelligence tool for our risk and business reporting needs. We use it to produce …

IBM Cognos Analytics Review

7 out of 10

February 13, 2024

Incentivized

IBM Cognos Analytics is used in the organization for reporting and analytics trends that come from the financial aspects of the company. …

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How IBM Cognos Analytics Differs From Its Competitors

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

This is very important to us. We appreciate the controls accessible in IBM Cognos, as with any platform we seek out. This allows access to the data and investigating from team members at any and every level.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

Self-Service

Cognos Analytics allowed me to create personalised dashboards tailored to my specific needs and preferences. It did not take long to get the core wok done as I can use drag-and-drop functionality, to easily add, arrange, and configure my visualisations to visualise my key metrics and KPIs. The …

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

These data governance controls have significantly improved my confidence in the quality and security of our data. They provided me with assurance that our data assets are managed effectively, adhere to regulatory requirements, and are accessible only to authorized users. Its really important …

Incentivized

Self-Service

We are getting benefited continuously with the advanced Automation and AI capabilities on IBM Cognos Analytics which enable us to focus more on delivering the strategic business solutions rather than repetitive development tasks like data extraction, modelling (unless specific modelling is needed …

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

Data security is a critical deal maker or deal breaker for us and IBM Cognos Analytics live to fullest of the expectations in this regard.
It offers tremendously helpful capabilities for row level and role level security on top of already powerful single sign on and multi factor authentication …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

The level-wise controls and access management work smoothly. We have a big team using this software, and everyone's access and role rights are efficiently and easily managed through the tool.

Incentivized

Self-Service

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

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

Self-Service

If it is possible for all users to clearly understand the generated reports, the information panels are easy even for non-technical staff; it is not necessary to ask for help to export information to components or modules that are required, and it is also easy to change the location and report …

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

Documents and reports are shared in all departments only with Latin permissions for password management and encryption when required; there is a person in charge in each department who has the authorization; in the same way, this product has additional security features with advanced verification. …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

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 …

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

This does increase throughput so that we can deploy content to a wider audience utilizing security to make sure people see only what they are supposed to see. The overall model is flexible and powerful so we can deliver data securely no matter the security need.

Incentivized

Self-Service

Yes it did and if the code was simplified also with integration of multiple UI then it would be a great product that users can use in their businesses

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

In enables better data governance structure by having regulated access to reports and dashboards of who can access the data with better row level security enabled. Quality of data is highly dependent on how we get the data and make relationships with different tables and databases so it is …

Incentivized

Self-Service

Leveraging AI to analyse data and generate interactive dashboards is an incredible powerful and time saving feature.
The AI assistant natural language processing is also a great tool to fill the knowledge gap that is normal for clients using these kind of tools.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

The security controls are a must of using this tool. Beyond important :-) Without security it would not work.
Proper content management and data quality features improved the confidence in the quality of the data.

Incentivized

Self-Service

Such self service features are the reason we stick with Cognos Analytics. There is an active community and support is excellent.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

With Cognos Analytics user data and master copy are nicely differentiated. So a user can come out with different scenarios on his own workspace without modifying the master copy.

Incentivized

Self-Service

We just migrated to CA this year so we are still struggling with switching our model to self service.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

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.

Incentivized

Self-Service

We provide training on these exact capabilities and offer custom report/dasboard builds on an SOW basis. Along with our standard reports and dashboards this has allowed us to satisfy all of our customer needs.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

Very important. All users are assigned roles and "scope". This scope is enforced in models, allowing us to provide single packages which satisfy 1,000s of needs. Power BI and Tableau can't do that!

Incentivized

Self-Service

We are planning to introduce business user self-service for future release.

Incentivized

Data Security and Quality

IBM Cognos allows governors at system level, model/package level and report level security controls, but it is lacking control by tenants. e.g. many system level governors like high/low affinity processes or max processes cannot have different settings per tenant.

Incentivized

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 (103)
8.1
81%
Drill-down analysis (102)
8.1
81%
Report Delivery Scheduling (101)
8.0
80%
Customizable dashboards (100)
7.8
78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

Role based access controls
Introducing new charts and visuals

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Banking Company, 5001-10,000 employees

Integration with IBM Watson: makes it easy to use Watson AI features (NLP etc.) on your data.
The user interface feels old and not easy to use, especially compared to recent solutions.

Verified User

Program Manager in Product Management

Information Technology & Services Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Pricing

View all 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

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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

8.1
Drill-down analysis
(102) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
8.1
Formatting capabilities
(103) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
7.8
Integration with R or other statistical packages
(72) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
8.4
Report sharing and collaboration
(100) 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.

8.3

Avg 8.4

8.3
Publish to Web
(27) Ratings
8.7
Publish to PDF
(98) 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.
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
(101) 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.

8.1

Avg 8.1

8
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
(89) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
8.2
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
(86) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
8.1
Predictive Analytics
(82) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
8
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
(21) Ratings
Pattern recognition and data mining mean the ability to recognize hidden patterns in large quantities of data.

Access Control and Security

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

8.3

Avg 8.6

8.4
Multi-User Support (named login)
(96) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
8.3
Role-Based Security Model
(95) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
8.2
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
(95) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
8.4
Report-Level Access Control
(24) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
8.3
Single Sign-On (SSO)
(77) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

7.3

Avg 8.0

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

7.3
REST API
(58) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
7.5
Javascript API
(57) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
8.3
iFrames
(9) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
6.9
Java API
(11) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
7.1
Themeable User Interface (UI)
(10) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
7.8
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
(7) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API

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Product Details

About
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.

https://ibm.biz/Cognos_Analytics_product_page

IBM Cognos Analytics Features

Show Unsupported 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 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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Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)

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September 23, 2014

Is IBM Cognos 8 ideal for non-technical business users?

Dwight Taylor

Manager of BI Reporting

Bezaleel Consulting LLC (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)

Score 1 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM COGNOS 8 and it's suite of products was selected as the Enterprise BI tool. It's main use was a historical static reporting tool.

Pros and Cons

IBM COGNOS consistently delivers static historical reports to users across the Enterprise.
IBM COGNOS successfully connects to the majority of Enterprise data storage systems.
IBM Cognos is a robust suite of tools that deliver complete life cycle business intelligence capabilities.

IBM Cognos is a "VERY" difficult tool for common business users to be productive in. This inevitably creates clogged pipeline of unmet BI needs for business areas.
IBM Cognos requires such a specialized set of skills in order to be productive, it's impractical for business users to acquire such skills when it's not their primary job responsibility.
IBM Cognos would be a very useful tool if the platform provided a non-technical suite of tools that could be leveraged by non-technical company resources.

Likelihood to Recommend

Given my in-depth technical knowledge and awareness of constantly changing business user needs, it's hard to imagine a scenario where I would recommend such a complex and expensive platform in light of some of the more inexpensive and business user friendly options like Tableau.

Alternatives Considered

Crystal Reports Server, SAP Business Objects and Tableau Server & Desktop

IBM Cognos shines when it comes to setting up slow changing historical reports that need to be delivered on a predefined schedule to a predetermined set of recipients.

Likelihood to Renew

It took my BI team one year to become productive at developing useful content on the IBM Cognos platform. After this year, the reports being developed for a client were stale and no longer relative to the ever changing needs of the business client. Given the same opportunity, I would select a platform that allows the team to quickly produce BI content. Fail fast and recover quickly!

Breadth of Deployment

It really depends on what you mean by adopted. If you mean report recipients, which is usually how adoption is measured, then it was widely adopted. However, if by adopted you mean productive content producers, it was not widely adopted. Maybe less than 1% of business intelligence content producers.

Data Integration

IBM Cognos is capable of connecting to a very wide variety of data sources; no problem there.

Collaboration and Sharing

IBM Cognos has strong access control, sharing or report distribution and security capabilities. However, the platform could do much more in the collaboration space. In addition, content formatting is rigid and can benefit from enhancements.

Data Visualization

IBM Cognos Insight was in it's first or second release when I used it. Chart types were limited to 6 types. Desktop memory utilization was prohibitive. Dashboard creation was not intuitive and quite difficult without extensive training. Data connections were limited. Visual capabilities were inflexible and presented the user with spreadsheet like visualizations without customization.

September 12, 2014

IBM Cognos is a mid tier BI solution best suited with great customer service and support

Francisco Prieto

Sr. Market Analyst - Business Intelligence & Digital Analytics

Travelocity (Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 1001-5000 employees)

Score 5 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cognos is used throughout the organization but under different capacities and for different reasons. There are three tiers: Developers, PowerUsers/Analyst and end users.

Cognos is used to deliver historical reporting through queried data tables and programmable reporting functions. It allows us to get a pulse on how the business is doing and deliver production informatics to our sales and marketing groups.

Pros and Cons

Cognos provides a simple way to view and use dynamic tables to slice and dice data similar to what a pivot table does. Once particular reports or queries have been set, they are easily married with email and pdf functionality allowing us to schedule reporting data deliveries.

Cognos doesn't do well when competing with other tools that allow for data mining, digital analytics and also predictive analytics. Its difficult to produce forecasting type dashboards that are dynamic to the end user. Too often you are limited to static views which are not dynamic.

Likelihood to Recommend

IBM Cognos is scoped specifically for the traditional reporting and analysis tasks using a variety of presentation techniques. These include simple graphs, charts, reports, and tables. For orgs that haven't implemented an organization wide solution, Cognos would be a prime candidate. Probably the strongest feature is the ability to offer a mid tier enterprise wide BI environment solution.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau Desktop,QlikView,SAP Business Objects,Crystal Reports,SugarCRM

IBM Cognos is a big, all-embracing BI solution mainly to satisfy general needs of many large organizations. It has good scalability. There are however easier to use and more intuitive solutions depending on your need. IBM Cognos is also more costly pound per pound than the competition.

Likelihood to Renew

We are heavily tied to IBM with other portions of the business so don't foresee us breaking off completely from their offering, however a better statement would be to say that we will be scaling back some of the functionality we pay for today.

Breadth of Deployment

There are about 200 users in our Division.

Data Integration

I'm neutral here as there are not many limitations we have experienced when connecting to databases.

Collaboration and Sharing

The product is easily used through email and lists distribution.

Data Visualization

This is one aspect where the tool lacks that special something when compared to more dynamic options. The visual attractiveness is on par with that of Excel 2002.

September 11, 2014

IBM Cognos: A Real Life Review from a Disappointed User

Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

Score 2 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Cognos is not used across the entire organization from what I can tell, but only used by select departments, mainly out of necessity, as this is the report designer that is integrated with some of our systems. We are currently using it to develop reports within our Enterprise Asset Management System.

Pros and Cons

It integrates very well with our Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) System
Making the reports accessible via the system itself is pretty seamless
Ability to add numerous objects to a report gives you many options for developing your report and getting the most data out of your systems

In my opinion, it is very difficult to use and it is more geared towards developers that are used to products like Visual Studio
I do not like the use of the hierarchical layout under the Properties. It is not easy to determine where data objects will be placed and how they will interact with the system. For example, you can have numerous List Columns in the tree, yet it is hard to determine which is the correct on to place data objects.
It may be that we are a hosted environment, but the system is not very flexible with what you can do with it from my standpoint

Likelihood to Recommend

IBM Cognos is a decent system if it is integrated with one of your other systems already, but if this was not the case, I would lean more towards Crystal Reports, as it is more user-friendly. Trying to accomplish simple tasks in Cognos is very difficult and very time consuming and making updates is never simple.

Alternatives Considered

Crystal Reports

I did not select IBM Cognos by choice. It was the report designer that was integrated into our Enterprise Asset Management system. In order to create custom reports for our users, this was they system we needed to use. If I were to have the option of using Crystal Reports instead, I would definitely choose CR.

Likelihood to Renew

As stated before, this system is a requirement for report creation in our Enterprise Asset Management system, so it will automatically be renewed when we renew the support for the EAM system. It is really that cut and dry. I would not renew this particular product if I was able to use a different report writer.

Breadth of Deployment

IBM Cognos is used minimally in our organization and it is more of a niche product. It is mainly used when we have no other options. Some of our systems require this program be used for all report related functions. As far as I know, it is being used by about 4-5 departments and possibly 10 users.

Data Integration

IBM Cognos (at least the way we have it configured via our hosted provider) does not allow us to connect to other data sources, so I am not entirely familiar with how well or how bad it connects to these other data sources. I do like how everything is laid out for me in the EAM Database and it is easy to choose tables and fields that I need for any given report.

Collaboration and Sharing

I think that the sharing and collaboration capabilities within the system have not really been utilized too much up to this point. I do like the scheduling functionality and it is fairly straightforward to schedule a report to be emailed to users on a schedule. That is pretty much the extent that we have shared reports thus far.

Data Visualization

As with everything else in this product, adding charts and graphs seems much more involved that how easy it is to accomplish in Crystal Reports. It is very cumbersome trying to create the look and feel for a product that would literally take minutes in Crystal Reports. I think IBM needs to work on updating this product from a user's perspective if I am going to change my tune about the product.

September 10, 2014

Cognos - Adequate for Reporting, Needs A Friend or Two for Analysis

Joseph Frank, PhD, CCP, GWCCM

Human Resources Consultant/Compensation (and HR Analytics) Services

Washington University School of Medicine (Human Resources, 10,001+ employees)

Score 5 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

IBM Cognos is locally known as RAPS (Reporting, Analysis and Planning System). RAPS is a reporting tool that sits atop the data warehouse managed by Information Systems & Technology. It is used for reporting on a variety of business operations areas, including finance and human resources.

Pros and Cons

Strong at pulling data from a single package.
Allows for some data analysis and changing of field names.
Provides tools to summarize data and extract into other formats.

Limited ability to do advanced analysis.
Often crashes when querying more than 500 records on a single filter.
Does not easily allow for connections between multiple data sources.
Documentation is unclear / unavailable to power users.

Likelihood to Recommend

Cognos is great for just pulling lists of data, but at least the way it is deployed at WUSTL, it does not allow for advanced analysis. The underlying data must be pulled into a format like Microsoft Excel, and then transferred into other tools like statistical software.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle PeopleSoft

IBM Cognos is definitely more robust as a reporting and analysis tool than PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, in my experience. PeopleSoft is primarily transaction-oriented, rather than data-driven.

On Demand - Standard

$10.00

On Demand - Premium

$40.00

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