IBM Cognos (Business Intelligence)
April 24, 2014

IBM Cognos (Business Intelligence)

Joyce DuPree | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Versions 7, 8 and 10.

Modules Used

  • Query Studio, Report Studio, Dashboards

Overall Satisfaction

I am the primary IBM Cognos report writer for our organization. I have scheduled reports that are emailed out to managers and supervisors on a biweekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Most of my reports are HR and payroll related. I have set up a couple of dashboards for our Executive and Management teams and am currently working on dashboards for the HR Business Partners and Training and Development.
  • Filters- when setting up filters within your report, you can validate to see if it works, prior to finalizing your report.
  • XML copying- if you have the XML from a report that someone else authored, you can open it up in Report Studio and tweak the report to meet your needs.
  • The report packages are easy to use and will give you as little or as much information as you want to report on. You can choose a small package, such as My Employees( limited data), or use a larger package, the Administrator Package ( all inclusive).
  • I have had problems trying to pull information from more than one package into a single report.
  • The current Time and Attendance package doesn't actually pull in information from Ultipro's Time and Attendance (UTA) module.
  • Increased efficiency within the HR department. We can run our own reports on demand.
  • Better customer service, when reports are requested by internal or external customers, they can be delivered within 24 hours of the request. When we relied on our IT department for reports, this was never the case
  • I did some Crystal reports years ago.
Cognos is more intuitive and I think easier to use.
It's currently the report writing tool for Ultipro. I hope it stays around a long time.
It is well suited for novice report writers. Ultipro offers free training and I have taken most of the Business Intelligence classes! Some I have taken twice to really grasp the concepts. A key question to ask during selection would be will free and unlimited training be provided?