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IBM Cognos: A Real Life Review from a Disappointed User
September 11, 2014

IBM Cognos: A Real Life Review from a Disappointed User

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

8 BI Report Studio version 8.4.1

Modules Used

  • Query Studio
  • Report Studio

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cognos

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.
  • 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
  • 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.