IBM Cognos Analytics Review
January 15, 2021

IBM Cognos Analytics Review

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Analysis Studio
  • Query Studio
  • Report Studio
  • Transformer

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cognos Analytics

Used across the whole organization.
Addresses practically all our important, and most of our less important business questions.
  • Ad hoc combination of attributes to select data (in order to analyze data).
  • Range of front-ends (cubes, standard reports, query- and report-studio for power-users).
  • Integration of diagram-functionality in cubes.
  • Downloading in different formats (csv, xls, pdf,...).
  • OLAP-cubes MUST IMMEDIATELY be upgraded to 64-bit-technology (if not, we are lost as Cognos/IBM-customer).
  • Easier integration of complex authorisation systems (concepts) into cubes (vertical as well as horizontal authorisation).
  • Much more statistics-functionality in cubes! (IBM bought SPSS 10 years ago!! where is the benefit of Cognos-users!!)!!!
  • Positive: MUCH easier access to data for hundreds of users in our organisation (almost thousands of users).
  • Positive: time saved! at least 70%.
  • Positive: hundreds of users can now analyze data and can get scheduled reports.
TRANSFORMER plus Cognos-Cubes were superior to all of them: speed of development as well as usability!
Much higher speed of development as compared to SAS.
Much easer as well as versatile handling for end-users as compared to SAP-BW.
We had a difficult time to decide between BO and Cognos. Don't remember why we chose Cognos over BO.
Not really. Because our users stick to Cognos OLAP-Cubes. No interest in using fancy dashboards. Management not interested in dashboards (just in numbers). The real enablement was, many many years ago, cubes over standard-reports.
Security-concept (authorization concept) is not detailed enough for our purpose (but we use mainly cubes).
Well suited:
* simple reports for simple users ("big button-users", mostly managers or CEOs)
* analyze date in cubes (finding "most important customer-group", finding "outliers" / "exceptions"; seeing historical development of...)

Less appropriate:
* beautiful reports for the general public! Be it paper, be it in electronic form (online)

IBM Cognos Analytics Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
9
Customizable dashboards
7
Report Formatting Templates
7
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
7
Publish to PDF
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
4
Role-Based Security Model
6
Single Sign-On (SSO)
8
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
Not Rated