IBM Cognos Delivers Value for Small-Medium Sized Businesses
August 23, 2021

IBM Cognos Delivers Value for Small-Medium Sized Businesses

Ben Swinney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Analysis Studio
  • Query Studio
  • Report Studio

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cognos Analytics

We use IBM Cognos Analytics across our company. We use to do ad hoc reporting and automated reporting on our core system.
  • Automates reporting
  • Enables precise reporting from database
  • Enables users to share reports easily
  • The user interface is slow to move from screen to screen.
  • I wish there was a search function to find our data elements in the data warehouse.
  • It would be helpful to have more clear error messages that you could better use to determine what needs to be changed.
  • Easier access to data - there are reports we would not have been able to generate without Cognos.
  • The report scheduling saves lots of time each month. At least 20 hours per month.
  • We have been able to catch errors that have saved our company $250,000.
IBM Cognos [Analytics] is offered through our core system provided, Fiserv. It is integrated with our loan, deposit, and customer information systems which is the primary reason it works best for us. Power BI seems to have a better user interface and visualization functionality, but the integration to our core data systems is key.
We have not used these features.
We have 10 users and they all have the same security access, so this functionality has not been critical for us.
IBM Cognos allows you to generate a report in a usable, effective format but it is harder than I'd like it to be to generate the reports. Subtotaling and totaling is often confusing and could be simpler.

Do you think IBM Cognos Analytics delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM Cognos Analytics's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Cognos Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IBM Cognos Analytics go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Cognos Analytics again?

Yes

IBM Cognos Analytics works best when a user is very comfortable with SQL databases and queries. It doesn't require you to know how to code SQL but it is very helpful to know the concepts well. If you aren't familiar with SQL, Cognos is harder.

IBM Cognos Analytics Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
6
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
6
Drill-down analysis
6
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
9
Publish to PDF
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Not Rated
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Not Rated
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
Multi-User Support (named login)
8
Role-Based Security Model
8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
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