Item: IBM Cognos Analytics
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence and analytics platform to gather and aggregate data from multiple parts of our organization, then analyze and visualize data to make business decisions (mainly to improve B2B sales and customer satisfaction, but also as a hint for developing new products/solutions for our clients).

Pros and Cons

Data Visualization: Plenty of options exist for multiple use cases, and dashboards are easy to implement and customize.
Integration with IBM Watson: makes it easy to use Watson AI features (NLP etc.) on your data.
Its advanced analytics functionalities with powerful pattern detection/prediction models.

Steep learning curve for beginners. It takes time to understand what can be done and how.
The user interface feels old and not easy to use, especially compared to recent solutions.
Limited options for user identification (LDAP only).

Return on Investment

Helped improve the KPIs for sales/customer satisfaction.
Eliminated the need for manual reporting in several use cases.
However we needed quite some time to learn how to use BI functionalities.

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.

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.

Reporting

I think Cognos does deliver on this aspect, but the user interface feels old and formatting could be made easier if they improved that aspect of the product.

Alternatives Considered

Tableau CRM and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Cognos provides very advanced analytics functionalities, maybe even more advanced than the competition, and works great when used in collaboration with Watson. However, Tableau and other newer products are much better regarding overall usability.

Key Insights

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

Other Software Used

Slack, IBM watsonx Assistant, Microsoft Teams

Likelihood to Recommend

Our first and most basic scenario was to automatize the creation and publication/sharing of business reports that used to be created manually by employees throughout our organization. Using Cognos for that first use case worked well. The advanced analytics functionalities we used on the aggregated data were also as expected. However, the user interface is not always intuitive, and there is a steep learning curve, so I would recommend Cognos only to large organizations where there is a need for the most advanced functionalities (AI analysis/prediction).

Good BI tool for advanced analytics.

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cognos Analytics