IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews

Cognos Analytics is a flexible software for Standard Business Intelligence Reporting as well as for Self Service Data Visualization capability. You have the option to connect to a variety of the Data Sources as well as Multi-Dimensional Cubes. The new invention of Cognos Analytics software provides a greater flexibility for enterprise deployments and upgrades. It has the new feature of NLP (natural language processing) for predictive analytics by IBM Watson.

Too many modelling tools (Cognos FrameWork Manager, Dynamic Cube Designer, Cognos Transformer) for modelling the content. Too many studios (Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio) for report development. Maintainence and cost is huge

The ability to visualize data in many way all using the same utility is beneficial so we don't have to worry about multiple deployment/support patterns. Having an in-memory OLAP option made performance less of an issue compared to hitting an on-prem database directly for everything. The ability to add custom code allows for some really creative solutions to unique business problems in reporting.

We felt the interface and functionality was a little dated - our more technical employees were fine but the more analyst-type developers preferred something "prettier"/"friendlier" like Tableau/Power BI. It also got expensive for us which was one of the two the primary reasons we transitioned. This is obviously dependent on the number of users, so consider your own environment of course.

Complex reports can be achieved with IBM Cognos Report studio, great for setting up scheduled reports.

Interface is not user friendly, certain features are not logically placed.Charts are not great when downloaded into Excel.

The software is very intuitive. If you have knowledge of SQL, it is a very easy software to pick up. The Help portion of the Cognos interface is very helpful also.

Customer Support for this product isn't the best. We have been on Cognos 10.1.1 for a while and when it came up for licensing renewal, we were charged for a newer version of Data Manger. When we inquired about this through our support contract we were going to be charged for the new software.

Scheduling reports, configuring prompt pages on reports for users to run a standardized report with custom filters are both fantastic features that I used hundreds of times across all reporting.

Report building was intuitive for a power user but average users found it overwhelming. This just meant a bit more training from my department.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a great data analytics tool. It can handle a lot of data and makes it easy for users to create reports to view their data. I like that it allows for a variety of output formats.

Cognos Analytics can be hard to learn how to use. You have to really understand your data first so that you can figure out how to make the tool do what you need it to do.

You can write your own reports and pull out the data you need from our accounting software. You have the ability to create advanced reports and format in multiple ways.

Sometimes the fields that are in Cognos do not match exactly or have different names from the actual software so it is a guess at what field you are pulling. The report studio portion is advanced report writing and in order to create these reports it is recommended to have additional training in order to make reports be beneficial for your company.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a great tool for data reporting. It is easy to use and easy to see data relationships. It has a lot of reporting options and the folder structure is nice.

It can be kind of hard to learn and there are not a ton of helpful resources online.

Being a IBM product it pack quality. great functionalities and features that defeat the competition.

It's hard to setup.
Installation and configuration process is a pain.
The space usage for this software is to high.
The IBM Windows services is slow on startup and service errors can be very difficult to diagnose due to bad log structure or description.

Before leaving their Web version, they had a very good desktop application, but they discontinued it. is a powerful tool, with ease for the reporter

it is traumatic for its administration, it depends on the active directory, which can be an advantage, but in other cases it makes it cumbersome

Compatibility mode queries allow for custom ODBC and JDBC connection to made, so even if there is no native compatibility other databases can still be used as a source if needed.
Dynamic Cubes are capable of querying against millions of rows in seconds when properly set up with sufficient hardware resources.
Standard Reports are snappy, returning data and rendering quickly, as long as the pagination is kept to reasonable quantities.

Due to Active Reports packaging all of the data in the file and prerendering charts, file size can get quite large (easily several megabytes) and the initial load time can be quite long when opening it. It is best used for basic overviews and other times when some "flash" is needed, but not a large amount of data.
Configuring the interoperability with TM1 and SPSS is a little more on the technical side than most other tasks.
You could call the development process "Front heavy" meaning most of the development will be modeling. This means that it will take longer to end up with visualized data than other tools.

Very structured, Reporting features are very good and we can make use of various functions, Event studio tool is the most powerful.

I wish if natural language feature is added to Cognos. When it comes to the calculated fields we need to write functions in Cognos, but if IBM Cognos can make built in functions like Microsoft power BI then that would be awesome. High pricing is another factor.

Cognos tool suite is perfect for your enterprise needs, with different tool available for different user level. The tool can handle all the reporting needs (charts, table, list, crosstab). With the addition of active reports and Cognos mobile it makes a complete solution

Enhancement of geographical reporting, current available option for Maps are very limited and should be extended.

I love the fact that Cognos Analytics is so flexible as we deal with a lot of reports which needs to be emailed to the higher authorities as and when they run. Cognos has this inbuild feature, where it can also write the reports to the internal file system. This helps us to keep a track of the recipients of the reports.

The Cognos 10 version was a little laid back on the visualization side as it did not had much interactive visuals available for reporting. But they have overcome it in Cognos 11 version.

Unfortunately, there is not much to write in this section. The only possible "pro" in all cases would be the flexibility offered in the product as far as setting up the framework. Other than that, not much to like.

User interface was slow and clumsy. The user experience was not smooth at all. There was no ease of use whatsoever. The retrieval times from the back end were even worse. We had to retrofit an existing n-tier system to use the reporting side of this software and it was a disaster. There is no way I would recommend to anyone to purchase this system.

Cognos has such great data available and we use it through our HRIS - it has changed the way we report out on data

The only hard thing is getting used to the reporting, but once you learn then it is smooth sailing!!

I had used the IBM Cognod Sales Compensation tool while working a global high tech company. It took a while to learn the system but once you figure it out then it was easy to use and configure the plans.

The only issue I had at the time was the very long time it would take to run a calculations. Average was an hour.

It can handle enormous amounts of data and allows a user to create extremely complex data models from almost any number of disparate sources

Super complex and difficult to learn. The least intuitive software I have ever used, and the help documentation is pretty much useless.

I would definitely recommend this to people who want to create effective dashboards and reports. It has user friendly interface. I is good alternative for tableau or power BI.

It needs to upgrade a little bit to give features like Power BI

I like its functionality and different features. I also like the ease of use.

Cognos's support sometimes is not as it should be. The support should be quick and accurate, and Cognos should have more error details to track down the solution. The majority of time, the error doesn't provide meaningful info, so it is always difficulty to track down the solution.

Cognos has some good time based accounting features that allow you to go back and look at how much was booked and when.

Getting the Cognos reports to match up. Some reports update once a week others are daily. This makes it difficult to see how much is actually going to be spent. Having to pull multiple reports to get the information that is needed wastes time.

This product will do just about anything you want it to do. It does take more of a skilled employee in order to create things. However, anyone can run things once they are created.

This product is pricey, especially for a mid range company. It takes a lot of training and setup to get the product going as one would like.

Cognos is a great tool for reporting. The visuals are not awesome but there is a lot of customization you can do for reporting.

It can be difficult to learn at first. It is not as easy to pick up as Tabeau. Googling for solutions can be tough.

This software is very flexible and extensive enough to meet almost any of your needs. The reporting engine allows for complex queries and views that far surpass standard reporting methods.

While I was not involved in the purchase of the software it is my understanding the cost was a little high and this is not designed for novice users.

It allows the user to create reports and customize based on user needs

It is expensive compared to a lot of the other software out there