Cognos Reviews

Pros

Easily integrating with most of the ERPs, very good for customizing reports, very detailed reporting

Cons

Tough to learn & not many resources available, you will get the value of the money invested in it only if you are able to get the most out of it

Pros

It's been a long on the market.
It's offered by IBM
It has a great integration with many databases

Cons

New version (CA 11) has some inconvenient UI changes (new side panel which does not allow to easily navigate and see all properties)
Many things need to be done manually instead of integrating as best practices (security, deployments, testing, version control, etc.)
New studios are not that intuitive / transparent

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Cognos is a very effective BI tool. you can create customized reports without having a very technical background ... It can be easily integrated with several data sources in a simple and consistent way and I find the interface to extract data on demand or send scheduled reports (Report Planner) excellent. good user experience with the drag and drop. . . versatility of the Live API to postgres, sql server and oracle databases. We use Cognos to deliver operational reports to all production units and great and very well presented reports and productivity indicators to senior managers

Cons

It is a very powerful tool but not as easy to understand quickly as other tools on the market for the same price .. The learning curve is broad. The initial configuration is not easy, the dashboard function does not have many options. Installation can also be a complicated issue and may require vendor support

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

It is a very complete software already from the basic version (it already offers the map graph). it allows real-time monitoring useful also for predictive analysis. It allows you to work anywhere even offline, producing interactive reports being able to consult them even without connection. It's easy to use even without having followed a specific training program. Charts that can be customized at the the maximum level (so complete from this point of view).

Cons

Not captivating and innovative graphics with the times (it seems like an office pack years 2000). when the graphics are very complex they are difficult to display on web pages, they do not always fit. there isn't a feature where you can search where a particular data field is located/stored. The scheduler it's not easy to use and automating the sending of static reports to users is not easy

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

It has a lot of reports included and providing the information needed

Cons

Some reports were not easy to run and I have to go to the home page to run a different report

Pros

The latest versions have improved the report writer experience by consolidating a few of the modules. Generally robust at connecting to single data sources.

Cons

Steep learning curve for writing reports and setting up Framework Manager packaging is way too time consuming. The end user interface got more complicated and less easy to use in their attempt for more flashiness. The latest versions have been extremely buggy. Data blending and quick turnarounds are not its strong point.

Pros

We have used IBM Cognos to create customer insights and patterns to help in our marketing and targeting campaigns. The dashboards and graphs have multiple styles and formats and can be scheduled to be generated at specific times

Cons

Larger reports tend to be slow to generate from the report studio. Installation can also be challenging and may require purchase of vendor support

Pros

The ability to create custom reports makes it user friendly for anyone to figure out

Cons

the cubes tend to be confusing for file storage

Pros

Once set up, the end user can easily get into advanced reports and simply navigate as needed to get information in a repeatable manner.

Cons

There are some odd, not intuitive quirks; however, I presume that’s a consequence of an organizations configuration and less about the software

Pros

I like that Cognos is incredibly intuitive. I can easily navigate through the program to finish coding and changing anything I need.

Cons

I sometimes struggle with coordinating upgrades and running up against other software/products. Some of that though is me.

Pros

Active Reports, Dynamic Cubes and Prompt APIs are some of the features that are helping a lot for meeting visualization. Latest introduction of RAVE added a lot of visualization that helped streaming and better visualization.

Cons

Workspace needs to be more integrated and advanced as of today. Flashy UI and customization needs to be provided within the tool itself.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

The thing I like most about the product is its integration with other custom APIs.

Cons

I didn't like that fact that it can't integrate with the Oracle database.

Pros

I like it because of its visualization, 3D graphs wich is not available in Tableau. With the help of Cognos, we have created a lot of dashboards.

Cons

I don't have any concern with Cognos. Thanks, Cognos, I really like the features of Cognos.... Thanks to being a such a nice tool Cognos team.

Pros

What I like about IBM Cognos is that it has so many features implemented in both reporting and analysis topics.
You can pretty much do anything thanks to its strong flexibility.

Cons

Complicated and its ability to build reports from its smallest details will land some heavy consequences: Creating a report will take longer than expected and also some features such as linking 2 reports are really hard to implement.

Pros

The user access review is easily performed in cognos application

Cons

The technical details are not very clear

Pros

Price- Subscription base. SaaS. Easy to use

Pros

Performance wise good

Cons

Licence cost is high

Pros

Well established took with huge user base and support. Being IBMs main BI tool, it comes with a lot of Support and Knowledge Base. There are tons of supporting products for Advanced Analytics, Visualization and AI/ML which makes the tool both powerful and versatile. It fits into both departmental BI as well as for Enterprise wide reporting.

Cons

IBM should increase the support the provide for their products. It is difficult to get quick help from IBM.Self service features of the tool and not as easy as other contemporary tools like Tableau and Qlikview. IBM has catching up to do in this area. Also cloud based SAAS is not yet advanced for COGNOS.