IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews

Capabilities of this software is far reaching and varied and it depends on the organisation ability to use it to their advantage.

the support from the consultant was great but costly.

- The application designed to enable business users with limited technical knowledge to extract data, analyze it and make business decision based on the analysis;
- It could be used within relational or multidimensional data sources;
- It is included a mobile version allowing users to access a complete version of Cognos from mobile devices;

- very sensitive in implementation;
- requiring significant resources in order to maintain and support;
- too expensive for mid-size companies;

I think this tool is quite good, since it allows the user several functionalities: create and adapt BI reports, automate the export of a report in a set period and for the necessary containers (they do not need a license to receive), etc. . I love working with this tool from IBM. It allows some SQL language, and some configuration features that are very good too.

One thing I can point out as a cons of this tool, is the fact that it does not always return the correct information (because the user, without knowing it, can mix incompatible information) - and only at a more advanced stage do we notice that the information is not correct - because we have no error information.
When we actually have information about the errors, this is also not very detailed, that is, we are left without knowing what the error is anyway. It is difficult to make correct associations in this tool, because it is very restricted in relation to the use of the database and the compatibility of the data between them.

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.

Handles all BI products very well, including but not limited to self-served reporting structure, reports, cubes, dashboards, and scorecards.
Project deployment and duplication are easy and quick.

User administration could be very time-consuming and we use a third-party tool (which is not free of charge).
Product upgrade is not simple enough and has to be planned and conducted with extra caution.

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.

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.

Easy to use, easily connects to many ERP softwares.
Houses budgeting and planning, financial reporting and dashboarding and metrics all in one suite.

Requires in-house administration, is not an out of the box software and requires monthly maintenance on the reports and the planning applications.

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!!

Most employers love this software because it is easy for employees to use. Since it is fast, efficient, simple, and does its job well. You can also run great reports in it too.

Sometimes the software has a glitch here and there, but every product does. I am sure there are less expensive products on the market, but why use something that isn't tried and true?

Customization and more options to tune performance improvements. Many ways to connect databases like FM. Direct datasource, usage of stored procedure, and usage of database trigger is good.

SDK has to be bought as separate package, whereas it should be given free.

The flexibility of the product and scalability of the solution.

Enterprise offerings are a bit pricey. For SMBs it can be a difficult conversation to justify the costs.

I love that you can report off any field and get results. There are calculations and graphs and so many tools to create any type of report for any data.

I struggle with all the information and fields and calculations. I'm old school!!

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.

I like the easy access, great UI, and several ways to interpret data.

It still needs to catch up with other advanced tools in this field.

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.

Very Powerfull

It' Great Product

The software was very productive and have very professional support . It was very useful and fast

The cons was pricing and overall learning curve of the software . But once the software was up and running it really was productive

Once this software is set up and you know how to use it, it is great! There is so much data that can be sorted and presented with Cognos and you can really customize how you are viewing the data.

We have a team that set up reports for us and without them, I don't think this would be useful at all. You also need to know what you are doing for this to work. There are not helpful troubleshooting messages to help you correct errors, so it can get really frustrating if you get stuck and don't have a team to support you.

Feature set, visualizations

If you can figure out how to make the reports run you can create nice reports with lots of information.

Not easy to create a report, some reports will stop working for no reason, they just will spin and not generate. Difficult to change the layout and information.

I like being able to pull data from various data warehouse sources and being able to pull from cognos for reporting.

Reporting studio can be a little tricky to figure out at first but once I did it was a great tool.

Pretty basic and easy to use UI. Reporting metrics show lots of good data and information. Support for the product is sufficient

Always seemed to be a delay in getting data. IBM seems to really like to have lots of control over its "proprietary" metrics. Frustrating to work with.

Great reporting toll that gives you what you need without any bells and whistles to go though. Bland interface which is fine. This is a top 3 reporting toll available.

There is a learning curve to understand each screen and what it dos. Some of the labels from drop downs could be a bit better named. Larger reports can take longer than expected time to run.