IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews

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140 Reviews
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
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Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
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Best BI tool
Reviewed on 09/03/2016
IBM Cognos maintain huge data and so many new features are in new versions.Easy to understand the...
IBM Cognos maintain huge data and so many new features are in new versions.Easy to understand the structure of cognos.It is suitable for medium and large projects .
Pros
Performance wise good
Cons
Licence cost is high
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Cognos- All in one tool for data analytics
Reviewed on 03/02/2022
Pros
decreases support because of complete report inclusion and a zero-impression climate.
abbreviates detailing time because of consistent reconciliation and versatile composing.
Further developed independent direction reports and dashboards present information in handily gotten designs.
Cons
Investment in Cognos R&D by IBM is declining.
Won't work smoothly with large data sets having many parameters.
Cross-browser compatibility is often problematic.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
IBM Cognos Report Studio
Reviewed on 28/03/2019
I would recommend for company reporting, works great with a big database
I would recommend for company reporting, works great with a big database
Pros
Complex reports can be achieved with IBM Cognos Report studio, great for setting up scheduled reports.
Cons
Interface is not user friendly, certain features are not logically placed.Charts are not great when downloaded into Excel.
- Industry: Government Administration
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Business Intellegnce Software with Standard Reporting And Self Service BI
Reviewed on 16/10/2018
Overall it is a great product to use
Overall it is a great product to use
Pros
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.
Cons
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
- Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Effective Tool for Customer Management
Reviewed on 06/11/2022
Great tool for Sales & Marketing Function
Great tool for Sales & Marketing Function
Pros
- Provides great Dashboards- Provides effective Reports- Helps in Data Visualization
Cons
- Requires training to understand it effectively- Not very intuitive
- Industry: Banking
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
One Of The Best Self-service BI Software
Reviewed on 10/01/2020
one of the best complete solution for delivering insights from data at enterprise level
one of the best complete solution for delivering insights from data at enterprise level
Pros
the powerful framework manager, allow us to implement complicated logic into model and deliver a package to end user, business user can do ad-hoc report easily.
Cons
steep learning curve for beginners. not mention people who doesn't have BI experience, Had a few new team members from tableau background. the FM package complexity is much more than they have done in the tableau data source.
- Industry: Higher Education Software
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Great Analytics Tool
Reviewed on 24/10/2019
Overall, I would recommend using Cognos Analytics for data analysis. My whole company uses it from...
Overall, I would recommend using Cognos Analytics for data analysis. My whole company uses it from daily reporting to more advanced analyses.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Higher Education Software
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Good Tool for Data Reporting
Reviewed on 14/02/2019
IBM Cognos Analytics is a great enterprise tool for data reporting. There are a lot of report...
IBM Cognos Analytics is a great enterprise tool for data reporting. There are a lot of report options and it is easy to collaborate and share reports with colleagues.
Pros
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.
Cons
It can be kind of hard to learn and there are not a ton of helpful resources online.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Complete Package for your Analytical Solution
Reviewed on 11/09/2019
It is good software but requires a learning curve
It is good software but requires a learning curve
Pros
The best thing about this software is that it is a complete package for your BI Solution. The software is good for Standard Reporting as well as Adhoc Reporting. The new Analytics software has dashboarding as well as storytelling.
Cons
Too Many client tools for the same purpose Like Transformer, FM, Dynamic Query Analyser, Data Manager and Decision Stream. Maintenance is the biggest thing.
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
I recommended this SW of BI to a company that had several departments to connect and collab...
Reviewed on 05/04/2018
uses multidimensional and relational data source transforming data into metadata, Cognos is a...
uses multidimensional and relational data source transforming data into metadata, Cognos is a complete platform for data experts
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
- Industry: Construction Software
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Full-featured, slightly behind the curve.
Reviewed on 26/11/2021
It brings a lot of functionality all under one roof. Our team found the "visualization" a little...
It brings a lot of functionality all under one roof. Our team found the "visualization" a little easier in Cognos vs Power BI, but the paginated reporting better in SSRS/PBIRS. We ended up transitioning entirely from Cognos to the MS stack and the broad consensus by the team is it was an overall welcomed upgrade. We're starting to consider Tableau or Looker, but returning to Cognos isn't on our horizon.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Cognos - A good Enterprise Reporting Tool
Reviewed on 12/12/2016
I used Cognos as an analytical tool by linking our ERP (Microsoft Dynamic NAV) to it. All the...
I used Cognos as an analytical tool by linking our ERP (Microsoft Dynamic NAV) to it. All the financial data would be mapped & a lot of customized reports were taken out like Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). The user interface is pretty good. The CUBEs are little confusing but once you get the grip they work very well. The ability to drill down the reports to very basic level is a plus point
A little tough to learn & customize. It's a little slow when dealing with a medium amount of data.
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
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Cognos review
Reviewed on 12/10/2017
helpfully to seeing analytics. I am engineering in mining operation company in Mongolian
helpfully to seeing analytics. I am engineering in mining operation company in Mongolian
Pros
Its all of my majority. Planners are always analyzed in daily productions. Good design, dashboard, pivot tables. That's all i need analyse data and prepare to reports
- Industry: Human Resources Software
- Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
COGNOS
Reviewed on 10/11/2016
Cognos makes it easy to design reports that match the look-and-feel required by the client. Report...
Cognos makes it easy to design reports that match the look-and-feel required by the client. Report rendering time is also very fast. Browser support can be touchy and Dynamic Cubes are very hardware intensive.Cognos has strong out of the box capabilities with a wide array of add-ons, and good interoperability with other IBM analytics and data suites
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
I feel Cognos is the best BI Product that I have come across.
Reviewed on 26/02/2018
Data Analytics, Dashboards, Complex KPI reports, Event studio objects
Data Analytics, Dashboards, Complex KPI reports, Event studio objects
Pros
Very structured, Reporting features are very good and we can make use of various functions, Event studio tool is the most powerful.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Accounting Software
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
One of the best time keeping software in the market
Reviewed on 12/04/2018
Pros
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.
Cons
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?
- Industry: Real Estate
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Reviewing IBM Cognos Analytics
Reviewed on 16/09/2019
I have a pretty decent experience with cognos with some of the new inbuilt features but there is...
I have a pretty decent experience with cognos with some of the new inbuilt features but there is always a scope of improvement
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.
- Industry: Management Consulting
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 3.0 /10
Powerful but complicated
Reviewed on 12/11/2020
Implementing the tool is painful but once is running is great.
Implementing the tool is painful but once is running is great.
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.
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Cognos is it!
Reviewed on 13/06/2018
Pros
Cognos has such great data available and we use it through our HRIS - it has changed the way we report out on data
Cons
The only hard thing is getting used to the reporting, but once you learn then it is smooth sailing!!
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
Great Reporting tool for your datawarehousing need
Reviewed on 03/07/2018
Pros
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
Cons
Enhancement of geographical reporting, current available option for Maps are very limited and should be extended.
- Industry: Higher Education Software
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
IBM Cognos Analytics allows me to access our data warehouse
Reviewed on 21/12/2019
I mainly use it to get data from the customer information system. Cognos allows me access to...
I mainly use it to get data from the customer information system. Cognos allows me access to customer information without getting access to the other system.
Pros
We use Cognos to access our customer info. The IT team set ups the report and we are able to export it for viewing and analysis. If built correctly, the reports can be easily run by the users. The users do need to know how to enter the parameters and known the data structure to fully utilitzed Cognos. We run Cognos through the browser. No need to install software.
Cons
Users need to understand the data structure in order to enter parameters. If the parameters are not entered correct, there will be no data, exports, or graphs. You also need to make sure the back-end servers are fast if you have a lot of data.
- Industry: Health, Wellness & Fitness
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Monthly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 2.0 /10
IBM Cognos Analytics
Reviewed on 13/01/2022
Pros
Extensive features, vast ability to access, mine and report on data.
Cons
Steep learning curve, this software requires intensive training, is not intuitive and requires a dedicated analyst.
- Industry: Civic & Social Organization
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Where Self-serve BI is being enabled and controlled
Reviewed on 07/02/2018
IBM Cognos Analytics is a BI tool that can be used to bring a new methodology and look to traditiona...
IBM Cognos Analytics is a BI tool that can be used to bring a new methodology and look to traditional BI products. It is a stand-alone system that enables self-served BI.
Pros
IBM Cognos Analytics provides drag-and-drop dashboard creator, and deals well with multidimensional and relational data sources. It facilitates the implementation of a logically reasonable BI solution and is very powerful in controlling different aspects of BI.
Cons
For users who are used to Excel, they might find it difficult to use this tool at the very beginning. The installation and upgrade usually is a pain. Its embedded administrative tools are limited as well.
- Industry: Biotechnology
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Powerful software; steeper learning cure
Reviewed on 08/12/2019
We use this to analyze sales for our company by region, part, etc.
We use this to analyze sales for our company by region, part, etc.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support Software
Worst of all modern BI tools I've worked with
Reviewed on 28/06/2018
Cognos is years behind the modern BI tools like Qlikview/Sense, Power BI and Tableau. I will...
Cognos is years behind the modern BI tools like Qlikview/Sense, Power BI and Tableau. I will hopefully never again have to work with Cognos products in the future.
Pros
Customizeable, if you know how to code. Probably could be a good tool if you have a team of trained Cognos experts that deliver all the reports and dashboards in very old-school Enterprise way.
Cons
Very very bad UI, unintuitive, messy and buggy. Very fiddly to get things right when creating reports.