IBM Cognos Analytics

4.2 (140)
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Business intelligence suite

Overall rating

4.2 /5
(140)
Value for Money
3.9/5
Features
4.2/5
Ease of Use
3.8/5
Customer Support Software
3.8/5
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140 Reviews

Cherup
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support Software

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

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Government Administration
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Weekly for 6-12 months
  • 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

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Higher Education Software
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Higher Education Software
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 6-12 months
  • 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

Robert
Overall rating
  • Industry: Construction Software
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • 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.

pavan
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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

CHANDAR
Overall rating
  • Industry: Human Resources Software
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1-5 months
  • 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.

Beena
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Accounting Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • 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?

Sayali
Overall rating
  • Industry: Real Estate
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • 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.

Eddy
Overall rating
  • Industry: Management Consulting
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • 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.

Katherine
Overall rating
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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!!

Sagar
Overall rating
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • 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.

George
Overall rating
  • Industry: Higher Education Software
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 6-12 months
  • 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.

Christopher
Overall rating
  • Industry: Health, Wellness & Fitness
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Monthly for 2+ years
  • 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.

Jian
Overall rating
  • Industry: Civic & Social Organization
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • 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.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Biotechnology
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Weekly for 1-5 months
  • 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.

jakob
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • 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.