IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews

Powerful, Reliable, Expensive

Comments: I've been working with IBM Cognos since version 8.4
I like this product and see how IBM is improving 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

A great solution for your financial planning

Comments: Take your time and implement it right and the rewards will be very good.

Pros:

It has integration with with other IBM products like business intelligence. The excel functionality is great for finances. The product to meet our needs perfectly for all our needs.

Cons:

Creating reports is overwhelming at the beginning but if you dedicate time and resources there will be the face of your deployment.

Used to be good, showing age

Comments: General business intelligence tool that is showing its age and needs to be geared more for agile. Not a great solution for small user numbers or more towards hardcore analyst/data scientist.

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.

Cognos is sophisticated BI application for large enterprises

Comments: Cognos is one of 2 major Business Intelligence tools on the market. If it is implemented correctly, it could provide complete web-based business solution based on the data analysis. It is a platform which allowing to deliver mission critical analytics to the business including but not limited to Enterprise reporting, Planning & Forecast, OLAP cubes technology, etc.

Pros:

- 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;

Cons:

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

IBM Cognos Analytics Review

Comments: It is AI driven, improves the business outcomes.It enhances decision making.Overall it improves business agility.

Pros:

The best thing is "Quality reports can be run at any time and by any representative with a substantial log-in " at IBM Cognos Analytics.The AI enabled exploration and dashboard capabilities are easy to use and exceed expectations

Cons:

It is not simple to use. User has to get the formal training to utilise it to maximum extent. Report pulling is not that much fast. It take quite some time to load and display.

Cognos Developer

Pros:

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

Cons:

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

Cognos BI is best for large projects..

Comments: Using Cognos ,We can develop diff types of reports.It is suitable for big projects and it have so many new features and products like Cognos BI,Cognos Express,Cognos Tm1 aand etc..

Pros:

It is suitable for Huge data projects.

Cons:

Expensive and difficult to understand

Cognos Controller

Pros:

The user access review is easily performed in cognos application

Cons:

The technical details are not very clear

Best BI tool

Comments: 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

Cognos Analytics in the Cloud

Comments: IBM Cognos Analytics offers the up-to-date version of the application that you can use immediately to your reports.

Pros:

Cognos Analytics on Cloud removes the expensive and tedious process of installation Cognos Analytics on-premise server.

Cons:

You must cope with the latest version of the software. The lesson materials that you are using in the past may be different in terms of interface offered by the application.

Enterprise Reporting and Analytics Tool

Comments: It has been a solid tool for our company for last so many years. IT meets out current needs in terms of performance and capabilities. However, as we start exploring more cutting edge technologies like cloud, SAAS and Advanced Analytics, we see the tool is not in the top 3.

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.

Great capabilities, but really difficult to use practically.

Pros:

Cognos Analytics has really great capabilities. There is so much that you can do with the framework if you know what you're doing. Good security features. Good for enterprise level reporting.

Cons:

If you're hoping this will replace a dedicated reporting team or IT team, it will not. The ease of use depends on several factors and be SURE that you have an experienced team built the framework. No support whatsoever from Cognos themselves for end users, and they take a long time to get back to us on issues. The new visualizations can be clunky, especially maps. They are unusable for detailed maps. Scheduling features slow down the system considerably.

Cognos review

Comments: 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

COGNOS

Comments: 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.

I feel Cognos is the best BI Product that I have come across.

Comments: 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.

One of the best time keeping software in the market

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?

Reviewing IBM Cognos Analytics

Comments: 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.

Powerful but complicated

Comments: 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.

Cognos is it!

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!!

Great Reporting tool for your datawarehousing need

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.

IBM Cognos Analytics allows me to access our data warehouse

Comments: 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.

IBM Cognos Analytics

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.

Where Self-serve BI is being enabled and controlled

Comments: 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.

Powerful software; steeper learning cure

Comments: 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.

Worst of all modern BI tools I've worked with

Comments: 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.