IBM Cognos vs Infor dEPM comparison

The compared IBM and Infor solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #7 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 1.3% mindshare in the category. Infor is ranked #13 in BPM , with an average rating of 7.0, and holds a 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Infor users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 138 IBM Cognos reviews

5,922 Views
3,139 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Infor dEPM

Read 14 Infor dEPM reviews

854 Views
820 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Infor dEPM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Infor dEPM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

February 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

138

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (4th)

Infor dEPM

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Cognos is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 1.3%, down 3.8% compared to last year.
Infor dEPM, on the other hand, focuses on Business Performance Management, holds 2.8% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Cognos	1.3%
Microsoft Power BI	8.9%
Tableau Enterprise	6.2%
Other	83.6%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Business Performance Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Infor dEPM	2.8%
Anaplan	6.9%
CCH Tagetik	5.1%
Other	85.2%

Business Performance Management

Featured Reviews

Rawen Lawrence

Senior Project Manager at BD

Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions

IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.

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Dietmar Müller

Key Account Manager at Cronon GmbH

Customizable features streamline installation and integration challenges remain

Our company is a partner of Infor in Germany. We mainly use Infor DEPM for finance solutions Infor DEPM has features that are well-prepared by Infor. I do not need to have my own tools; I only need to customize many elements. This makes it easier to install and work with. With the prepared…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."

"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."

"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."

"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."

More IBM Cognos pros

"You can get the data directly from the database with Excel formulas."

"Budgeting and consolidation are the most valuable features in Infor dEPM, and the budgeting process and consolidation features prove very valuable when businesses work with the system."

"I do not need to have my own tools; I only need to customize many elements."

"All our customers have experienced a return on investment, as they have been included on the list of calls."

"Our customers have the solution deployed on the cloud or on-premises. The deployment took about a month."

"Infor dEPM's got the best end-user reporting solution that keeps us motivated and moving forward with this solution only."

"The planning capability is the most valuable feature."

Cons

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."

"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."

"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."

"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."

"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."

More IBM Cognos cons

"There are questions about how Infor DEPM can be used with other solutions and the difficulties in connecting it with other software solutions."

"The usability could be better."

"It's a very expensive solution."

"The latest version has been cloud-enabled, but it requires a deeper understanding of programming skills compared to the previous versions, which were more user-friendly."

"There are questions about how Infor DEPM can be used with other solutions and the difficulties in connecting it with other software solutions. Integration is a concern."

"The initial setup from a user perspective can be cumbersome and has room for improvement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."

"The solution is affordable."

"Pricing should be improved."

"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is competitive."

"While the licensing cost of Infor dEPM may be costly, it is still more affordable than SAP BusinessObjects EPM, for example."

"It's a very expensive product, and I would rate it at nine out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. There are yearly licensing costs."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Insurance Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	89

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	1

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...

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What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

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What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infor dEPM?

Infor DEPM is expensive.

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What needs improvement with Infor dEPM?

From my perspective, I think Infor dEPM is a good solution for clients who want to deep dive into data analysis in finance, but it may be complicated. The user cannot make decisions independently a...

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What is your primary use case for Infor dEPM?

With Infor dEPM, I usually recommend it for finance, insurance companies, oil and gas companies, and hospitality industries. I have one client in education who currently wants to deploy Infor dEPM ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SQL Server vs IBM Cognos

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Adaptive Insights vs Infor dEPM

Compared 29% of the time

Domo vs Infor dEPM

Compared 11% of the time

Jedox vs Infor dEPM

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Infor dEPM

Compared 8% of the time

CCH Tagetik vs Infor dEPM

Compared 7% of the time

More Infor dEPM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

January 2026

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Infor dEPM

January 2026

Download Infor dEPM product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Infor Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management, Infor PM

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

IBM

Take a holistic view of your business performance with Infor Dynamic Enterprise Performance Management (Infor d/EPM). Combining modern intelligent business tools and financial performance management capabilities into one EPM software solution, d/EPM enables you to consistently report with confidence, measure past and current performance, and forecast future activities. Deep analytics and business intelligence give you a real-time view of performance across your business to speed decision making, so you can unlock siloed data and transform information into actionable insights.

Infor

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

DAB Group

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

February 2026

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