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Anaplan vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Anaplan
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (1st), Production Planning (5th), Predictive Analytics (4th)
IBM Cognos
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Anaplan is designed for Business Performance Management and holds a mindshare of 13.7%, down 16.1% compared to last year.
IBM Cognos, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 3.8% mindshare, down 4.3% since last year.
Business Performance Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

LS
Jul 24, 2024
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data integration enhances operational efficiency and flexibility
As a client developer and solutions architect, I use Anaplan for building modules and deploying logic end-to-end. I work closely with the business in an agile manner to ensure the model aligns with business needs Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform. The…
Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
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. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Where we're seeing the opportunity in the market is at the Fortune 100 companies that have far more complex modeling type scenarios where you need to be able to have a lot of people collaborating together, and you need a lot of information all at everyone's fingertips. This is where you see the big advantage of a solution like Anaplan."
"I believe Anaplan is a new cloud tool, and from time to time, there's a lot of improvement that the Anaplan company deploys with the system. So, with that improvement, we need to really adapt and know the new system trends."
"It's highly flexible. If you've got a complex environment with complex calculations, you can build that out. So that's a really good positive."
"Anaplan offers flexibility in building different options within the platform."
"I am impressed with the tool’s real-time calculations and intuitive interface. The tool’s user interface is the best compared to other software that I have worked with. I also find the tool’s management reporting feature valuable."
"It's simple to use with a lot of functions."
"Anaplan's in-memory calculation engine is super-fast compared to the old tools we previously used. You enter the data and everything shows up in one go."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
 

Cons

"The dashboard could be better. Because within a dashboard or report, you have to do a lot of scrolling. You need to scroll down because the table doesn't fit in a single view. That's why even the users aren't happy with that kind of user experience. They need to scroll to see all the data, and it could be better if it fits in just one page. That way, you can see everything. In the next release, I want automation that's connected to Anaplan. For example, to load master data from SAP to Anaplan. I don't know if this already exists, but a log where you can see the progress and see if there's an error will also help. It would be better to give you the error message, for example, if there is an error within the automated process importing to Anaplan."
"Anaplan could enhance its user interface by including a more user-friendly API."
"There are workspace issues, like the limitation on model sizes."
"Anaplan's workflow component is probably the biggest area for improvement. I'd also like to see Anaplan add an ad hoc reporting tool that allows users to query things. It's going to factor into how you design your data set and your models, but I'd like the ability to create ad hoc queries against the data that's in there."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"The tool needs to work on its integration with MS Excel and MS Word. The tool does not allow data analysis in spreadsheets which is possible on other platforms. I want the solution to be more collaborative to facilitate decision-making in organizations."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"When there is a lot of data, it sometimes takes long to load."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"The solution's support could be better."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We are currently using a free workspace license for 90 days. We are satisfied with the price of the solution. There are additional costs if you want more storage, the default limit is 250 GB."
"A value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM."
"This is a yearly subscription. So a customer initially buys a workspace and specifies how much GB they want. The minimum starts at around 30 GB. You can buy multiple workspaces."
"The tool’s pricing is reasonable and competitive with other solutions."
"This is an expensive product and if the price were reduced then it would attract more customers."
"The license is a yearly subscription. There are three licensing tiers: the model builder, planner, and the reporting."
"The cost of Anaplan is a challenge for clients, especially if they don't have an ongoing long-term use case for it. It's a $50,000 licensing fee just to get started. Clients need a strong business case to switch from Excel to Anaplan. But if clients have used something similar in the past, such as Hyperion or other solutions, that's not a factor because they know what to expect."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"Pricing should be improved."
"The solution is affordable."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are your main use cases for Anaplan?
Anaplan is an industry-leading cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) platform that combines business planning and analytics in a single solution. It is designed to assist organizations...
Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
Is Anaplan better than SAP ERP?
There are different aspects of both Anaplan and SAP ERP that I like and dislike. Anaplan improves forecast accuracy and drives up the quality of analytics. Rather than spending all of their time co...
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...
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.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great f...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

HP, ForeScout, DocuSign, EAT, Pandora, Aviva, Intel Security, Zalora
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Anaplan, Oracle, IBM and others in Business Performance Management. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.