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Anaplan vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

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
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
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 13.3%, down 15.5% compared to last year.
IBM Cognos, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 3.6% mindshare, down 4.3% since last year.
Business Performance Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

LS
Jan 10, 2025
 

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…
AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You don't need to have a programming language to use Anaplan."
"The best thing is that it's very intuitive and user-friendly. You don't need coding skills to manipulate the platform."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is web-based and easy to use."
"It's real-time connected planning, so the calculations are pretty much seamless as far as your model is connected."
"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."
"The solution works very well for budgeting."
"Anaplan is a three-dimensional cloud platform that is good for analyzing data, visualization, integration, terrific for visibility."
"It's simple to use with a lot of functions."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"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."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
 

Cons

"The visualization tools in the product are limited in comparison to other reporting tools."
"Anaplan could enhance its user interface by including a more user-friendly API."
"When there is a lot of data, it sometimes takes long to load."
"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."
"Anaplan is a relatively expensive piece of software."
"The integration technique should be a little bit easier."
"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."
"The price of the solution can improve."
"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A value-for-money product and a very reasonable price compared to competitors like SAP or IBM."
"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 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 price of the solution is expensive."
"The license is a yearly subscription. There are three licensing tiers: the model builder, planner, and the reporting."
"Anaplan is a bit pricier compared to its competitors - the license costs about $4,000 per user annually."
"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."
"It is averagely priced."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"It is pretty expensive."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

LS
Jan 10, 2025
Jan 10, 2025
Hi Leonardo, I have had the benefit of working with IBM PA and Anaplan applications for many years. If you are working on a smaller application with only a few dimensions (Anaplan calls them lists), Anaplan is fine except for ongoing costs and maintenance. A few, small dimensions, maybe planning by device group (not lower SKU level), general sales locations, departments, time and a two to three...
See 2 answers
Milan Orendac - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 24, 2024
Both products are great and are massive planning and analyzing tools. I am not sure about the size and complexity of your business. You mention "small businesses". To use IBM Cognos or Anaplan for small business may give more headache than benefits. My suggestion would be to work out the expectations and needs for your planning process and to search for the right tool, fitting to your needs.
CM
Jan 10, 2025
Hi Leonardo, I have had the benefit of working with IBM PA and Anaplan applications for many years. If you are working on a smaller application with only a few dimensions (Anaplan calls them lists), Anaplan is fine except for ongoing costs and maintenance. A few, small dimensions, maybe planning by device group (not lower SKU level), general sales locations, departments, time and a two to three versions, Anaplan works (again, watch ongoing & expansion costs). When it becomes more complex where you want to do more granular planning at the product SKU, multiple budget cycles and rolling forecast throughout the year, across territories, by internal rep, different channels, with distributors selling in multiple territories, that is where IBM Planning Analytics shines. You can plan/forecast at any level including consolidated and have room to expand when needed.  Expansion with Anaplan with granularity becomes very difficult, very quickly.  I am happy to show the differences. Ping me if you like, www.linkedin.com/in/chrismirras. We work very well with Global Clients.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Insurance Company
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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.