Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Birst vs Board comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
Birst
Ranking in Reporting
32nd
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (14th)
Board
Ranking in Reporting
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (24th), Business Performance Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.6%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Birst is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Board is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user196212 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 06, 2016
 

Featured Reviews

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.
RH
The dashboards and Visualizer are valuable.
The administration module was built using flash. It is clunky and outdated. By “clunky” I mean that it sometimes becomes confused and throw an error when I’m making a change. To clear it up, I will have to log out and log back in. We knew going into our purchase that the UI for the admin was not the strongest part of Birst at the moment. Power users often depend on the web services to complete admin tasks and the web services are robust. Birst knows they need to improve this area of their system and have been working on that. They began improving usability overall with the the front-end UI that report writers utilize and did an excellent job with that so I have good reason to expect the admin module UI refresh to be solid as well. From what I understand, the planned changes are more significant than a simple UI refresh also.
Wiboon Thabsuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and requires less time to learn or understand its features
I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products. Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"My favourite feature of BOARD is the ability to write back to the OLAP DB, as well as the Rdb, and secure user data allowing databases to be flushed and rebuilt daily."
"Our clients have improved a lot in terms of coordination and communication. This has improved their internal performance."
"All the reports are prepared automatically."
"The benefits are getting the data in one spot, the ability to report dynamically, and version control."
"The aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it."
"What is very valuable is the ability to customize. We didn't see a solution out there that really matched exactly what our functional requirements would be. So we were able to work with New Brain, our integrator, and we were able to build from the ground up what we wanted, and I think that's pretty unique to BOARD."
"The dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view."
"The flexibility and the user-experience are the most valuable features of the solution."
 

Cons

"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."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"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."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"It could have more options for themes."
"Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution."
"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. ​"
"If we could upload other data, e.g., pivot tables which can be done in BOARD already, that we have pre-existing and have that data distribute to more complex spreadsheets​, I would like that going forward."
"It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive."
"​We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."
"We have had some challenges with newer version of the rollout in terms of stability."
"We would like to see better logging in the procedural world."
"Building similar models entirely from scratch could be made quicker with transfer abilities between databases and capsules."
"The initial setup was very complex for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."
"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."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"​In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."
"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

it_user196212 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016
Bruce, have you made a decision about which solution is the best fit for your needs? I would love to hear your feedback.
2 out of 49 answers
it_user165072 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 17, 2015
I'd recommend they look at Sisense.... Pentaho takes a ton of expertise and time. Board is really limited in terms of data magnitude, blending and the visulaziations aren't that great and Birst has huge performance issues, especially when taking concurrency into account. It's also overly expensive as well. http://www.sisense.com/embedded-analytics/
Sep 17, 2015
Hi, We have been using Pentaho as our primary BI Solution as an OEM for clients on our ERP Solutions, and have found it to be the most cost effective and user friendly of the BI Products we identified. On our scaled implementations, with 500+ users, we utilise HP Vertica for our Data Warehouse and we have not had any major speed issues at this scale Regards, Aadil Aboobaker Brainbug
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Government
4%
No data available
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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 version...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 ge...
What do you like most about Board?
All the reports are prepared automatically.
What needs improvement with Board?
Some of my company's customers are interested to see the predictive analytics part of the tool. Some customers would ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

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.
Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Board and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.