Board vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Board International and Microsoft are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Board International is ranked #23 with an average rating of 7.5, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Board International holds a 0.5% mindshare in BIT, compared to Microsoft’s 23.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Board and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Board vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Board is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 23.0%, up from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Jul 27, 2022

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.

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Wiboon Thabsuwan

Senior Consultant at IMD Company Limited

Jul 17, 2024

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.

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Amol Rane

Solutions Architect M365 at Sogeti UK

Jul 17, 2024

Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics

The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

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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

"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"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."

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

"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Primary valuable features are its flexibility and versatility and, obviously, functionality goes along with that. Plus, it does that at a small footprint in the file servers, and does it very efficiently."

"BOARD technical support is knowledgeable and helpful."

"The drill down is good for people who have that high level view, because they can do some analysis based on it."

"The benefits are getting the data in one spot, the ability to report dynamically, and version control."

"It allows people to quickly create dashboards with reports."

"It has a good set of visual elements that you can use and can explain quite well."

"The dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view."

"The ability to do write back and visualization, with minimal IT development orientation."

More Board pros

"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are the variety of possibilities to connect to various data sources. The visualizations are easily done, have useful rollover functions, and there are continuous updates being made to the system. You can benefit from the various improvements."

"The advantages of Microsoft Power BI stem from the fact that it is really easy to use. The drag and drop facilities provided by the product are good."

"Data integration is very useful in Power BI. It lets me collect data from many sources. For example, I can get data from Oracle databases and SQL Server databases at the same time."

"It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured."

"In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well."

"This product has a lot of features and most of them are user-friendly."

"I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it."

"I like the flexibility it offers."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."

"Need improvement towards Visualization."

"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."

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

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."

"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."

"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."

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

More IBM Cognos cons

"My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem. "

"It would be nice to be able to host your site and actually have BOARD be the driver of your site. So you could have anybody in your organization go to www.myorg.com, for example, and then go through what you allow them to go through. So rather than having to go through the application, to be able to go to actually host it to a website."

"We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."

"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. "

"The initial setup was very complex for us."

"The setup was a bit complex."

"We can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model."

"The product can be improved by making it possible to know where cubes are used."

More Board cons

"A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution."

"Right now, their premium pricing is keeping us out of the premium market. The premium price per user just doesn't make sense for us, but we haven't reached the limit of 500 users to justify the premium."

"Compared to other applications, like Tableau, Microsoft BI doesn't have as many functions that allow you to do more in-depth analysis and represent the findings."

"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."

"There are some limitations in Power BI; you have to work in the Power BI base. However, if you want something not out-of-the-box and you want something custom, you have to do a lot of work."

"One thing I would like to have is the scripting language, as they already have within Excel. It's already within a Microsoft business product, because Excel is the number one business product out there. So it would be nice to have the scripting capability in order to automate certain processes."

"From a scalability and performance perspective and based on my understanding and feedback from end users, there's room for improvement in data processing, scaling up, and leveraging the cloud. That could be an enhancement area for me to look into."

"My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"It is averagely priced."

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

"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."

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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 price of the license can be better."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive."

"The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."

"I very much recommend the free trial mode."

"There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."

"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Educational Organization

41%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

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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?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

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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...

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What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

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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 ...

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Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...

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How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 30% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Board

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 12% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Board

Compared 9% of the time

Tableau vs Board

Compared 4% of the time

More Board Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 17% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Board

November 2024

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

November 2024

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Learn More

IBM

Board International

Microsoft

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.”

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

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.

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

November 2024

Free Report: Board vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about Board vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

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