Board vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Board International and Microsoft are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Board International is ranked #24 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 22.4% 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 December 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.3% 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 22.4%, up from 22.4% 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

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

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

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

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

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."

"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."

"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'."

"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

More IBM Cognos pros

"The flexibility and the user-experience are the most valuable features of the solution."

"It is useful for self-analysis regarding company data and helps to find areas where we can improve."

"BOARD technical support is knowledgeable and helpful."

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

"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."

"I think the product is good in terms of ease of use."

"The aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it."

"The ease of being able to get the data into BOARD is what makes it nice for people with a semi-IT background."

More Board pros

"You don't need much support with Microsoft Power BI because it has such a large base of users who can answer your questions on their forums. There are also many video tutorials and webinars available online that offer solutions to whatever problems you may have."

"Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision."

"If you are not very technical this tool could be very useful."

"The interface is very easy to use."

"In the early stage of an implementation, it not only helps decision making, but it allows people to have insight into problems with data so that they can go and get it corrected."

"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."

"Everything that's in M Query and DAX is the heart of Power BI because with these tools you can make up for a lot of other missing features."

"Allows business users with a mission to solve their own problems, without an IT person."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"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."

"The solution's support could be better."

"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."

"They should provide improved visual reporting."

"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."

"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."

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

"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."

More IBM Cognos cons

"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."

"Sometimes, the data disappears from the product."

"What could be better is the manual... nowadays, most people use a web client, but on the Board manual website, a lot of the information is only about the Windows client. If they could update that, it would be helpful."

"In terms of scalability, I would say that there are some limitations in the solution. It cannot handle data that is too big."

"We have had some challenges with newer version of the rollout in terms of stability."

"Some of our users are still using an MS Office add-in for Excel for certain calculations, and when they export from Board, some of the values, some of the totals and column names, are not coming through into Excel."

"It would be huge in the future if BOARD offered a lot more graphs and presentations, and it was a lot easier to use."

"Building similar models entirely from scratch could be made quicker with transfer abilities between databases and capsules."

More Board cons

"This solution is resource-heavy."

"The reporting could be a bit better."

"The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects."

"The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics."

"At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool."

"There are some other visuals that are available in the Microsoft marketplace, however, you need to use them via trial and error. There needs to be a write-up about how to use them with a quick guide describing the visual."

"They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features."

"Automation could be improved and performance enhanced."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"Pricing should be improved."

"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 is pretty expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."

"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."

"I rate the product pricing a ten."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."

"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."

"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."

"Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? "

"You don't need a license for development, but if you want to publish to external users, you need a license. The licensing is very costly, but I think that since the advantages and benefits of Power BI are so high, people are willing to pay. I can't blame them."

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

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

42%

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

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

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion 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 7% 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 12% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 11% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 9% of the time

CCH Tagetik vs Board

Compared 8% of the time

More Board Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 16% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

Workday Prism Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Board

December 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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