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IBM Cognos vs NetSuite Business Intelligence 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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
NetSuite Business Intelligence
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
35th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetSuite Business Intelligence is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Antonio Lira - PeerSpot reviewer
Scripting is a great feature as is the ability to export almost anything
Scripting is a good feature if you have programming and scripting skills. It can be used without those skills but I think it's difficult to integrate them in PRISM. The best thing is that you can export almost anything whether it's graphics or data and you can change dates on the fly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"You can export almost anything whether it's graphics or data."
 

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 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."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"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 flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"Graphics are limited and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It is averagely priced."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"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."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
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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
55%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 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...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

Learn More

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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.
THE SECOND CITY, QUICKEN INC, LAND O’LAKES, LOVESAC, HELLO PRODUCTS
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.