Looker Studio vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

The compared Google and SAS solutions aren't in the same category. Google is ranked #12 in RT , with an average rating of 7.2, and holds a 2.3% mindshare in the category. SAS is ranked #9 in DV , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of SAS users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio and SAS Visual Analytics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Reporting.

To learn more, read our detailed Reporting Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

Reporting

Data Visualization

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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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

May 28, 2024

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

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Robert Heck

Co Owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH

Feb 10, 2022

A great solution for big organizations, complex business requirements, and highly sophisticated and specialized statistics

There are a few little things that are predefined and can be done out of the box immediately. There is no business intelligence application that is predefined, which is something some customers or prospects would love to have. Small and mid-sized companies would struggle with it because they prefer something standard that has been predefined by somebody else. For instance the system does not come with a pre-defined accounting, budgeting or planning model for a particular industry. Some competitors come with such a model (e.g. for retail companies) which makes the implementation of course easier if the customer can comproise with this predefined model. SAS does not provide such models but does not demand customers to comply with a foreign business model.

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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 initial setup is quite straightforward."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

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

"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."

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

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

More IBM Cognos pros

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

More Looker Studio pros

"The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with quality assurance processes."

"It is a very stable solution."

"Great for handling complex data models."

"The flexibility of the configuration is valuable to me."

"I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data."

"Visual Analytics is very easy to use. I use Visual Analytics for all the typical use cases except text mining. I used it to analyze data and monitor statistics, not text mining. I also use it for data visualization as well as creating interactive dashboards and infographics."

"What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes."

"Simplifies report designs and quickly displays tables and graphs."

More SAS Visual Analytics pros

Cons

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"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."

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

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

"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."

"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."

"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."

More IBM Cognos cons

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

More Looker Studio cons

"It is not as mature as competitors such as Tableau and QlikView."

"Colours used on report objects"

"The licensing ends up being more expensive than other options."

"The reason we haven't rolled it out across the board is due to the fact that the licensing is so expensive."

"There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance."

"The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages."

"The charts and tables could use better sorting, primarily using other variables than the ones on the figure. If they could implement views like in the older version (previous to Viya), it would be very nice."

"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."

More SAS Visual Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

"It is averagely priced."

"The solution is affordable."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The tool is free."

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."

"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."

"The product is quite expensive."

"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."

"Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."

"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."

"Licensing is simple."

"I work with the tool's free version...The tool's corporate version is very expensive and requires a monthly hire."

More SAS Visual Analytics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

20%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

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 ...

See all answers

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

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicati...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards.

See all answers

What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?

The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?

It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?

Some capabilities are missing compared to Power BI, especially when working with spreadsheet types. Furthermore, Exce...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

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

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 45% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 22% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Looker vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 26% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 21% of the time

Databricks vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Apache Superset vs SAS Visual Analytics

Compared 2% of the time

More SAS Visual Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

October 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

October 2024

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

SAS Visual Analytics

October 2024

Download SAS Visual Analytics product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Data Studio

SAS BI

Learn More

IBM

Google

Video not available

SAS

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.”

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

SAS Visual Analytics is a data visualization tool that is used for reporting, data exploration, and analytics. The solution enables users - even those without advanced analytical skills - to understand and examine patterns, trends, and relationships in data. SAS Visual Analytics makes it easy to create and share reports and dashboards that monitor business performance. By using the solution, users can handle, understand, and analyze their data in both past and present fields, as well as influence vital factors for future changes. SAS Visual Analytics is most suitable for larger companies with complex needs.

SAS Visual Analytics Features

SAS Visual Analytics has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Data
Interactive data discovery
Augmented analytics
Chat-enabled analytics
Sharing and collaboration
Visual analytics apps
Embedded insights
Location analytics
Security and administration
In-memory engine

SAS Visual Analytics Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing SAS Visual Analytics. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Machine learning and natural language: SAS Visual Analytics uses machine learning and natural language explanations to find, visualize, and narrate stories and insights that are easy to understand and explain. This enables you to find out why something happened, examine all options, and uncover opportunities hidden deep in your data.

Easy and efficient reporting: With SAS Visual Analytics, you can create interactive reports and dashboards so you can quickly summarize key performance metrics and share them via the web and mobile devices.

Easy to use: SAS Visual Analytics was designed to be easy to use. Its easy-to-use predictive analytics enables even business analysts to assess possible outcomes, which also helps organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Self-service data: Self-service data preparation gives users the ability to import their own data, join tables, create calculated columns, apply data quality functions, and more. In turn, the solution empowers users to access, combine, clean, and prepare their own data in an agile way, which helps facilitate faster, broader adoption of analytics for your entire organization.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SAS Visual Analytics solution.

A Senior Manager at a consultancy says, “The solution is very stable. The scalability is good. The usability is quite good. It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective.

PeerSpot user Robert H., Co-owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH, comments, “What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes.

Andrea D., Chief Technical Officer at Value Partners, explains, “The best feature is that SAS is not a single BI tool. Rather, it is part of an ecosystem of tools, such as tools that help a user to develop artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on. SAS is an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem of products. We've found the product to be stable and reliable. The scalability is good.”

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.

Genesys, Shueisha

Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Reporting. Updated: October 2024.

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