IBM Cognos Reviews

We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting. IBM Cognos is an easy-to-use solution that has simple drag-and-drop features.

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

I have been using IBM Cognos for a few years.

The solution’s technical support is not so good. I rate the solution’s technical support a six or seven out of ten.

Neutral

The solution's basic use cases are business reporting and data analysis, and it's bundled with most of the products. All IBM products in our region should be promoted more.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly.

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.

It is also quite pricey.

I have been using Cognos for about 15 years. I used to work in a company that was a partner of IBM. I was selling this product formally, and I created solutions with it. That was about five years ago, and now, I have started to work with it in another company.

I mostly worked with Cognos. I have worked a bit with Tableau and Microsoft BI.

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.

I would rate IBM Cognos a nine out of 10.

My primary use case for IBM Cognos is reporting.

I work with a few organizations. IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team. For example, we know which offers work and which offers don't. We've got a very good record of that. We have the very good ability to check the meetings of the actual salespeople. When they are made, who is in them, how effective the meetings were compared to what we estimated. It's very, very good on that level.

Additionally, the budget control is very good. We get triggers once a budget is crossed. It creates and sends an email to the person who needs to know, "Hey, you're in trouble. Basically, you've crossed the line." Which a lot of times you don't realize. You have a team of 20 people and the manager gets an email if somebody has done something or there's a problem, and it gives them a very strong awareness.

IBM Cognos' feature that I have found most valuable is its ability to create very complex reports which are not available in other tools.

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.

I have been implementing IBM Cognos for over 20 years.

I think they're very stable.

IBM Cognos is the most scalable option, I think. It can handle thousands of users at the same time. If anything, the only thing you need is hardware that can support it.

This product is usually focused on medium to large organizations.

I'm really satisfied with the technical support. We encountered a couple of very unique bugs and IBM was very helpful. People from IBM found a quick workaround and then they solved the problem. So I'm very happy with it.

The initial setup usually takes a few hours.

You need a consultant or an integrator for setup. You need somebody to do it. You can't just do it by yourself.

In terms of pricing, for what you get, it's a relatively good price. It's good value for what you pay for. But you always want things for cheaper, but the price for what you get is relatively good, because everything is included. Everything, all the extra features that with other products you have to pay for, here they are just included. It's in it. You don't have to pay for sending out emails, you don't need to have an extra mail server. It's in the product.

On a scale of one to ten I would give IBM Cognos a nine.

I would suggest to potential customers that if they don't have experience, there is a lot of information on the web. There are wonderful video clips in YouTube. There are wonderful blogs. Before you decide on a solution, check. There might be something that's even better than what you thought initially. The abilities are so wide and amazing that a lot of times people take a solution which is not the best, because they do what they know and they don't think, "Hey, I can do something much better."

Make sure you know all the options before you choose one. And again, reconsider. If you checked it three or four versions ago, then check again. There are new features all the time that are changing and improving, and you can get amazing results.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to change the reports directly on the server.

The solution could have more options for themes in terms of creating reports. Also, its drill-down feature needs improvement. In addition, they should include features for visualization in the next release.

I have been using the solution since 2015.

I rate the solution's scalability a seven or eight.

Power BI has better drill-down features. Also, they have efficient components in the toolkit. In comparison, Cognos is more easy to use.

The solution's initial setup process is easy.

The solution is affordable.

The solution is easy to use. Our customers could learn cognitive algorithms quickly with its help. I rate it an eight out of ten.

Report Studio is most valuable to me, mainly for the active reporting feature as our CEO loves the instant reporting.

The product takes away the need for mundane reporting via Excel spreadsheets freeing up the business areas to concentrate on growing the business.

Every product on the market can be improved, but I would like IBM to stop trying to compete with the smaller players in the market, rushing out versions that nobody wants to migrate to because the version seems unstable.

I’ve been using the Cognos product since 2006; since the old ReportNet days.

We did not encounter any specific stability issues. Like every product, you need to carry some sort of monthly maintenance to make sure that the platform runs smoothly.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. As long as you are following the guidelines set by IBM you should be ok.

If you have a contact within IBM then things are great, but some of the IBM partners (in my opinion) don’t offer the same high standard, (there are gaps in their knowledge).

We never used another solution.

The installation was quite straight forward. But the webserver setup can be a bit tricky.

Recently, IBM have changed the way they package the licensing (which so far seems to give us a better understanding of what we are paying for). The product can seem quite pricey compared to other suitors in the BI arena.

We looked at Microsoft SSRS. But on look and feel, it didn’t give us that professional outlook.

If you are new to the product and want to implement a reporting tool that will be free from issues, get an experienced consultant.

Well, I liked the split Cognos- used to have 2 differents products for reporting. One very friendly for user (query studio) and other one more for super user or tech user (Report studio).
The AdHoc reporting (query studio) are very easy with query studio but this happens only if the package is well done by the modeler. The most valuable feature in query studio is Develop/ Reduce group in a list. For Report Studio, the possibility to create report from SQL Query direct, easy, simple and efficient :)

We reduced IT requests for reporting and improved reports standards. High quality reports.
We used templates and reuse components so it's easy to change lots of report quickly.

Administration and security.

I'm with Cognos's products since 1997. (First products I used was Impromptu, Transformer and Power Play). Last version I have used is 10.1 (Query and Report Studio).

Well, developing packages makes deployment a bit long in case of emergency.
Also, for performance issues, avoid to connect the package's data on OLTP databases. Always use de-normalised databases, (ODS) or OLAP databases.

Server not responding some times

No

With IBM it is too complicated, I used a partner.

With IBM it is too complicated, I used a partner.

No

Not too complex.

At that time I was implementing with the Cognos team and in-house. People from Cognos were very experienced.

I can't remember. But now I'm looking to go around looking at BI Tools to advise my customers which ones are best according to theirs needs. I will go deeper in Microsoft (for the price), Tableau for the visualisation and easy deploy and of course Cognos because it can do all BI needs (but it's expensive).
PS. Cognos Express is welcome with lower licensing price.

If you are looking for an all integrated, scalable and high quality reporting tool, Cognos is a solution to consider. But, the price is a factor too.
You need to define well your needs for reporting, chose the right component you want to start first and start small.