Name: IBM Cognos
Brand: IBM
Rating: 4.1 (139 reviews)

Director of Data Analytics at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Jul 1, 2013

Great tool, I absolutely love Cognos

Great tool, I absolutely love Cognos. Made for sitting on top of a DW, but it addition to that, in some cases we needed to build views where we would summarize things to be able to provide reports with some level of performance. Need to be careful. They provide a semantic layer which If built properly can get quite a bit of functionality out of it. But still need to be careful with volumes for specific reports.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Jul 14, 2013

Great. Cognos Enterprise is in deed a perfect tool for data summarization and report generation. Moreover, upgrades to later versions for those using earlier versions is always recommended for better features that are improved for enhanced performance in addition to access to support for the product. Skills are needed to operate this program just like most specialized software.

Ariel Lindenfeld

VP Product at PeerSpot

Jun 5, 2013

Gartner found that Cognos users are concerned with difficulty of use. Do you agree?

In the February 2013 Magic Quadrant report, Gartner says that some of the top reasons why customers choose Cognos are IBM's road map and future vision. However, a high percentage of users are concerned with poor performance and difficulty of use.

What are some of the reasons you chose Cognos? What are your main concerns with IBM's product?

If you are a user or are evaluating IBM Cognos, add your comment below or write your own review. Share your opinion with our community!

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user9354Senior Developer with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Sep 2, 2013

Yes, Cognos does make it very easy for someone who is given access to too powerful of a tool suite without training to get in over their heads. Certainly, assisting users with their issues is one of the primary things I have to do as a Cognos Developer/Administrator. However, the solution is to spend some analytic time to figure out what tools the users need, and deliver those to them. It's not complex to lock users out of functionality they don't need, and ultimately, it's more cost effective for the company to only buy "Analytics" licences for the Analysts. Most users really just want their reports, for their particular area, and to be told what they are getting done, and what they need to get done in the near future...if they need more information, they rely on the Analysts in their company to do that for them...that's the paradigm that has worked for large companies for decades, and despite the current rash of "do it yourself" tools....it's the paradigm that is surviving.

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it_user5220

Senior Manager of IT at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 30, 2013

We previously used Hyperion and SQL Reporting Services however we moved to Cognos because we need an integrated solution

For how long have you used this product?
- 12 Years

Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- Quick query ability

Can you give an example of how this product has improved the way your organization functions?
- We use it against our enterprise data warehouse for enterprise views of data and material flow

What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- Visualization

Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- Scalability only due to source data issues

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?
- Hyperion and SQL Reporting Services. We need an integrated solution.

Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- Essbase, Oracle, SAP

How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- Very Good

Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Setup for such a complex tool is always difficult

Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- We used an outside vendor. Good, but needed some more technical understanding

What is your ROI on this product?
- 3-5 years

What was your original setup cost for this product and what is your day-to-day cost of using this product?
- 2 Million to implement. Not sure

What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- Do your homework on configuration and server architecture

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Carlos Mardinotto JuniorBI Expert at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Oct 28, 2016

The IBM Cognos Suite, its very corporative tools, web and clould , therfore you get easily to reach your goals.

it_user5802

BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 9, 2013

Comparison of Business Objects & Cognos

Most of my experience is with Business Objects. I have done a little with Cognos Elite also. Comparatively I find Business Objects much easier to work with when it comes to customizing the presentation of the data. Neither of the two products does a drill-down as well as you can in Crystal Reports, but they both allow you to create multiple views of the data on one page. Business Object WEBI reports allow you to use multiple universes and multiple report pages in one WEBI document.

Both system will force you to use another layer between the presentation and data layers. In Cognos it is called Framework Manager. In WEBI it is called Universes. Both Universes and Framework Manager define the structure and connections the are usable to the presentation layer. Both middle layers can connect to any kind of database or even spreadsheets on an accessible drive.

Both products will force you to use their WEB portals as an interface into the presentation layer. Both allow you to schedule and deliver reports in multiple formats and in a variety of means. Links to reports, send the reports via e-mail, only send reports with data the user can see, and send alerts when reports fail are just a few of the common things that can be done.

When it comes to ease of use, Business Objects is a lot more intuitive and straight forward. Cognos seems to make you take a lot more steps to get the same results. Some of those steps are tough to figure out. The term "clunky" comes to mind when I think of working in Cognos.

Both products offer very similar concepts and tools to summarize and chart the data in a report.

Licensing costs and how you want to architect your server infrastructure are going to be the key driver to which product fits your organization better. Business Objects offers the advantage of another more static reporting tool with Crystal Reports.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user5601

Business Analyst at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees

Apr 2, 2013

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Very powerful toolset with many options. But complex to learn and use

Valuable Features:

Very powerful toolset with many products and options. Has various ways to present data to meet requirements.

Room for Improvement:

Complex to learn and use. Need technical team to build solutions.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Aug 25, 2013

This is not a program for use by just anybody. Therefore, one must have some technical knowledge and skills background in order to learn how to use this.

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it_user5472

VP of IT at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 27, 2013

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Great support with broad set of analytic capabilities, but needs improvement with integration of Data Discovery capabilities

Valuable Features:

IBM support, suite of tools covering broad set of analytic capabilities, and ability to integrate with multitude of platforms

Room for Improvement:

Need to integrate Data Discovery capabilities

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

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Aug 25, 2013

Precise but to the point. Program support is very important to businesses because they are bound to encounter bugs from time to time. This makes Cognos Enterprise very viable and appealing to its users. Various businesses across the globe utilize different operating platforms. Some even use more than one platform within the same company. This makes the integration feature a perfect choice for Cognos Enterprise to its customers.

it_user5319

Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 21, 2013

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Can do most things we need it do and we like the scheduler. But visualization is poor.