IBM Cognos Reviews

It has improved things in a lot of areas, such as in better decision making for the company. People are relying more on the reports coming out of Cognos, or a BI tool, rather than their own spec sheets. It gives them time to invest in other activities.

Developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source.

What we have noticed is that it's lacking a few things which we want, especially on the visualization side of things. We want Cognos to improve, IBM to improve. But functionally, it has been working fine.

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.

It's a quite stable environment. I have used technical support with the 10.1 version of Cognos, but not with the latest version. Anything after 10.1, it has become a quite stable environment.

Scalability is okay.

We were not using anything previously. We have been with Cognos for a long period of time.

But with the inquiries and the market requirements and the new tools coming into the picture, and the customers who see all these beautiful presentations, they want those tools to be implemented in the company. That's how we started looking into other opportunities.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor are that the product is scalable, provides ease of use requiring less dependency on IT, and is user-friendly, providing end-users the power to actually create their own dashboards, reports, or any kind of analysis of the fly.

I was hands-on in setting up the environment for our company. It was pretty straightforward. It's a bit fiddly on a few things, if you want some extra components installed, but overall, the basic installation is pretty straightforward.

If you are looking into BI tools, you need to go through how scalable and dynamic the tool will be, and how you're going to actually use it, how the users are going to use the tool in the end. There are various tools on the market. One can do one thing and another can do the other thing. There is not much of a comparison. If you look at Cognos, or if you look at other tools, Cognos is really good when you're looking for credibility of data. But if you're looking at other aspects of usability, then it's not that great. Investigate thoroughly is my advice.

Cognos is an eight out of 10 because it's still lagging behind in some of the capabilities which other BI tools in the market are providing. Images are one of those things. Otherwise, it's really good, it does the job. Still, people have the impression that Cognos still has that dependency on IT.

Cognos contains many components that make up the entire Cognos suite.

The starting point is the meta data designer, which is Framework Manager.

Framework manager allows you to pull in database tables from any type of database, this is referred to as the ‘Database Layer’. Then you create the Business Layer where you update the column names with ‘business names’ and remove the geek speak or database names. You can also include data transformations and table joins in this layer. Finally you create the Presentation Layer that points to the Business Layer. The presentation layer is usually the only layer that is published in the Cognos package.

Cubes contain data hierarchies and time dimensions to allow a report consumer to ‘click and drag’ the data elements that they want to analyze to their reports.

Transformer is the product that allows you to pull large amounts of data together, to allow clients to slice and dice their data any way that they want. Report Studio allows for sophisticated reporting. Each of these is valuable; there is not just one that is more valuable than the other.

We developed sophisticated reports in the fundraising area, which pulls in data from many different databases and presents graphs, charts and summary financial information over any time period that the person wants to see. This set of reports are run or used on average 15,000 times per month by hundreds of end users.

Another example is building financial data using cubes. The cubes contain 11+ years of financial data and we have the add-in for Microsoft Excel, which allows end users to build their own ad-hoc reports for trending and analysis.

Right now, we are in the midst of implementing a brand new version of Cognos, named Cognos Analytics. This version is very, very different from prior versions. We are finding ‘undocumented features’ on a daily basis and reporting issues to IBM. We are working thru the issues, but it is very stressful on us, finding out functionality that was in the previous release but is missing now in Cognos Analytics version 11.

Here are just a few examples of issues that we are facing as of today! We have identified other issues, which have been resolved or we have workarounds.

- In our CA production environment, we imported reporting content that included saved output of financial reports. The saved output did NOT import and therefore users will not be able to pull up the reports in production! This works in our other CA environments, but failing in production!

When you have a saved output report that contains links to drill thru reports and you want to open them in a new browser window, it fails! You have to go in and modify the reports to open in the same window, so now the user cannot see the original report that they clicked on.

You also lose the ability to export reports to Excel or PDF when you have drill thrus to a new window.

If you run a report, have it emailed out and you attach a link to the report in the email, it fails only in our production environment.

The Search and Select prompt fails on the prompt page.

I have used it since 2005, so 11 years now.

The product is stable, but we continue to find issues due to the product’s newness.

The product is very scalable and can support thousands of end users. HUGE companies are using this product.

I rate technical support with a 8-9/10. We occasionally need to escalate issues to senior technical support.

I was an independent consultant and have used competing products; they all have their quirks. Here at the university, we for the most part use Cognos.

The initial setup can be complex for large organizations; for smaller companies, it is easier.

For the university, Cognos is very competitive, because IBM offers huge discounts to higher education. My advice would be to work with an IBM business partner.

Cognos was already installed here when I was hired. The university hired me for my experience.

Hire an experienced business partner, who can provide ongoing support and training.

We use IBM Cognos to help clients with reporting.

Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos.

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

I have been using IBM Cognos for many years.

We have their premier dedicated support. I rate the solution's technical support eight and a half out of ten.

The solution's initial setup is not too bad. We have IBM support if we run into issues.

Overall, I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to create and deploy security packages throughout the network, as well as system analysis reporting.

This solution has provided us with a single control tool, which allows us to easily provide reports for the different sections of our banking environment.

The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us.

We also like data module that comes with this product.

We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required.

We have been using this solution for five years.

We have found this solution to be stable, but the products performance can be affected by the servers in use, if it is being hosted on-premises.

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward, if the staff involved are experienced with the product. However, the deployment takes time to carry out.

We implemented the solution using our in-house team.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases for IBM Cognos are operational and other reports. 

The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson. 

I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information. IBM Cognos could be improved with some analytical solutions that could help us make predictions.

I have been using IBM Cognos for five years, I think. 

We have 700 individuals using the solution and plan on increasing that number. 

I think the IBM Cognos tech support is good. 

I don't know what the initial setup was like because I wasn't with the company at that time. 

I can't say much about the licensing costs because I am not privy to that information. However, I do know we are sharing a global license. 

On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would give IBM Cognos a nine for overall performance. 

We have found this software to be insightful in finding and defining true performance of products and services. The numbers give the details and there is no place to hide.

This software identifies normal product sales, margins and costing, which are basic key performance indicators. We then use this to identify service of customers and vendors. Recently “COST TO SERVE” reporting has been a “HOT” supply chain tool because this identifies the business activities and overhead costs. This reporting is NOT your (ABC) activity-based costing reporting, but a mixture of costing drivers, which usually provides surprising results.

We have also seen improvements in manufacturing processes because the tool identifies bottlenecks quickly. Most recently, the ability to have mobile reporting to our user site has been very important to drive down information.

We are excited about more features for cloud and web analytics:
- Cloud: Companies are really starting to embrace the cloud for running their business intelligence software. There is so much to choose from for supporting and servicing cloud users than 1-2 years ago.
- Web analytics: For me, this is where you see who is searching for your products and services. You can find out where in the country/world and know more about the user too. This gives you insight on your web presence and how your social media and marketing campaigns are performing. Also, who’s talking about your products and services and why? You can see what the issues are and what you are doing well.

We have used Cognos Project for 20 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Once the users are trained on the product, everyone wants to use it, so it’s best when defining your in-house server or cloud that you incorporate future needs.

Technical support is excellent and very responsive. They have different levels of support for response time that can be purchased in addition to web help.

We had training but were able to do the install in-house.

Buy the software and licenses that you will need for the next 12-15 months.

We tried Microsoft’s offerings but found them not as full featured as Cognos.

Take time to understand your data. Decide which reporting must be from live data and what data could be taken from a data repository. Prioritize your reporting needs. Add proper time for validation and training.

• The ability to burst. It allows us to control the prompting activity and automate monthly reporting to our end users as we mass distribute to almost 900 end users.
• The GUI design interface is intuitive.

• We are able to rapidly communicate financial reporting and statements for reconciliation purposes.
• People are able to self serve with the provided authoring tools.

• The visualization tools have greatly improved but the active reports still need help.
• The build process of linking the variables can be a bit complex, especially for newbies.
• The ability to secure on the downloaded dataset that feeds the active report is prohibitive of its widespread use.

We have used the solution for seven years.

I would rate the technical support at about 5/10. We continue to struggle with IBM provided first or second time correct responses to cases we have open. Cases can drag on for months before resolution.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The setup was complex. We built scripts to create and configure at a redundant server level.

The prodict is expensive.

We evaluated Oracle OBIEE and Jaspersoft.

Investigate the cloud option for savings in maintenance and patching.

It is used for customized reports. It is the only tool supported by our IT group for user reports.

Customized reports are valuable because you can probably create any report you could imagine with it. It has features we are constantly learning how to use. It does allow the users to pull their own data, provided they are given a good framework/datasource that has been created with the options they need to use.

Currently, we just use it for user-requested reports. It has more features that, if we had the manpower, we could better set up the tool so users could do their own reporting. IT here are just getting around to letting users do their own reporting.

More flexibility for joining data sources within reports would be nice. It seems to be a feature IBM is slowly developing.

We have several framework/packages created. For example, we have one for sales, one for shipping, one for manufacturing, etc. You go to create a report in sales, but the one table that you need is defined in the manufacturing package. You can’t join the two packages in Cognos. Someone has to create the table on the sales package in Framework; then, it can be used in the report.

I have used it for three years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

We purchase support from a vendor because support from IBM is more complicated and seems to take longer. Our vendor knows us and can respond faster.

My company was using this software at least 10 years prior to me joining.

I wasn’t at my company for initial setup. We have consultants do the upgrades, because they do tend to be complex and we are short on manpower.

It is very expensive… You have to determine if the complexity of software you are getting is worth the price you are paying; how many bells and whistles do you need for what price. And if you don’t have the manpower to implement all the features, is it worth the cost?

I wasn’t at my company when they chose it, but I think it might be beneficial to re-evaluate the options.

Make sure you realize the scope of the product. It is not easily maintained by one or two people. It involves more than just Cognos for report writing; you also need to use Framework to create the data models/packages to use with it. I have done IT for 30 years; it is one of the more complex report writing tools I have used.

Also, make sure you are in it for the long haul with the costs that are associated with maintaining the software.