IBM Cognos Reviews

• 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.

• Scheduling options
• Bursting (each staff member gets feedback regarding their own duty shifts): We might have hundreds of report recipients who need to have their own data (and only their own data). Doing similar work manually would take very long time, or could be impossible. I guess Cognos Burst was originally designed for large sales organisations, having a need to send sales figures for certain sales reps. For example: sales rep in Asia needs his/her figures (Asia), Europe rep European figures, etc. This functionality can be used for, e.g., staff performance, as long as the data can be joined with staff IDs. In other words, with Cognos Burst, we are able to provide personalised reporting / analytics, without manual work.
• Possibility to save report output history to the Cognos portal
• Possibility to use the same report object for various outputs (e-mail, Cognos workspace = dashboard, screens)

It results in less manual work, process performance improvement and improved real-time data availability.

It is also possible to check the report utilisation via Cognos audit reports.

The tool is complex, and I would not recommend it to small companies, because you need to have expertise for Framework Model development, access rights issues, licensing, etc.

New functions, e.g., external data import, do not work as smoothly as they should. New visualisations using RAVE take a long time.

Unfortunately statistics are not available for Cognos 10.2 (as in 10.1), and that has been a disappointment, when Lean Six Sigma-type calculations are done.

Additionally, even after four years of using Cognos, it is sometimes difficult to understand how the tool works, e.g., which calculations are processed locally, etc.

I have used Cognos 10.2 for one year and Cognos 8.4 for three years.

We encountered stability issues, but most likely related to our network and AD issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

From IBM, technical support is OK; other domestic service providers also work OK, but their hourly rates are high!

Finnair has been using IBM tools for a long time, but I personally have used other SQL tools.

Our IT department has taken care of this, thus I do not know.

If you need to send scheduled reports to third parties, you need to have a PVU server.

We have had PoCs regarding QlikView, SAS Visual Statistics, Tableau, etc.

Appropriate data modelling is a must, if you want to increase self-service.

Ability to create canned reports with some ad-hoc capability: Canned reports are important because users are able to get the data they need on a daily basis with minimal effort. However, I have found most people have been downloading the canned reports into Excel and manipulating and adding data. So the ability to have ad-hoc reporting would enable users to get at the information easier, as well as have control over what information they pull. We can provide data quality and integrity on their data sources which they would not get from pulling data randomly.

We are able to launch Cognos reporting across thousands of stores and have them access the status of their stores and products.

I would like to have the ability to drill down to the lowest level of granularity and still do it with speed. Cognos is unable to get down to the lowest level of grain in our data. The solution slows down to an unreasonable level or completely comes to a halt. So if the lowest level of grain is a single customer order or serial number level amongst millions of data points, we are forced to use other solutions to get at that data.

Also, Cognos has no ability to integrate with other reporting solutions.

I have used it for three years.

We have encountered stability issues; every so often, Cognos will hang and needs to be reset.

We have encountered scalability issues, depending on the hardware that the system runs on.

IBM’s technical support is fine.

I did not previously use a different solution; we have been using Cognos.

The complexity of initial setup depends on the hardware platform used and the level of skill of IT.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Tableau, SAP BOBJ, Qlik, and OBIEE.

Understand what level of granularity the users need and the speed of reporting. There may be other solutions that are better. Also, be aware that Cognos is not able to integrate with tools such as Tableau and many reporting solutions that would improve the product. So, you are pretty much stuck with the tools IBM provides.

Most of my customers are on-premise, but I have two customers who are on the cloud.

IBM Cognos is used for reporting and I work with all businesses, but mainly in the banking and insurance industry.

The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them.

IBM Cognos is a very big solution, and it is similar to other large solutions, such as SAP and Oracle, everything is in one solution and one platform. It's very easy to use from one to the other.

The new data module makes life much easier when you combine it with very complex modules. You can build and combine things very quickly if you need to. You can keep the main organizational data structure and then you can combine it with specific external usage. It's very practical at that level.

It is very important for large organizations to have a secure solution, and this solution is secure. I trust IBM a lot. Having the full web organization structure and organization local modules, you are about to do small operations quickly.

There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos.

That would be nicer if you'd have more charts, the ability to add charts easily. That would be a big improvement. However, the maps have been improved immensely which I am happy with.

Once you put a few requests into IBM for changes, it might take six to 12 months. A lot of the requests are responded to and they upgrade or change the feature. When you make a report and you plan it in advance and you want to have smart dates in your planning, this is a bit limited. It is a small issue and you can work around it quite easily but it would be something they can improve.

If you want to see the new feature in someone else's product it takes time, and for IBM Cognos it is approximately six to 12 months for it to be implemented. The other cloud competitors will have it. 

I have been using IBM Cognos for approximately 18 years.

IBM Cognos is highly stable. This is one of the largest values of the solution.

The solution is highly scalable.

Technical support has been improving a lot over the last two years. I add my questions in an online IBM forum and people from the development have directly contacted me with a solution. I'm really happy with it.

The initial setup of IBM Cognos is complex. It takes time and experience to know how to do it. You can't only install it, there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before you begin. You have to make sure you have the right hardware specifications, and that you are not conflicting with any firewalls. You can put it on many servers and for large organizations. The solution can handle complex issues that other solutions can't. Most of the smaller products can't handle it. IBM Cognos is efficient at handling multi servers with data coming from many places and organizing it into one place. The implementation can take a long time because the requirements are complex.

The basic setup will take approximately one day. If it is not a basic implementation the time depends on how complex the data is and how much needs to be worked on. For example, on a predefined data warehouse, in which everything has been done, the setup might only be a few hours then you can start working.

It can be between hours and months. It depends on the context of how many databases are being used, fields, and calculations. You can bring 500 tables and none of them are difficult, but then you have one table with three calculations and takes three weeks to build because those calculations are complex. it doesn't matter which tool you use.

The amount of people needed to support the implementation depends on the customer. If it's a small business-sized customer with 10 to 20 users, I can do the implementation by myself. If it's a larger business then sometimes four, five people.

The maintenance can be very minimal because the data structure doesn't change. However, on the other hand, some customers have the requirements over time to change.

IBM Cognos can provide a substantial return on investment but it depends on the implementation and use case. I've been in organizations where I improved delivery from 24 hours to an hour. They had hardware coming in and it took them a long time to process it. I brought in easy-to-use reporting systems, which they could check the inventory coming in and approve it in less than an hour using barcodes. 

The barcode would send the information to the ERP system in a way that was easy for it to receive. However, the process was very slow. We added a few things, and the operation was doing better. If you use it properly, you can improve your business services immensely.

The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product.

I have evaluated other solutions.

I rate IBM Cognos a nine out of ten.

• The solution is very flexible, but IT oriented.
• It is an enterprise level solution for BI that holds value in a traditional BI sense.
• It is a full platform that is designed for the full cycle (data warehousing to pixel perfect reporting).
• It provides a managed IT environment.
• It does not excel in any one specific area, such as in visualization. However, there appears to be a lot of development with complementary products such as Watson Analytics and TM1.

We have been able to provide managed data sources and packages to end users. They can use this content to do their own reporting without IT assistance.

It is similar to a competency center, in which IT will help resolve or work on complex requirements or projects.

I would like to see the following improvements:

• Tools: Dashboards, visualizations, and the simplification of the available tools
• Licensing: It is very difficult to know which studio needs to be passed to which users or projects. This is because licensing and tools are confusing and they overlap with one another. Even for OLAP, there are issues with transformers, TM1, dynamic cubes, and compatibility with other vendors’ cubes.
• Simplicity: There are CQM and DQM modes, so it can become very technical.
• Consistency: They made a decision to deprecate Query Studio and migrate to Workspace Advanced. However, that did not happen. They wanted to push the new version which will deprecate Workspace Advanced as well.

Basically, Cognos has been a traditional BI platform. Lately, there has been a trending push for more of a modern BI approach that is heavier on the self service side. This approach does not care for the whole cycle of waiting on a request to go through the IT development chain in order to make it happen for the end user.

I have used it for about nine years. My company has been using it for about six years.

We are on Linux, so we rarely have stability issues. We could run into resource issues, but that would be space or hardware related.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability. Cognos is very good at scaling.

Vendor technical support could be improved. It used to be really great. However, it seems like the focus now is on newer development. The support may not be that good for the more difficult issues.

When I came here, they did not have another solution. In my past environment, they had Business Objects, but ended up switching to Cognos for the flexibility it provides.

If you are doing a standalone installation, then the initial setup is easy.

However, if you get into a distributed environment and load balancing, then it requires you to really know the application well. You need to know about the server level for all of the configurations.

Licensing has been simplified over the years. However, we do not like their Processor Value Unit (PVU) model and prefer the named user licensing route.

Pricing can be expensive depending on the number of administrators or developers. Regular consumer licenses do not cost as much. They also have a cloud solution.

If implementing on-site, you will need to have skilled administrators and developers who are experienced with this solution. They are in demand, so they will command a high salary.

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.

• Active Reporting: Users can access the reports offline.
• Visualization: IBM Cognos has a variety of charts. It has options to customize any kind of chart using the JSON editor. This helps clients to visualize and analyze the data in a very effective way.

This product has a wide variety of options to present data. The solution has improved our organization in the following ways:

• Builds different kinds of report like lists, crosstabs, and charts.
• Sends the report output to users.
• Offers mobile dashboard options. Client executives and directors can pull the reports to their mobile phones. They can view all kinds of data related to their organization.

I would like them to reduce the cost of the user licenses.

We have used this solution for over six years.

We sometimes have to restart the application.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

I used the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. I switched to IBM Cognos because some of the customization options were not available in that tool.

The installation can be a little complex. It depends on the environment. If it is a Windows environment, the setup will be easy. If it is a Linux environment, it will involve scripting.

If the organization is big enough, I would recommend this product.

We evaluated other options, such as Tableau.

The product has a wide range of data presentation options. If an organization has too much reporting to do, then I would definitely suggest this product.

Consolidation capability; that's really all we use it for.

Moving away from a manual, Excel-based consolidation to a largely automated one has enabled us to reduce our reporting timelines.

Accessibility to and flexibility of consolidation rules / logic: Products like HFM are much easier to work with when one needs to change rules, etc. With Cognos, I find that a regular user needs a much better understanding of the control tables and the E rules than a regular HFM user needs of the rules file. There seem to be more steps involved in Cognos, and the order of those steps are also important. One almost has to tick a few dozen boxes in a particular sequence whereas with HFM, one just has to export the rules and do a Ctrl + Find.

The investment register is also quite painful to work with, but I suspect that's due to configuration issues.

All in all, I have used it for about 18 months.

I encountered stability issues. As with all databases, space management on the server is important; all of our stability issues are related to database size and available space.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I can't comment on the implementation; it was completed before I joined.

The pricing is good. It's fairly cheap compared to other products.

I understand HFM and SAP BPC were also considered before choosing this product. Cost and the relative sophistication of the user community played a big role on choosing Controller.

If one has a complex consolidation structure, regular M&A activity (and hence changes in structures and rules), unusual transactions and a large user base, then I would think twice about Controller. If not, it'll probably work fine.