IBM Cognos Reviews

I use the solution in my company for standard reports, audit reports, and dashboards. The tool helps develop good dashboards for management.

The new features in the tool are good. The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database. The SMTP part of the tool is connected to the Cognos Analytics content store, so whenever there are a lot of reports running, .mdp files will be full and sometimes fail. People need to be able to free some space, and I believe that this needs to be checked by IBM before sending out a notification to its users.

I have been using IBM Cognos for five years.

The tool's stability is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The tool's scalability is good. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

For the setup phase, my company uses SQL Server. The tools' setup phase is easy.

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.

When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos. It is mainly useful for management meetings since it allows one to see KPIs, which helps the management-level people in a company to make decisions.

Speaking about the tool's valuable features for analytics needs, compared to the previous versions of the tool, I believe that the new version of the solution has introduced auto-generated facilities, like drag and drop, which is very useful for business users to develop reports easily. In the past, packages were deployed using a framework manager, but now, with the new functionalities, you can directly upload CSV files to deal with areas concerning the sales team or validation of payments. The sales team can directly import the payment validation files. The product helps sales teams since it allows users to directly upload and see the results in reports without the help of any technical people.

I am very satisfied with the product's reporting capabilities. The use of Excel format before sending emails to users is very helpful, especially for those who are in different countries, like Australia or the USA. The sunburst part associated with reports is very helpful for many.

The scorecard widgets in the tool are mainly useful for the KPI part. It helps to keep a tab on the monthly achievements. It helps users to look at how much they have achieved in their company and the actual number of units booked or sold by their organization.

A minimum of two people are required to maintain the product.

With the new version of the tools having many additional integrations and connectivities, I can see technologies like Snowflake and Salesforce integrated with IBM Cognos. The tool's integration capabilities will be helpful in the future.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, especially for handling the reporting part. The product's security features are also very good compared to the other tools in the market.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

I have used IBM Cognos for 15 years as a business user, but for most of this time I only used the basic functionality of Cognos with Analysis Studio. However, two years ago we started using the new version of Cognos (11) and it was then that we began using more functionality overall. Notably, there are more features for reporting, so we can simply create modules and explore them with dashboarding.

Our deployment is situated on-premises, although we do use external databases connected to Excel, for instance. The packages that we use are all made inside the Cognos 11 environment. 

IBM Cognos has helped improve the quality of our KPIs because we can now deliver data and reports without human intervention.

We are using the self-service capabilities for business users in the new version and it is a blessing to us because now we don't feel any pain with regards to the IT department. We can use the full functionality and develop dashboards without the help of the IT people and without having to start up a whole new project. This is very important because we can multiply the results. With no bottleneck coming from the IT department, we reduce the cost of improving our KPIs.

The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way.

Tableau and Power BI also have similar features, where they try to use graphic functionality to analyze the data. And yes, there are more people using these solutions than Cognos, but for us the most important thing is that both the data and the data splitting functionality are in one place.

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.

I have been using IBM Cognos for 15 years.

The performance is okay. Sometimes we have small interruptions and I suspect these are due to configuration changes, but I don't know for sure. Cognos was one of our first applications running and it's quite stable.

As a business user, we try to do cross solutions to provide information for any department, and then we make it scalable. If the performance isn't good, we can either adjust the scalability of the data or the data strategy itself.

Currently, there are more than 2,000 users of Cognos in my organization, as it is mainly a cooperative tool for analysis. I think with the added capabilities and improved user experience of the new version we can extend the use of Cognos to even more people. We try to democratize the analysis of data with the dashboard as it is the easiest way to extend our usage of Cognos.

There are other solutions we also use, such as Tableau and Power Bi, depending on the project. But in these applications, there isn't the same amount of data available to analyze, so you have to provide the data for each dashboard, in each case. For all the solutions we use, we have safety measures to ensure the security of the data, but with Tableau and Power BI, the setup is less organized than Cognos.

Our IT department uses their personnel as well as consultants to maintain the Cognos environment.

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.

My advice to others is to make solutions with a bridge between them to optimize the use of the data. In addition, it's important to structure your data well to facilitate better understanding among your users. When users use a data module, for example, it must have well-structured folders which include the documentation, the calculations, the KPIs, etc. We train to make all the KPIs in the data module, because if you make the KPIs in the report or in the dashboard, then you can't use those KPIs in other objects. We have had other solutions from different consultants where they made the calculations with the reports, such that to make another report, you would have to repeat the calculation.

Another piece of advice is not to use the Analysis Studio's reporting tool, because it's very complex to maintain. Instead, we tend to use the dashboard, and that is what I would recommend to others as well.

On the whole, I would rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

I use IBM Cognos for various purposes in our business. We use it to generate email triggers based on alerts as a self-service BI tool where users can drag and drop for analysis and predictive analysis using the integrated IBM Watson. We also use it for presentations and business reporting.

You can customize your data according to your needs. It has all the functions and capabilities, making it easy to use. You can customize datasets at the business layer based on your preferences, which is very convenient. Compared to Power BI, IBM Cognos offers more flexibility, like joining data at the report level and applying any needed customizations. You can also set up role-level security so users only see the data they need. Additionally, you can distribute reports as needed. It's easy to integrate with other systems like Active Directory.

The tool integrates IBM Watson, which is used for predictive analysis. Simply dragging and dropping your data, IBM Watson provides trends and insights, making Cognos stronger in AI than other tools.

The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau.

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.

I have been working with the product for eight years. 

I rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. 

The tool's installation and maintenance are easy, and the setup process is quite easy—I'd rate it an eight out of ten. Deployment only takes about 30-40 minutes, involving exporting a package from development and importing it to production.

IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

I use the product for my company's customers to provide analytics services.

The most valuable features of the solution are the ability to use the IBM Watson Applications and AR, along with its ability to generate new dashboards as needed.

Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

The UI of the product needs to be similar to the one offered by Power BI, which has the most market share presently.

I have been using IBM Cognos for more than four years. I use the solution's latest version. My company has a partnership with IBM.

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

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

I rate the product's initial setup phase a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup phase, and ten is an easy setup process.

The ease or difficulty experienced during the setup phase of the tool depends on the experience of the person involved in the installation process.

Most of our company's clients have confidential data, so the solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The time taken to deploy the product varies from project to project. In the last project that I managed, the deployment process took around six months to complete.

The deployment process of the product was taken care of by one of the in-house teams in my organization.

From an ROI perspective, I rate the product a ten out of ten since most of our company's customers feel that IBM Cognos is good for their business.

It is an expensive product when compared to other solutions in the market. I believe that IBM Cognos delivers the best functionalities for the product's expensive nature. Most of our customers know that the product is expensive since it offers more functions and features.

I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price.

I did not have the need to pay any extra charges apart from the standard licensing costs attached to the solution.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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 IBM Cognos for dynamic reporting to drill down to the details such as product category and item level. For example, call centers need data down to the entry level for a transaction. We use the solution to provide sales trends and forecasts as well.

Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly.

With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions.

I like being able to drill down to the details. The forecasting system is a valuable feature as well.

Recently, Python scripting was added, and there will be opportunities to integrate AI into the system to help provide a better experience for management staff when forecasting sales.

Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic.

IBM should provide more support for Cognos development. It is quite limited in Pakistan.

In the next release, I would like to have a mobile app for Cognos. For instance, Power BI has a mobile app for their solution, and I would like Cognos to do the same.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the scalability of IBM Cognos at seven. We have 25 people who use this solution.

The scope of technical support for Cognos is limited in Pakistan, and I would rate it at eight out of ten.

Positive

We previously used Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Sense, and Tableau but had licensing issues with them. We switched to IBM Cognos because it's a mature solution. Also, the user interface and integration are quite simple as compared to those of other solutions such as Power BI. Also, we liked that IBM Cognos has forecasting and data structuring capabilities.

The initial setup was straightforward for me because of my previous experience with Power BI and other solutions. I would rate the setup process at eight out of ten.

I created a prototype based on input provided by process owners. It took about six to seven months to deploy the solution.

I implemented it myself with the help of a reseller. I had two other team members, one who was responsible for ETL generation and the other for the physical database and backup. We have one person who maintains the solution.

On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight. 

Because of IBM Cognos' design and implementation and because it better engages the user and customer, I rate it at nine out of ten.

I am using IBM Cognos the analytical pack that is provided, I've used it to do a lot of forecasting, proactive analytics, prescriptive, predictive analytics, and correlation analysis. Additionally, I have developed some leadership dashboards.

The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date.

The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help.

In the next release of the solution, It would be a great addition to the analytical tool pack if there were histograms on the fly it would be a benefit. I know there is a workaround on IBM Cognos and I've used that workaround to develop the histograms, but not everyone is that tech-savvy. It would be a great help if we had some of these features, such as histogram, box plots, on the fly.

Lastly, the solution could improve by adding some of the user-friendly statistical calculations, such as percentile calculations, median, mode, for calculations.

I have been using IBM Cognos for approximately two years.

The stability of IBM Cognos is excellent.

IBM Cognos is used on a daily basis and sometimes for the entire day. It is scalable. We have approximately 2,500 users using the solution. 

We had an issue with the dashboards and we were in touch with the technical support from IBM to resolve the problem.

On the overall experience with the technical support, I would rate them a four out of five. However, the initial response time could improve.

The analytical parts of IBM Cognos are some of the best in the market, it is excellent. I've used Qlik Sense, Microsoft BI, Oracle Business Intelligence, and to some extent Tableau. The second feature that IBM Cognos is excellent with, is the table structure that we can create on the fly. I have had a very good experience with them.

Microsoft BI is much more user-friendly and non-technical personnel can also start working on the Microsoft BI quickly. It would be great if IBM Cognos would also look at doing something on that front, where a non-technical person can also develop some small, very basic dashboard on their own.

The initial setup was a bit complex. 

The joins and structures that we had to create were somewhat difficult. I've worked on the OB as well and the RPD constructions that we do on OB are pretty straightforward. If we have some features such as we have in Oracle Business Intelligence, of the RPD structure, it would be a great help for IBM Cognos.

I would rate the complexity a three out of five.

We used support from the vendor for the implementation. It took approximately one and a half months for the process.

For some of the aspects of the solution requires maintenance. One of the features that we were using is the development of interactive and interdependent dashboards. For some reason, this dashboard used to fail when we would get out of the dashboard and close IBM Cognos and come back to IBM Cognos again. That required an upgrade on the application, which we did, but it was still not working. This issue required some maintenance to resolve.

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.

My advice to others is to be very particular about the architecture that you are developing because once you deploy it, it's really difficult to change and very complex to change. Once you deploy it and start working on it, and then you realize that something that you had to do, you have not done it right, it's a really complex process to change it.

The second thing I would advise is always to keep on top of the updates that IBM Cognos sends over. Some of the features that you might require in your work environment only come with the updates. You need to upgrade your application and that is when the features would be available.

Lastly, make sure that you explore every bit and piece of the analytical world of application because there are some very good features that the IBM Cognos brings in. It would be great if you explored everything and then start using it. 

If the cost is not a problem for the organization, then I would highly recommend IBM Cognos.

I rate IBM Cognos a seven out of ten.

Due to the way our product is designed, it has not been possible for us to use Cognos because of one of their issues. When we upgraded to Cognos 11, there was an issue with this version and we are not able to use the dynamic query mode. So essentially, we've not been able to use the dashboards and other kinds of reports in Cognos 11.

In terms of Cognos 11, we primarily upgraded due to the support for Cognos 7 going away. I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot. We haven't been able to use them recently. Most of the reports we've used are upgraded versions of legacy reports.

In terms of what could be improved with this product, the speed could be better.

The second thing I feel is lacking in Cognos 11 is usability - ease of use. I find Tableau much easier to use.

I have not used stories and dashboards extensively, but 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.

The other thing that should be included in Cognos is Landing Pages. It would be good for the Dashboard Landing Page, if they could make it as easily and attractively as Tableau, that's the only other tool I've used, and theirs is completely visually appealing. The client should want to click and open the Cognos portal to get their data. We have our own product and Cognos is integrated with it. If they're able to get similar data, even if it is not as detailed in our product, they don't have any motivation to go to Cognos. They need to polish their product a little bit to make it more user-friendly and customizable - that would help.

I have been using Cognos for about 15-16 years.

Product stability-wise, I do find Cognos stable. We have faced some issues with memory in our client environments wherein if the client has created a custom report, it may not be optimized. In such cases, the memory gets utilized and the Cognos server goes down. A simple restart does resolve the issue, but that's still an issue if the client has a production server which is using Cognos. These kind of issues are among the biggest pain points we have. Other than that, Cognos has been fairly stable for us.

I am not very satisfied with the technical support that they offering. It's a very time-consuming process. The biggest problem that I see with Cognos is not the product itself, but the support of the product. That's where we always face issues, because whenever we contact IBM support, it's a very long and difficult process to get that thing resolved.

The setup is slightly complex for us because Cognos is basically integrated with our company's product.

So what happens is, we have our product and Cognos is a separate product, a reporting tool for that product. Whenever we release a new version of Cognos, we have to make a sort of handoff from our product to Cognos and we need to create some Custom Namespaces and do other Custom Roles. So for us, the setup is complicated.

But I have installed Cognos out of the box once, as well, and it was very easy. I did face an issue in an early in version 11.0.1, that whenever Cognos started and set up everything, a lot of times RAM use was an issue, even though the system had quite a lot of RAM. But if the system RAM was allocated to the standby memory, then Cognos did not get it. That used to be an issue. However, that issue has been resolved in subsequent versions.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cognos a 7.

I do like the product. I think there is room for improvement. Cognos has started taking steps towards improvement like new solutions such as Tableau, however, there is still quite a way to go. Cognos's framework model requirement does restrict everything. If you want to make any changes to existing reports, it is a tedious process to add some new tables or change joints or things like that, to make it part of the data model. That's one of the main issues that we had. But other than that, I'm quite happy with the product.

I have used the solution for business intelligence across various commercial sectors, including banking, finance, luxury goods, etc.

The solution's most valuable feature is scalability.

The solution's support needs improvement. Also, they should add better administrative tools.

We have been using the solution for 25 years.

It is a stable product. I rate it an eight for stability.

We have 3000 end users of the solution as our customers. I rate its scalability a nine.

The solution's technical support could be better.

Neutral

I rate the solution's initial setup process as a five. It takes a year to complete.

The solution is averagely priced. I rate it as a five for pricing. We have to pay extra to buy third-party administrative tools.

It is a good tool for a multinational enterprise. I rate it as an eight.

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.