IBM Cognos is a tool that is used across my whole organization. I work at a University so we have a lot of data and a lot of departments who are using data. IBM Cognos allows us to view and analyze data across departments. IBM offers a lot of great resources for learning how to use the tool.
Pros
Good for combining data sources
Good data visulizations
Easy to manage permissions
Cons
You have to really understand the underlying data structure before you use it
It can be hard to learn at first
It can be glitchy sometimes
Likelihood to Recommend
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 10,001+ employees)
Cognos Analytics is more than a Dashboarding tool and is used to understand data patterns, trends, and drivers. The explore and AI capabilities are typically used to get more insights into data, and dashboarding and reporting are used to distribute the result in a pixel-perfect output with strict governance and control. Reports are automatically burst based on certain criteria
Pros
AI - The Assistant
Explore Capabilities
Forecasting using AI
Cons
The range of visualisations needs to be expanded
Report modules need to be easier
Likelihood to Recommend
The integration between Cognos Analytics, Planning Analytics, SPSS, and decision optimization makes it a perfect tool that can grow and expand as the organisations analytics needs do. Not many visualization tools offer this degree of integration. The integration with Planning Analytics allow it to be fully integrated with a budgeting and forecasting application and present this information in real-time using compelling dashboards and visualizations
VU
Verified User
Employee in Sales (Professional Training & Coaching company, 11-50 employees)
IBM Cognos is used for meeting the reporting needs of the university. It is used to display data from the data warehouse. It is the single destination for the user to get data in a simple, clear, easy to read, and quick way. It is also used to generate timely reports on a schedule for a group of users.
Pros
Importing and modifying metadata
Create queries for use in GUI
Print Friendly Report
Cons
The new UI requires more clicks compared to previous version
Dashboards require more color options
Learning curve to use is still high compared to other products
Likelihood to Recommend
If you require pixel-perfect reports and you have to share these reports with users in an enterprise. Then it is the best BI tool for you. Other competitors are missing many features that are needed for enterprise users. The ability to use data sources with no relation inside a report is a GOD send. You will not find this anywhere.
Our entire organization uses IBM Cognos and we love it. It does have a large learning curve, but it is such a powerful analytics and reporting tool. This tool allows you to manipulate and report off of large amounts of data. Personally, I like being able to extract it to Excel so that you can manipulate the data via pivot tables.
Pros
Handles big data well.
Provides the end-user with the data.
Allows for management to get the data they need.
Cons
Large learning curve.
Requires a lot of IT support.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cognos is a wonderful tool for reporting and analytics. It works best when you are working with large data. We use it as the reporting tool for our ERP system, Banner. Cognos works well to be able to deliver reports that cannot be obtained through Banner. We have several users that never access Banner, they only use Cognos to obtain their data.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Finance and Accounting (Higher Education company, 1001-5000 employees)
We use Cognos throughout our university. It houses shared frequently used reports for areas such as student records, financial aid, and human resources. Cognos serves as our data warehouse. We have connected it to Tableau Server in order to regularly refresh our Tableau visualizations.
Pros
The prompts in Report Studio are easy for users to figure out.
Cognos allows us to publish reports with a live data connection side-by-side with reports that use day-old data.
Cons
The layout on the screen for changing the properties of a report is overwhelming. It's hard to remember where certain properties live.
It's time-consuming to construct a prompt page and to match the formatting/branding of our previous reports. These types of things should be faster and easier.
Likelihood to Recommend
Cognos is good for reports that can be built by our data warehouse developers. Since Cognos is a time-consuming piece of software, we use another query tool for quick reporting needs.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 5001-10,000 employees)
IBM Cognos is used across the whole organization. It funnels down multiple databases to a standardize output and become report generating tool. It allows the editor with minimal sql coding skills to build reports across multiple sources. The downside is they do not provide cross packages report building, which we still ended up using additional tools to create the final reports. The additional tools I use, depending on the scale of the report, from basic Excel, Access, to Brio, SAS, SQL, to merge, integrate, clean data according to our need.
Pros
Users need minimal coding skills
Integrates multiple data sources
Standardizes data items
More Visual way to generate a report
Cons
Not user-friendly, it still functions as if from the 90s.
Too many odd bugs that users need to go around to avoid, especially now with the Cognos Analytic 10.
Cognos does not allow cross packages data sourcing, which is a huge problem.
The system functions like an old machine with a new wrapping.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cognos is an Enterprise software that large entities like more for the legal perspective of the spectrum, since security and legal are always a major concern for large entities. But for smaller entities, there are so many better tools that can do the job with a fraction of the cost. With the same mindset of the security and legal, Cognos upgrades are still very clunky, nothing exciting or with major improvements. In so many ways, Tableau will be taking over the data world at some point.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 10,001+ employees)
It used across the university and provides easy access to prospective and current student data.
Pros
Intuitive interface
Dashboards
Reporting, analysis and scorecarding
Cons
Cognos Data Manager
Visualizations
Performance
Likelihood to Recommend
While IBM Cognos comes in various shapes and sizes depending on the needs and size of the organization, in reality the BI and analytics platform is best suited to large corporations.
We use Cognos across the university for reporting and some dashboards. This includes student data, financial data, and human resources data. It allows us to create robust reports from a variety of data fields from multiple data packages and provides the reporting we need for both day to day operations as well as for yearly requirements, such as audited financial statements.
Pros
Very robust functionality that allows for a variety of report types as well as reporting structures.
Report prompts make reports easy to run for end users even when reports are very complex.
Ability to set up security classes that restrict access to end users based on their need to know and use the data.
Cons
The learning curve for Cognos is fairly high due to the high level of functionality available. It would be helpful to have some less expensive training options available.
Instructions for using Cognos could be more robust, but I realize that's partially dependent on how it's used and documentation writers would not necessarily be able to anticipate all uses.
Instructions for creating a cross tab report with formatting and subtotals could be better.
Likelihood to Recommend
If simplified reports are needed - mainly drag and drop fields without much formatting or specific subtotals, then Cognos may be too complicated for that type of reporting. However, if the data requires joins between data sets and views or specific formatting is required, then Cognos is a very robust option for creating such reports. I've rarely found a report that was not possible in Cognos, and when that has happened, it's more due to the data field structure than Cognos itself.
IBM Cognos is used by departments as a reporting query tool for reporting on institution data. Data being analyzed is from the Student Information System (PeopleSoft) where we extrapolate data on students' enrollments, enrollment caps, average enrollments, demographic data (race, age, geographic, level of education, etc.) . It flags high or under performing course offerings and academic departments (as a whole).
Pros
IBM Cognos allows the administration to make certain data available based on individual rights, privileges, and exclude data that they should not be viewing.
IBM Cognos allows the institution to easily label high or under performing departments so that the marketing teams can promote programs with high demands.
Cons
IBM Cognos provides collections of required data, but graphs and table functionality should be improved. As this functionality isn't extremely helpful, data is exported to other programs do produce charts and tables as needed.
Functionality to flag inconsistencies with various query outputs. Within the user interface it would be helpful to see where databases need to be reviewed and/or updated to reflect consistency.
Include options, to users with limited customization privileges, to request output customizations or changes to database fields directly from the GUI.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cognos is suitable for any company or entity that needs data for marketing, sales, management or accounting purposes. In education, Cognos easily extrapolates data on students' enrollments, enrollment caps, average enrollments, and demographic data (race, age, geographic, level of education, etc.).
