#1 most frequent
United States of America
54.6%5,841 installations of 10,694
What is IBM Cognos Analytics?
IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.
Categories & Use Cases
Media
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Screenshot of a natural language query, used in IBM Cognos Analytics to get AI-powered insights from data.
Top Performing Features
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Category average: 7.9
Report Versioning
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
Category average: 8.5
Javascript API
A Javascript API is a type of API
Category average: 8.2
Areas for Improvement
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
Pattern recognition and data mining mean the ability to recognize hidden patterns in large quantities of data.
Category average: 7.6
Predictive Analytics
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Category average: 7.8
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
Category average: 8.3
Who Buys & Uses IBM Cognos Analytics
#2 most frequent
Canada
6.4%682 installations of 10,694
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
5.3%568 installations of 10,694
Pros
- Robust reporting and data visualization capabilities
- Advanced AI and predictive analytics features
- Comprehensive data integration from diverse sources
Cons
- Steep learning curve for new users
- Performance lag in the cloud version with larger datasets
- Limited and less user-friendly mobile functionality
Powerhouse for Enterprise Reporting and Scheduling
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Cognos Analytics is used as a reporting tool to make reports and schedule them. We have over 250 reports that are scheduled daily and weekly to over 20 executives. IBM Cognos Analytics was initially decided to be used as an automatic scheduler of excel format reports. Later on it was adopted to be used as our dashboarding platform.
Pros
- Schedule reports
- Calculations and transformation of raw data
- Flexibility with excel format
Cons
- Write back functionality
- Visual Data Modelling
- Native connectivity with latest cloud platforms
Return on Investment
- Time Savings & Productivity Gains
- Consistent, governed data models reduce the risk of errors
- Report bursting ensures store managers, regional leaders, and executives each receive tailored reports automatically
- On-prem IBM Cognos Analytics environments require heavy IT effort to maintain servers
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft Power BI, Tableau Cloud and Sigma Computing
Other Software Used
Snowflake, Microsoft Power BI, Sigma Computing, ThoughtSpot
Strong data analysis capabilities helps for business planning
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We work for supply chain domain industry and IBM Cognos Analytics is integrated with our organization product warehouse management the primary usage of this tool is for generating the reports based on the warehouse data stored in database also helps in analysing data for various purpose in warehouse management , It provides easy
reporting and powerful analysis also with smooth integration across multiple data sources also it has very user-friendly interface.
Pros
- Reports Generation and auto scheduling part
- Data analysis is good feature
- It has various font support helps in Ware house for ex it supports barcodes and all
- Load balancing feature and auto healing
Cons
- Application breaks for no reason many times and fix is only restart.
- Customer service is poor is what I felt
- Interface looks outdated that needs and impovement
- LDAP logins gives error multiple times for example integration with Azure login makes trouble
Return on Investment
- Strong data analysis capabilities helps for business planning
- Great reporting capacity helps to update all the leadership management about the business in one report
- Auto scheduling and report generation is good feature which saves lot of time.
Alternatives Considered
Informatica PowerCenter (legacy)
Other Software Used
PagerDuty, Salesforce CMS, Docker, IBM webMethods, Nagios XI
IBM Cognos Analytics Mature governance along with perfect reporting
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
During 2023-2024, we used IBM Cognos Analytics for building detailed report from the complex data. Biggest virtue of this platform was it's AI assistant chat bot which you wouldn't find in Power BI back in the day.
The reports that we built were more on the operations risk metrics between potential sales vs closed sales. We thoroughly built more complex data-based reports on commission and AP regional spend management.
The reports that we built were more on the operations risk metrics between potential sales vs closed sales. We thoroughly built more complex data-based reports on commission and AP regional spend management.
Pros
- The AI chatbot was biggest highlight, it has a serious way of reading enormous data set. Making us bit more focused on the end user needs, and generating reports and dashboards.
- The data modelling feature was flexible, we had more features similar to power bi like creating joins, prompts etc. It also featured multi data sources connector; however we didn't test unstructured data sources.
- The forecasting analytics were off the charts; I liked it a lot even more than power bi.
Cons
- The cloud reporting was slow, which was expected considering the large ERP data sets we used to import.
- The initial setup is quite long, can test your patience.
- The expensive cost for mid-sized organizations, hoping they offer more lite based plan in future.
Return on Investment
- The cloud version was slow time we used it, and it made load report slower to management folks. Thus, adding some negativity to the decision-making process.
- The cost was same as power bi pro which was $10.00, we were around 6 folks who grabbed license for IBM Cognos Analytics tool. Our main motive was to decrease our burden from power bi reporting.
- While things were smooth, until in May 2024 our organization did restructuring and cancelled the subscription license in order to reduce cost. So, if you want to use IBM Cognos Analytics, better don't use another BI tool or vice versa
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft Power BI
Other Software Used
Snowflake, Looker Studio, Microsoft Power BI
IBM Cognos Analytics speeds and simplifies my everyday work.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Cognos Analytics is deeply integrated into our daily reporting and decision-making and I use IBM Cognos Analytics mainly for data visualization and analytics in my role as controller for finance and IT at LMW Limited.
Pros
- IBM Cognos Analytics dashboards are simple to use and make data exploration a whole lot easier.
- A non-technical person with clean data can build a dashboard with almost no experience.
- Drag-and-drop capability simplifies chart generation and even complicated dashboards are simple to explore and customize.
Cons
- For new comers, the learning curve is steep.
- There is a slight lag with the cloud version.
Return on Investment
- IBM Cognos Analytics has made it much easier for me to deal with huge amounts of data.
- It is great, as it saves me time, cause I can make decisions faster.
Other Software Used
Vasion Print, IBM AIOps Insights, Miro
IBM Cognos Analytics - Wonder
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use IBM Cognos Analytics as part of various leadership reports and insights. The business problem we address is how effective our inventory is flowing and what inventory is in more demand and which location.
Pros
- Data Cleansing
- Visual Graphs
- Predictive Analytics
Cons
- Performance
- GenAI based SQL instructions
Return on Investment
- Time Savings
- KPI reporting
Alternatives Considered
Tableau Desktop and Powerbird
Other Software Used
IBM Sterling Order Management, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Watson Content Analytics
