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Alteryx vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Alteryx offers quick ROI through reduced data prep time and increased efficiency, despite high licensing costs.
Sentiment score
6.9
IBM Cognos enhances decision-making and efficiency, offering savings, improved collaboration, and data-driven insights with automation and tailored reports.
Tasks that earlier took hours in Excel or SQL are now completed in minutes.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
From a time-saving perspective, we saved 60 to 75 percent of the human workforce needed and eliminated other disparate ETL tools, ultimately saving us over 600,000 dollars.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alteryx helps familiarize managers with artificial intelligence-driven possibilities.
Chief Information Officer at granistr
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
Quality Engineering Lead at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
This demonstrates that it requires a lesser number of people. You do not need a huge team for maintaining or working with IBM Cognos.
Sr cloud engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Alteryx offers responsive service; technical support is knowledgeable, but users often rely on community forums for solutions.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support experiences are mixed, with praise for expertise but concerns over response times and documentation quality.
Customer support from Alteryx has been amazing.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
they do have a website for resolving doubts and accessing helpful resources, including various tools and filters.
Senior Analyst at Guardian India Operation
I contacted customer support once or twice, and they were quick to respond.
Experience Technocrat driving IT initiatives at WISDOMBOWL
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Customer support for IBM Cognos is very responsive.
Data Analyst at Aig Foundation
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Alteryx is scalable for enterprise analytics, but expanding usage can lead to concerns over costs and server requirements.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Cognos is praised for scalability, efficiently managing growth and balancing workloads, despite configuration and hardware challenges.
Alteryx is scalable for most enterprise analytics and data preparation workloads.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Suggestions for improvements in Alteryx include areas for increasing efficiency, particularly in processing telemetry data, which involves dealing with large volumes of unstructured data.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alteryx is scalable, and I would give it eight out of ten.
Experience Technocrat driving IT initiatives at WISDOMBOWL
IBM Cognos displays good scalability, as it handles increased data growth well.
Data Analyst at Aig Foundation
It works across small teams to enterprise-level deployment.
Quality Engineering Specialist at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Alteryx is highly regarded for its stability, fast data processing, and reliability, despite occasional server or workflow issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
IBM Cognos is highly stable, with occasional minor issues, and users report excellent reliability with regular updates and maintenance.
I didn't need to reach out to Alteryx for support because available documents usually provide enough information to resolve issues.
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I have not encountered any lagging, crashing, or instability in the system during these three months of usage.
Legal Coordinator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Alteryx is a reliable tool, but it is also very heavy, requiring good laptop configurations, a minimum of 8GB RAM, and a recent processor such as i10.
Senior Analyst at Guardian India Operation
IBM Cognos is stable and very flexible.
Quality Engineering Specialist at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
Senior Project Manager at BD
 

Room For Improvement

Alteryx needs improved visualization, performance, and integration, with users frustrated by pricing, learning curve, and limited collaboration features.
IBM Cognos needs improvements in visualization, interface, data connectivity, integration, stability, support, and mobile user experience to compete.
The tool could include more native connectors, such as for global ERPs, instead of requiring additional fees for these connections.
Legal Coordinator at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system.
Senior Capacity Planner at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The additional features that Alteryx needs to work on to make it more competitive include better collaboration and easier integration through API.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
I would also suggest enhanced predictive analytics to move from more reactive to proactive decision-making.
Quality Engineering Specialist at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
Senior Project Manager at BD
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
Quality Engineering Lead at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find Alteryx offers robust analytics but at high costs, weighed against potential efficiency and productivity benefits.
IBM Cognos is costly but feature-rich; negotiate discounts or bundled licenses for better pricing.
The price is very high, with licensing typically starting around five thousand dollars plus user per year.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
We found excellent use cases for automation through Alteryx, which provided the means to reduce operational costs and streamline the build of ETL pipelines without extensive coding.
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Alteryx is more cost-effective compared to Informatica licenses, offering savings.
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
Quality Engineering Lead at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
Senior Project Manager at BD
 

Valuable Features

Alteryx simplifies data workflows with a user-friendly interface, offering integration, automation, and advanced analytics without coding.
IBM Cognos excels in enterprise reporting, dashboard creation, and scalability, offering AI-driven insights and user-friendly features for data management.
Alteryx not only represents data but also supports decision-making by suggesting the next steps.
Chief Information Officer at granistr
Analysts who do not have any coding experience can still work on the transformation and preparation of data, which is quite useful.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Alteryx includes built-in tools such as drive time analysis and linear regression, which are much harder to achieve in standard BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau.
Senior Rpa Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Our dedicated cybersecurity team ensures that sensitive data does not become public, making it crucial that data stored in IBM Cognos remains secure throughout the entire data cycle, which is where these enterprise-grade security measures prove invaluable.
Quality Engineering Lead at a logistics company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (5th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
IBM Cognos
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
141
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (10th), Reporting (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 7.6%, down 19.6% compared to last year.
IBM Cognos, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.4% mindshare, down 3.3% since last year.
Predictive Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alteryx7.6%
Red Hat Lightspeed5.8%
Altair RapidMiner5.7%
Other80.9%
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.4%
Microsoft Power BI7.5%
Tableau Enterprise5.8%
Other85.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ManojBehera - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Staff Cyber Security Cloud Data Architect at GE Healthcare
Automated complex ETL workflows have reduced coding effort and improved data integration
One area for improvement is in integrating mostly the data which comes from telemetry, where I can see some sort of improvisations can be made. It is a massive amount of unstructured data, and I believe Alteryx is able to handle it, but there can be some improvements. Suggestions for improvements in Alteryx include areas for increasing efficiency, particularly in processing telemetry data, which involves dealing with large volumes of unstructured data. Additionally, I believe when we use filter tools immediately after the input source, there can be slowdowns when handling massive data. The user experience of Alteryx is generally good, but there are areas for improvement from a user's perspective, particularly regarding user interface enhancements. I think there's always room for improvement, but otherwise, Alteryx has been a great tool for me. We haven't experienced significant disruptions while increasing data volumes, though I sense there could be performance issues as data grows exponentially. This is an area that could use improvement in Alteryx.
RL
Senior Project Manager at BD
Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions
IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me directly if you want to know more.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, R integrations if your team requires this. It can handle over 2 billion rows of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say the following: - An excellent desktop tool for Data Prep and analytics. - Featu...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
Regarding improvements for IBM Cognos, I think nothing yet about functionality, but I find the costs to be quite high for the enterprise system. However, since we need it, we continue to renew our ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cognos?
My main use case for IBM Cognos at my place of work is primarily for business intelligence (BI), mostly for serving, and we appreciate it because it covers the full BI stack, including dashboards, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Anaplan and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: May 2026.
900,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.