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CCH Tagetik vs IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Business Performance Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Julia Lupidii - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly performance management with intuitive approach
I appreciate its user-friendliness, especially for business users who may not be very tech-savvy. In many organizations, there's a mix of IT professionals and business users with varying levels of technical expertise. One of the strengths of the solution includes a feature similar to SmartView, is that it allows users to work with Excel. Since Excel is a widely familiar tool, it reduces the learning curve and makes it more accessible to a broader audience within the organization. The workflow feature within the solution is particularly valuable. It simplifies complex processes into a step-by-step sequence, making it easy for users to follow along.
AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability for integration and automatic loading from the Oracle system into CCH Tagetik is very valuable."
"I've primarily worked with CCH Tagetik as a consultant, handling implementations and not providing day-to-day user support. I initially appreciated the unified platform, the Ownership Structure Register, which benefits certain entities. The workflow feature is great, but it can become overly detailed and lacks clear guidance on design. The solution is good in terms of storage."
"I appreciate its user-friendliness, especially for business users who may not be very tech-savvy."
"Has an APM, which deals with the details of data and has calculation functions included."
"The most valuable feature of CCH Tagetik is form creation."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly."
"There was a lot of manual work involved with Excel, whereas once we moved on to Microsoft Power BI, it was a cleaner dashboard and it was faster too."
"What I liked most about the tool is that we can use text queries to create projects and modify columns according to our needs. There are hundreds of YouTube courses on how to use it."
"I like that I can use Power BI to upload data. That is very important for me. The visualization is also convenient and easy to use."
"PowerBi is used to import our production data and generate dashboards, then integrates other Excel sheets to provide managers dashboards. This helps them get insights to make better OEE improvement decisions, mainly where to focus resources. We became able to see indicators from any time frame (day, week, month, or year), then could make better decisions."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most effective feature of Microsoft Power BI for data analysis is the ability to use Power Query directly from Excel. Power BI's integration capabilities impacted our data management by allowing us to push all reporting down to the end user, giving them the capability to perform "what if" scenarios and discover and validate their own data without needing to refer to IT. Additionally, it provided insights that we couldn't get from Oracle Cloud. We wrote an extract routine to transfer our Oracle Cloud database to Power BI, which was a game changer in terms of giving people confidence in the finances."
"The tool is very flexible so it allows creativity."
 

Cons

"There is a need for improvement in the ability to generate all reports from one click, like both P&L and balance sheets, to be available together in Excel."
"There is room for improvement, especially on the settings side of the solution."
"We faced difficulties while uploading data."
"Analytics function is weak. Other products have sum(irate) function and forecasting help function, but Tagetik does not have this clarity."
"The tool's major drawback is the ETL process, which is not up to par with other solutions."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"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."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"I have observed issues regarding stability."
"At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool."
"My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset."
"Microsoft should offer additional features for visualization and have additional features for slicing and dicing that data."
"Integration with artificial intelligence would help. Humans take time to review the data and eliminate errors. Artificial intelligence based on machine learning and understanding can bring the same functionality."
"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."
"The solution could improve by simplifying the user interface and adding integration or compatibility with APA."
"The initial installation is difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"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."
"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."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
"The solution's pricing is medium."
"This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."
"There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."
"The costs are small and the benefits are high."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CCH Tagetik?
I've primarily worked with CCH Tagetik as a consultant, handling implementations and not providing day-to-day user su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CCH Tagetik?
I am not informed about pricing, but CCH Tagetik was chosen over HFM due to more comprehensive functionalities relate...
What needs improvement with CCH Tagetik?
There is a need for improvement in the ability to generate all reports from one click, like both P&L and balance ...
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 ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
 

Also Known As

Tagetik
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Daimler, Randstad, Rabobank, Metro Group
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.
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle, Anaplan, IBM and others in Business Performance Management. Updated: August 2025.
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