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IBM Cognos Controller vs SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos Controller
Ranking in Financial Close Software
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Business Planning and C...
Ranking in Financial Close Software
12th
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Financial Performance and Strategy Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Financial Close Software category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos Controller is 3.2%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation is 4.3%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Financial Close Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos Controller3.2%
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation4.3%
Other92.5%
Financial Close Software
 

Featured Reviews

Pauli Leppänen - PeerSpot reviewer
Group Controller at Eleda Group
A tool useful for areas like reporting and group consolidation
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. My company hasn't faced any issues regarding scalability, which we can't overcome. Regarding the scalability, there is some work required in the product. A user should also have some knowledge to be able to operate the tool's scalability feature. Sometimes, my company has to contact our support partner to figure out how to do certain things in the product. So far, my company hasn't encountered any issues with the tool where we have to deal with volumes even though we have to deal with a lot of leasing contracts, like over 2,000. My company expects the product to offer more scalability. My company has around 70 licenses.
it_user90087 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
​​It's a robust solution with no issues​. In my view, it is necessary to introduce another way to create reports apart from MS Excel.
There are no tutorials or wizards inside the tool, and I think they would be very useful sometimes. Having said that, I suspect that it is one of the SAP's strategies, because they get a lot of money from SAP training and don't want people learning who to work with their products on their own. There is another thing as well which could be improved. In my view, it is necessary to introduce another way to create reports apart from MS Excel, and it must be a way that can be exploited through mobile devices as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If there's already a scheduled report and we want a subset of that report, that can also be created. So we do not have to schedule a new report or create a new subscription for that. At this rate, we can create a subset out of one report itself."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is a properly working solution... The functionalities and package offered by the product seem to be the right fit for our company."
"Up to the implementation of the application, it used to take weeks to the consolidation team to carry out the entire, monthly, financial consolidation, now it takes them just one or two days to perform the entire process."
 

Cons

"IBM should work on a little flexibility and user-friendliness, in the current interface. It looks very rigid and hard to read. We need to give flexibility to the user in the current situation."
"IFRS 16 functionality is something that is not embedded in IBM Cognos Controller."
"There are no tutorials or wizards inside the tool, and I think they would be very useful sometimes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive, but compared to its other alternatives in the market, I feel that IBM Cognos Controller is a reasonably priced tool."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BPC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Emirates National Oil Company
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Sage, Blackline, Wolters Kluwer and others in Financial Close Software. Updated: June 2026.
900,196 professionals have used our research since 2012.