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IBM Cognos Dashboard vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 Dashboard
Ranking in Data Visualization
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Visual Analytics
Ranking in Data Visualization
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos Dashboard is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Visual Analytics is 4.2%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Leslie Mavonyani - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-use and stable tool useful for its functionalities like analytics and AI
It is a scalable solution, and to provide its scalability a rating, I would say that it would depend on how much data we push at it. There are five users of IBM Cognos Dashboard in my company. Though it is extensively used in my company, we do not plan to increase its usage.
Renato Vazamin - PeerSpot reviewer
Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations
We had that solution installed previously in another solution, Selvaya, but I don't think we used it at the time. We are now using SAS Detect Investigation as a complementary solution, in which we have part of the process, use a gene, SAS collects information and identifies some business situations, and the business guys use Visual Analytics to explore the results of the process. We previously used the FICO platform, but we switched because FICO's pricing was not scalable. Bringing more data or workloads to the platform required a significant investment in order to scale. We needed to change because we have a lot of data to process every day. FICO was also a little more complicated than SAS Visual Analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main feature that is useful is the on-demand report generation through the dashboard."
"It is a pretty stable solution."
"The product helps us update the KPI automatically."
"The tool's valuable features are that it is easy to use and stable."
"The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with quality assurance processes."
"The visualization capabilities and the email functionality are most beneficial."
"Simplifies report designs and quickly displays tables and graphs."
"What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes."
"It provided the capability to visualize a bunch of data in an organized way."
"The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed."
"I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data."
"The product is stable, reliable, and scalable."
 

Cons

"The price point is one of the major areas to be improved."
"Visualization is an area where the product lacks."
"They should include proper documentation to learn more about the product."
"The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."
"I haven't come across any missing features."
"Better connectivity with other data origins, better visualization, and the ability to create KPIs directly would all help."
"A bit more flexibility in the temperatization will be helpful."
"The reason we haven't rolled it out across the board is due to the fact that the licensing is so expensive."
"The charts and tables could use better sorting, primarily using other variables than the ones on the figure. If they could implement views like in the older version (previous to Viya), it would be very nice."
"There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance."
"The visualization should be better in SAS Visual Analytics. It is easy to use but when compared to other solutions it is lacking and the support is not very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on individual usage, and it is more expensive than other providers."
"The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"The product is expensive."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"I work with the tool's free version...The tool's corporate version is very expensive and requires a monthly hire."
"Licensing is simple."
"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cognos Dashboard?
The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors. Its pricing is fixed and depends on the number of licenses.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos Dashboard?
The tool is good enough to serve the purpose of what it is meant in our company. The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are req...
What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?
The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?
It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.
What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI. It may be that our current subscription does not include AI-enabled features, but I wo...
 

Also Known As

Cognos Dashboard
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos Dashboard vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.