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IBM Cognos vs IBM Controller 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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (9th), Reporting (6th)
IBM Controller
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Cognos is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, down 3.4% compared to last year.
IBM Controller, on the other hand, focuses on Business Performance Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.4%
Microsoft Power BI8.1%
Tableau Enterprise6.2%
Other84.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Controller0.9%
Anaplan6.8%
Adaptive Insights5.0%
Other87.3%
Business Performance Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
TL
Enterprise Architect at Veidekke
User support and consolidation capabilities have strengthened financial reporting
We primarily use IBM Controller for the consolidation of all our company results and yearly reporting IBM Controller appeals significantly to our user group led by the Chief Financial Officer and the team under them. The strong user support and capability in consolidation are standout features.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"This is a best-in-class reporting platform."
"The product has a wide range of data presentation options."
"Framework Manager is the best Metadata Modeling Tool and also Report Studio."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"We have found this software to be insightful in finding and defining true performance of products and services."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"Centralised, balanced, scorecard-based dashboards with drill-through to detailed OLAP; datawarehouse; and operational reports keep the organisation focused on KPIs."
"IBM Controller appeals significantly to our user group led by the Chief Financial Officer and the team under them."
"The strong user support and capability in consolidation are standout features."
 

Cons

"Self-service analysis features have improved a lot, even with new subversions of version 10, but I feel business users can't really utilize these features as they are not too intuitive and they easily find themselves lost among Cognos Studios."
"IBM Cognos has been working on data discovery-related features, visualizations, and speed of interaction with the end-user, but they are not yet on par with other vendors who are leaders in data discovery."
"Pricing model is frequently changing and hard to manage."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"I am uncertain about the delivery model of IBM Controller and the direction it is headed."
"I am uncertain about the delivery model of IBM Controller and the direction it is headed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"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 cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"It is averagely priced."
Information not available
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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
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise91
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
IBM Cognos can improve its error messages, as whenever something is wrong, it does not give us the proper error message, and we end up rebooting the entire software. Additionally, they can improve ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Cognos?
My main use case for IBM Cognos is to generate reports for clients and maintain IBM Cognos. My company is a retail company that provides the best price solutions to clients, and we use client data ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Controller?
I haven't provided a definitive opinion on pricing. However, knowing our CFO's cost-conscious nature, the pricing is likely very competitive and has never been an issue.
What needs improvement with IBM Controller?
I am uncertain about the delivery model of IBM Controller and the direction it is headed. While the delivery model includes both cloud and on-premises options, it causes confusion. A more straightf...
What is your primary use case for IBM Controller?
We primarily use IBM Controller for the consolidation of all our company results and yearly reporting.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
California Franchise Tax Board, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, Mirle Automation Corp., Radware
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.