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IBM Cognos vs IBM Planning Analytics 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Cognos improves decision-making and efficiency, with substantial ROI, cost savings, and enhanced reporting capabilities for faster data processing.
Sentiment score
7.3
IBM Planning Analytics boosts ROI by enhancing budgeting, analysis, and productivity but faces affordability issues due to increased pricing.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Power BI enhances productivity with ease of use, cost-effectiveness, scalability, and improved data analysis, boosting decision-making.
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment with significant time savings in report distribution through automation, ease of administration, and savings by keeping things secured.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
I have seen a return on investment, as the accuracy has really improved in my organization since everything is automated.
Team Lead Manager at Finlays
Since using this tool, I can now make decisions faster, even when there is just a small change in the data.
Key Account Manager at DHL
In a world surrounded by data, tools that allow navigation of large data volumes ensure decisions are data-driven.
Corporate HR Financial Controller at STMicroelectronics Holding
Power BI is easy to deploy within an hour, providing robust security against data leaks.
Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd
I have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Power BI, including money saved and fewer employees needed.
Consultant at National Australian Bank
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support receives mixed reviews, with feedback on responsiveness, complexity, solution speed, and service cost and personalization.
Sentiment score
7.0
IBM Planning Analytics support is responsive and efficient, rated highly by users, yet there's room for faster direct resolutions.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Power BI's support is mixed, with variations in responsiveness and effectiveness depending on user needs and resources.
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
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
We have a multi-level support system, with the initial level handled by the company we bought the license from and subsequent support from IBM.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Instead, we rely on third-party partners recognized by IBM, who provide cost-effective support.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have been very dedicated and provided top-notch solutions.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The significant drawback I notice is that Microsoft's size makes it hard to get specific change requests addressed unless they involve a bug.
Corporate HR Financial Controller at STMicroelectronics Holding
We have a partnership with Microsoft, involving multiple weekly calls with dedicated personnel to ensure our satisfaction.
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
The support is good because there is also a community available.
Business Development Director at a tech consulting company with 201-500 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Cognos is scalable, efficiently handling growth with the right infrastructure, but may face performance challenges under heavy load.
Sentiment score
7.9
IBM Planning Analytics offers high scalability, efficiently managing data with real-time handling and flexibility for small to enterprise businesses.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Power BI is praised for scalability, cloud integration, and flexibility, but licensing and large datasets present challenges.
I would say it is very scalable because it has continued to handle my organization's growth perfectly.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
IBM Cognos' scalability is very effective because it can handle a large volume of data effectively and fast.
Product Manager at PwC
IBM Planning Analytics' scalability is impressive, as it is able to gather data from multiple sources and handle huge amounts of data without any lagging or downtime.
Team Lead Manager at Finlays
Scalability is quite hard to implement in TM1, largely since the on-premise installation chosen back in 2014.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Scalability is straightforward but it is pricey since it's a SaaS model priced per user.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
You expect only a small percentage of users concurrently, but beyond a thousand concurrent users, it becomes difficult to manage.
Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd
With increasing AI capabilities, architectural developments within Microsoft, and tools like Fabric, I expect Power BI to scale accordingly.
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
As more data is processed, performance issues may arise.
Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
IBM Cognos is reliable with minimal downtime, though performance may lag under heavy loads; proper maintenance enhances stability.
Sentiment score
7.9
IBM Planning Analytics offers stability and reliable performance for forecasting, with occasional fixable issues requiring vendor support.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Power BI is reliable for most reporting needs, though it can slow down with large datasets and network issues.
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
The performance of IBM Planning Analytics has always been fast and reliable for my needs, even when dealing with huge volumes of data.
Key Account Manager at DHL
This stability is really important as we use it for budget calculation, which is time-consuming.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
IBM Planning Analytics is stable because the reason we switched from IBM Cognos is that IBM Planning Analytics capability allows us to connect to multiple tools, which we could not do before.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
In terms of stability, there's no data loss or leakage, and precautions are well-managed by Microsoft.
Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd
We typically do not have problems with end-user tools like Excel and Power BI.
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
It is very stable for small data, but with big data, there are performance challenges.
Business Development Director at a tech consulting company with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Cognos needs better data visualization, improved performance, real-time connectivity, simpler interface, and enhanced support for user satisfaction.
Users recommend improving IBM Planning Analytics usability, interface design, automation, integration, performance, scalability, offline access, and reducing upgrade frequency.
Users seek improved mobile compatibility, licensing, real-time data, advanced analytics, ease of use, and flexible design in Power BI.
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing limited real-time data connectivity.
Digital Marketing Manager at AT&T
The abundance of features results in complexity, requiring strict guidelines for developers to ensure simplistic approaches are adhered to.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
IBM's visualization needs significant improvement.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The advanced features are somewhat complex to understand, and if the data set is very large, it takes a lot of time to process, which causes performance to become slower.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today.
Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd
Access was more logical in how it distinguished between data and its formatting.
Corporate HR Financial Controller at STMicroelectronics Holding
Microsoft updates Power BI monthly based on user community feedback.
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
 

Setup Cost

IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing, but enterprises should negotiate or use partners for better rates and licensing solutions.
IBM Planning Analytics offers flexible licensing models and competitive pricing, with consulting fees impacting overall costs significantly.
Microsoft Power BI provides flexible pricing options, offering free, Pro, and Premium plans for individuals, teams, and enterprises respectively.
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ 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
TM1 is quite expensive, and I'd rate the pricing as an eight out of ten.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
While IBM's solutions were costly before, the introduction of SaaS models has reduced prices significantly.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Planning Analytics is that the pricing and licensing cost can be somewhat on the higher side, especially for small organizations.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I found the setup cost to be expensive
Responsable du département Projets et Applications at CHD Vendée
Power BI isn't very cheap, however, it is economical compared to other solutions available.
Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd
The pricing for Microsoft Power BI is low, which is a good selling point.
Business Development Director at a tech consulting company with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM Cognos delivers essential enterprise analytics with powerful reporting, integration, security, and AI-driven insights for improved decision-making.
IBM Planning Analytics provides fast calculations, customization, Excel integration, and automation for efficient financial performance management and data analysis.
Microsoft Power BI offers strong data visualization, seamless integration, and customization, making it ideal for interactive, collaborative report creation.
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Its stability helps controllers win time in their planning processes.
Responsable B.I at a retailer with 51-200 employees
It also integrates machine learning and AI engines, enabling us to use algorithms for inventory forecasting which optimizes our inventory and replenishment rates.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Some of the valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics are its intuitive and user-friendly interface, reporting output and scheduling, access control and security, and mobile capabilities.
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
In today's data-driven environment, these tools are of substantial value, particularly for large enterprises with numerous processes that require extensive data analysis.
Corporate HR Financial Controller at STMicroelectronics Holding
Within the organization, Microsoft Power BI is used to create dashboards and gain insights into data, enhancing data-driven decision-making.
Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
To reduce the need for highly skilled personnel, we can engage someone who is just familiar and has a basic understanding of Microsoft Power BI, while AI can handle the major tasks through either agent AI or requirement analysis.
Senior Technical Service Engineer Expert at Fujitsu
 

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Other82.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Business Performance Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Planning Analytics4.4%
Anaplan7.1%
Board5.0%
Other83.5%
Business Performance Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Amazon QuickSight3.7%
Other80.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Gladys Njeri - PeerSpot reviewer
Key Account Manager at DHL
Data-driven planning has transformed financial decisions and now saves major reporting time
IBM Planning Analytics helps with collaboration between teams by allowing us to gather data from various departments, analyze it, and collaborate on the data to make data-driven decisions between different departments easily. As I mentioned previously, I mainly use IBM Planning Analytics to visualize the existing data to generate meaningful report dashboards and use it during stakeholder meetings to arrive at the right decision. The best features IBM Planning Analytics offers include budgeting, forecasting, and what-if scenario analysis. The scenario modeling feature in IBM Planning Analytics is probably the most robust planning and forecasting solution we use, especially for what-if scenarios, where we are able to forecast using Watson Studio, which helps in better prediction. I really appreciate the Excel integration in IBM Planning Analytics because it keeps things familiar and adds more power.
Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.
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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%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise92
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise167
 

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 ...
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?
One area where IBM Cognos can be improved is that customer service sometimes is not very responsive, and I would love...
What do you like most about IBM Planning Analytics?
The most valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics for streamlining planning processes include a unified database w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Planning Analytics?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Planning Analytics is that the pricing and licensing co...
What needs improvement with IBM Planning Analytics?
IBM Planning Analytics could be improved by simplifying the learning curve, as it requires a lot of time to learn and...
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

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Cognos TM1, IBM Cognos TM1
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

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.
ManpowerGroup, Convergys, AIG, Orchard Brands, Citibank, InterGen, Northwestern University, EF Education First, Ironside, Bazan Group, CSOB Insurance, Macquarie Group, Charles Stanley, SATO, Government of Sint Maarten, BMW Financial Services
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
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