IBM Cognos and ThoughtSpot compete in the realm of business intelligence and data analytics. ThoughtSpot appears to have the upper hand due to its user-friendly, search-driven capabilities that simplify data exploration without requiring extensive technical skills.
Features: IBM Cognos offers comprehensive analytics and reporting tools with strong scheduling, integration capabilities, diverse report formats, and robust security. It provides powerful ad-hoc query capabilities and reporting flexibility. ThoughtSpot is known for its intuitive search-driven analytics that allow users to query data using natural language, simplifying data exploration and offering quick insights. It is favored for its ease of use and setup, ideal for self-service analytics by business users.
Room for Improvement: IBM Cognos could improve by enhancing its ease of use, updating its visualizations, and improving integration with modern data sources. ThoughtSpot would benefit from expanded visualization options, improved support for diverse data sources, and increased customization flexibility. Furthermore, ThoughtSpot should refine its data connectivity to reduce redundancy and improve stability.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos is available for on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployments but often requires assistance due to its complexity, with some users finding its customer support expensive and slow. ThoughtSpot offers flexible deployment across private and public clouds, with users finding its customer support helpful and personalized.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos has a complex and costly pricing model, especially for larger user bases, though it can offer substantial ROI through detailed insights. ThoughtSpot's pricing is more flexible, based on data usage rather than user count, which can benefit companies with varying data needs, particularly medium-sized enterprises focusing on specific data-driven decisions.
Using ThoughtSpot has resulted in significant time savings and improved business sales by allowing us to identify sellers and buyers across regions, facilitating targeted marketing.
Based on our implementation in one project, we are trying to raise more funding to expand its use.
ThoughtSpot saves a significant amount of time compared to other tools and is very user-friendly.
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses.
ThoughtSpot provides a dedicated customer success person and the ability to submit tickets online, with a response time of no more than a day.
The knowledge base for ThoughtSpot is less robust compared to others.
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
Tableau, Power BI, or Looker have separate tools for preparation, customization, and storytelling.
The platform does not have technical problems with scaling data or connections.
As our data has grown, I have validated huge datasets and complex models without significant issues.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
I use it primarily for large datasets, and it performs faster than regular data visualization tools such as Power BI, which has limits on dataset size.
The upgrades are smooth with no downtime, which is super important.
The responsiveness of accessing live data is exceptional and faster than most other BI tools.
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau.
Handling governance when there are many models and dashboards is complex.
Enhancing integration capabilities with other tools like DBT would also be beneficial as it would make our lives easier.
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
HubSpot is expensive.
ThoughtSpot's pricing is reasonable and in line with other BI tools.
IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting.
Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily.
This alerting feature is very beneficial for our company at the moment, and we use it extensively.
When I upload a data dump, AI analytics suggest possible data visualizations and insights, which I can pin to dashboards or live boards for modification.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| IBM Cognos | 2.2% |
| ThoughtSpot | 1.5% |
| Other | 96.3% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 33 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 23 |
| Large Enterprise | 83 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 1 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.
IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.
IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:
Reviews from Real Users
IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.
Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”
ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable.
The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.
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