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IBM Cognos vs Workday Prism 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
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
136
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (5th)
Workday Prism Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday Prism Analytics is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Workday Prism Analytics1.3%
Other97.4%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2648136 - PeerSpot reviewer
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized reporting has supported university-wide regulatory dashboards and secure data access
From my experience, we use regular dashboarding with IBM Cognos for producing scheduled reports and for mandatory regulatory reporting. All our departments use IBM Cognos, with each department developing their own reports while our corporate IT team provides the data. Some people use the interactive dashboards feature of IBM Cognos, and there are also other tools in use. I think some users utilize Power BI and Tableau, but our IT organization only provides IBM Cognos as an enterprise business intelligence and reporting tool. IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards. In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable. It has been around for many years and many users are familiar with it, ensuring it performs well in its intended capacity. The benefits of choosing IBM Cognos, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos.
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers
Provides great flexibility in terms of data transformation
I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation. Workday introduced Prism Analytics mainly because many clients wanted to merge data from different systems and then work with it to get some insights out of it. For that, they previously used tools like Power BI. Workday Prism Analytics gives you the power to do all the data transformations within Workday itself without taking out crucial data to a third system. I really like the way Workday has enabled Prism Analytics to be that one solution where you can bring everything. It also provides you the flexibility that things like the security model of Workday are still in place. You don't have to redo your security configuration if you do the data transformation outside Workday.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable, and the benefits of choosing it, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"IBM Cognos is a very comprehensive analytics tool that dissolves the challenge of turning complex and large data sets into clear, actionable insights by providing an intuitive platform for data visualization and reporting."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"Feature-wise, I feel that the solution's stability is good."
"The solution is stable and reliable, with minimal issues affecting its performance."
"The product is easier to use compared to other applications."
"I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation."
"The customer service and support are pretty good."
 

Cons

"The solution's support could be better."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics."
"The visualization techniques must be upgraded."
"It is not a very scalable product."
"One area for improvement in the solution is the ability to manually update individual rows or columns of data once it has been uploaded."
"When you create certain objects, a lot of the time, the fields are text. They’re not numeric, date, or any other field type"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"It is pretty expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
"I do not know of the licensing cost, but there are additional costs like 5,00,000 for recruitment modules."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool."
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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
13%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise86
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 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?
Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday Prism Analytics?
Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool. In fact, that has been one of the hindrance factors for Workday in making Prism Analytics more sellable.
What needs improvement with Workday Prism Analytics?
I think there are still some gaps in the solution. There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics. For now, Workday has enabled the SFTP server and Am...
What is your primary use case for Workday Prism Analytics?
As a consultant, I use Prism Analytics to implement my client systems. I first have design sessions with them, where we discuss their business gaps and then understand how Workday Prism Analytics c...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Prism Analytics
 

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.
Denny's
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Workday Prism Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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