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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
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (6th)
Workday Prism Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
17th
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 November 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.7%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday Prism Analytics is 1.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos1.7%
Workday Prism Analytics1.4%
Other96.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Thorpe - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust platform delivers excellent reports and insights while needing improvement in self-service capabilities
Our clients utilize IBM Cognos mainly for static reporting, board packs, business reporting, and insights IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting. One of our customers can get a full company update on a Monday…
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"I really like the flexibility the solution provides in terms of data transformation."
"The customer service and support are pretty good."
"The solution is stable and reliable, with minimal issues affecting its performance."
"Feature-wise, I feel that the solution's stability is good."
"The product is easier to use compared to other applications."
 

Cons

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions."
"There is not much flexibility in how we can add external data within Workday Prisma Analytics."
"The visualization techniques must be upgraded."
"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"
"It is not a very scalable product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing should be improved."
"The solution is affordable."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"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."
"Based on whatever I have heard, Workday Prism Analytics is considered an expensive tool."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise83
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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
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: November 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.