IBM Cognos vs XLCubed comparison

IBM and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. IBM is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #33. IBM holds a 4.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fluence Technologies users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 134 IBM Cognos reviews

6,188 Views
2,351 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

311 Views
174 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

IBM Cognos and XLCubed compete in data analytics solutions. IBM Cognos appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced analytical capabilities, while XLCubed stands out in cost-efficiency and Excel integration.

Features: IBM Cognos provides comprehensive reporting, robust analytics, and scalability suitable for large enterprises, supporting a wide array of data sources. XLCubed offers dynamic Excel-based reporting and dashboarding with intuitive Excel integration, and focuses on fast, interactive analytics for quicker decision-making.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos has a cloud-based deployment model with extensive setup documentation, though it can require considerable configuration time. XLCubed offers simpler deployment, quickly integrating into Excel environments, with responsive customer service focusing on quick support and updates.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cognos involves higher setup costs, reflecting its enterprise-level features and scalability, yielding ROI through improved data insights for complex business scenarios. XLCubed demands a lower initial investment, offering faster returns through enhanced productivity and reduced training requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. XLCubed Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. XLCubed

July 2025

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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 Reporting

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

33rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.5%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU

Senior BI-ETL Consultant at CMA Consulting Services

Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding

There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.

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it_user1391316

Head of Finance Systems at NHS

Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals

In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."

"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."

"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."

"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."

"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."

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."

More IBM Cognos pros

"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."

"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."

Cons

"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."

"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."

"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."

"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."

"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."

"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"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."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"Pricing should be improved."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."

"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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.

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What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.

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Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 12% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Cognos

Compared 9% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Qlik Sense vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed

Compared 69% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs XLCubed

Compared 31% of the time

More XLCubed Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

August 2025

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

July 2025

Download XLCubed product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Overview

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:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

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.”

IBM

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

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.

Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. XLCubed

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Cognos vs. XLCubed

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