IBM Cognos and Zoho Analytics are key competitors in the business intelligence software category, offering diverse analytics solutions. Each product holds distinct advantages, with IBM Cognos providing robust features suitable for complex, enterprise-level reporting, while Zoho Analytics offers a user-friendly interface, optimal for quick report creation and ease of use.
Features: IBM Cognos stands out for its comprehensive suite of tools including Report Studio, Query Studio, and Framework Manager. These tools offer strong integration capabilities and are well-suited for complex reporting. Additionally, Cognos provides advanced security, scalability, and the ability to perform schedule audits. Zoho Analytics, although less feature-rich, is favored for its intuitive user interface, ease of integration with other Zoho products, and ability to support varied visualizations. Its accessible nature makes it ideal for users with less technical expertise.
Room for Improvement: IBM Cognos users often highlight the complexity of deployment and the technical knowledge required for advanced features. Challenges with data visualization and version updates are also common concerns. For Zoho Analytics, users seek more diverse visualization options and improved user interaction features. Enhanced customer support response times are frequently requested by Zoho's user base.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Cognos is mostly deployed on-premises, making it suitable for large enterprises with dedicated IT resources. It offers a range of sometimes costly support options. Zoho Analytics is more flexible with its support for public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments, appealing to various business needs. While setup is generally straightforward for Zoho, some users note slower support response times compared to IBM's structured support system.
Pricing and ROI: The pricing model of IBM Cognos is viewed as expensive, primarily due to its enterprise-level capabilities and PVU licensing complexities, which can be a barrier for smaller enterprises. However, when used effectively, it offers significant ROI. Zoho Analytics, with its cost-effective plans, caters to smaller businesses and is especially chosen for competitive pricing, offering strong returns in line with its operational scale.
After incorporating Zoho Analytics, now all our decisions come from its reviews.
Any time I've integrated customer data using Zoho, I've received great feedback and referrals, and Zoho has gotten me referrals and more customers.
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
The support team doesn't have full awareness of the system capabilities.
Zoho support provides assistance through live chat to guide us.
If you need help with any issue you face, you can directly call them.
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
Zoho Analytics can easily adapt to our needs when they grow, and you don't need much knowledge to adapt it; even basic Excel knowledge is sufficient.
You can utilize URL features to redirect users to their records in Zoho CRM or Zoho Desk with just a click.
Zoho Analytics is scalable.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
A major missing feature compared to Power BI is the ability to create multiple DAX measures or row-level context, which would be useful for showing custom profit and loss statements.
The stability and reliability of Zoho Analytics have been good over time.
The stability and reliability of the product is crucial for optimal performance.
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
The collaborative features of Zoho Analytics have faced one issue: they have tried to reduce the sync time with most Zoho applications, but even with CRM, the sync still takes one hour.
While Power BI uses Power Query, an intuitive and powerful tool that allows data manipulation in any way, Zoho Analytics has limitations.
Having to pay for 25 users when only 11 are needed creates an issue with the pricing structure.
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
The annual subscription cost of Zoho Analytics is equivalent to about half of the monthly cost of tools such as Tableau or Power BI.
IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting.
The AI called Zia in Zoho Analytics is extremely useful. Whenever I build a chart or dashboard, I can generate a summary of insights using this AI tool, which is very convenient for both leadership and manager level teams to understand the data concepts.
These multiple dashboards are available to view in a single place, which is very beneficial.
In the pivot table and scheduler table, if we want data in one report, we can use an SQL query and get data from different modules.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| IBM Cognos | 4.3% |
| Zoho Analytics | 1.1% |
| Other | 94.6% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 33 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 23 |
| Large Enterprise | 83 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 4 |
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.”
Zoho Reports is a powerful, easy-to-use and highly scalable cloud-based reporting and business intelligence platform for small to medium-sized businesses. Its flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model and scope for customization allow businesses to tailor it to their unique needs.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
