Senior Manager of IT at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
We previously used Hyperion and SQL Reporting Services however we moved to Cognos because we need an integrated solution
For how long have you used this product?
- 12 Years
Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- Quick query ability
Can you give an example of how this product has improved the way your organization functions?
- We use it against our enterprise data warehouse for enterprise views of data and material flow
What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- Visualization
Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- Scalability only due to source data issues
Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?
- Hyperion and SQL Reporting Services. We need an integrated solution.
Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- Essbase, Oracle, SAP
How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- Very Good
Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Setup for such a complex tool is always difficult
Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- We used an outside vendor. Good, but needed some more technical understanding
What is your ROI on this product?
- 3-5 years
What was your original setup cost for this product and what is your day-to-day cost of using this product?
- 2 Million to implement. Not sure
What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- Do your homework on configuration and server architecture
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
BI Expert at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Comparison of Business Objects & Cognos
Most of my experience is with Business Objects. I have done a little with Cognos Elite also. Comparatively I find Business Objects much easier to work with when it comes to customizing the presentation of the data. Neither of the two products does a drill-down as well as you can in Crystal Reports, but they both allow you to create multiple views of the data on one page. Business Object WEBI reports allow you to use multiple universes and multiple report pages in one WEBI document.
Both system will force you to use another layer between the presentation and data layers. In Cognos it is called Framework Manager. In WEBI it is called Universes. Both Universes and Framework Manager define the structure and connections the are usable to the presentation layer. Both middle layers can connect to any kind of database or even spreadsheets on an accessible drive.
Both products will force you to use their WEB portals as an interface into the presentation layer. Both allow you to schedule and deliver reports in multiple formats and in a variety of means. Links to reports, send the reports via e-mail, only send reports with data the user can see, and send alerts when reports fail are just a few of the common things that can be done.
When it comes to ease of use, Business Objects is a lot more intuitive and straight forward. Cognos seems to make you take a lot more steps to get the same results. Some of those steps are tough to figure out. The term "clunky" comes to mind when I think of working in Cognos.
Both products offer very similar concepts and tools to summarize and chart the data in a report.
Licensing costs and how you want to architect your server infrastructure are going to be the key driver to which product fits your organization better. Business Objects offers the advantage of another more static reporting tool with Crystal Reports.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
IBM Cognos
November 2023

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Business Analyst at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
Very powerful toolset with many options. But complex to learn and use
Valuable Features:
Very powerful toolset with many products and options. Has various ways to present data to meet requirements.
Room for Improvement:
Complex to learn and use. Need technical team to build solutions.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
This is not a program for use by just anybody. Therefore, one must have some technical knowledge and skills background in order to learn how to use this.
VP of IT at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Great support with broad set of analytic capabilities, but needs improvement with integration of Data Discovery capabilities
Valuable Features:
IBM support, suite of tools covering broad set of analytic capabilities, and ability to integrate with multitude of platforms
Room for Improvement:
Need to integrate Data Discovery capabilities
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Precise but to the point. Program support is very important to businesses because they are bound to encounter bugs from time to time. This makes Cognos Enterprise very viable and appealing to its users. Various businesses across the globe utilize different operating platforms. Some even use more than one platform within the same company. This makes the integration feature a perfect choice for Cognos Enterprise to its customers.
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Can do most things we need it do and we like the scheduler. But visualization is poor.
Valuable Features:
Can do most things we need it do. We like the scheduler.
Room for Improvement:
Visualization is not as good as some others.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Manager of IT at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Excellent new functionality. Trying to connect to SAP Function Modules is tricky.
Valuable Features:
Excellent new functionality.
Room for Improvement:
Replacement for VVM is still giving us issues. Trying to connect to SAP Function Modules is tricky.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Hello FLPylot
Can you be precise and tell us more about the new found functionality of VVM and let us know?
Senior Manager of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides us with "a single version of the truth."
Human Resources Management (HRM) plays an essential role in developing a company's strategy as well as handling the employee-centered activities and the strategic management of the employees, who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the strategic objectives of the
organization.
IBM Cognos is a flexible, database-driven Human Resources Management, forecasting and project planning tool, which is fully integrated with all core IBM Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) modules - replacing the use of multiple, diverse, unlinked spreadsheets.
Cognos provides invaluable support for all participants in the HR and project planning cycles, of even the largest, most complex or fast-changing businesses. It supports a rich Web enabled planning and modeling framework that supports driver based planning to help connect HR assumptions to operational outcomes.
I’ve used Cognos for more than 10 years, from multiple global locations and platforms and it has allowed me to bring together information from across the organization and key systems to provide a "single version of the truth", from which to plan and make decisions. For example, it:
• Provides the core platform services of centerpiece capabilities (Talent Profiles, Employee Records, Competencies, Job Profiles, and Reports) enables planning departments to create forecasts and perform "what-if" analysis
• With Cognos’s combination of self-service facilities (allowing access from disparate locations) and workflow (to tightly control the data flow into the budgeting process), you can easily move from centralized to devolved project planning.
Cognos automatically generates supporting transactions that contains all employee records, giving you easy access to the information you need to reduce errors, enforce policies consistently, and build your business, to support more complete day-to-day operational reporting. So, for instance, a management entry may trigger an automatic compensation entry, which gives rise to changes in the employee's future compensation and reward decisions.
Cognos can integrate data: from existing spreadsheets (thanks to dynamic links into Excel); from external programs; or from end users (via user-defined, web-based input screens). This enables several business divisions or data sources to contribute to the planning and forecasting process, while keeping track of the changes and control over all the data inputs.
Sharing core ERP system administration and security infrastructure ensures that Cognos user permissions, audit controls, validation and security features are tightly managed and consistent throughout.
• Controlled user access, even when data is entered via Excel, to ensure accuracy and security of the underlying database. Complete audit trail for all data changes, user name and time of the change.
• Ultimately, IBM’s Cognos Enterprise offers a unique architecture, which delivers true "Post- Implementation Agility", allows changes to your system long after initial installation - in response to changing requirements, and without depending on expensive external consultants or constrained IT resources. This makes Cognos the ideal choice for service-based organizations that are affected by frequent and dynamic business change.
Underpinned by IBM technology, Cognos is the only planning tool that can efficiently adapt to major business change without re-implementation. You can start with native integrations from HR Management to other core talent management processes in order to support a holistic, end-to-end cloud talent management strategy.
IBM Cognos Enterprise Software offers customers the industry’s most flexible delivery and deployment options, including IBM smarter cloud solutions.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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