IBM Cognos Reviews

Most of my customers are on-premise, but I have two customers who are on the cloud.

IBM Cognos is used for reporting and I work with all businesses, but mainly in the banking and insurance industry.

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.

IBM Cognos is a very big solution, and it is similar to other large solutions, such as SAP and Oracle, everything is in one solution and one platform. It's very easy to use from one to the other.

The new data module makes life much easier when you combine it with very complex modules. You can build and combine things very quickly if you need to. You can keep the main organizational data structure and then you can combine it with specific external usage. It's very practical at that level.

It is very important for large organizations to have a secure solution, and this solution is secure. I trust IBM a lot. Having the full web organization structure and organization local modules, you are about to do small operations quickly.

There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos.

That would be nicer if you'd have more charts, the ability to add charts easily. That would be a big improvement. However, the maps have been improved immensely which I am happy with.

Once you put a few requests into IBM for changes, it might take six to 12 months. A lot of the requests are responded to and they upgrade or change the feature. When you make a report and you plan it in advance and you want to have smart dates in your planning, this is a bit limited. It is a small issue and you can work around it quite easily but it would be something they can improve.

If you want to see the new feature in someone else's product it takes time, and for IBM Cognos it is approximately six to 12 months for it to be implemented. The other cloud competitors will have it. 

I have been using IBM Cognos for approximately 18 years.

IBM Cognos is highly stable. This is one of the largest values of the solution.

The solution is highly scalable.

Technical support has been improving a lot over the last two years. I add my questions in an online IBM forum and people from the development have directly contacted me with a solution. I'm really happy with it.

The initial setup of IBM Cognos is complex. It takes time and experience to know how to do it. You can't only install it, there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before you begin. You have to make sure you have the right hardware specifications, and that you are not conflicting with any firewalls. You can put it on many servers and for large organizations. The solution can handle complex issues that other solutions can't. Most of the smaller products can't handle it. IBM Cognos is efficient at handling multi servers with data coming from many places and organizing it into one place. The implementation can take a long time because the requirements are complex.

The basic setup will take approximately one day. If it is not a basic implementation the time depends on how complex the data is and how much needs to be worked on. For example, on a predefined data warehouse, in which everything has been done, the setup might only be a few hours then you can start working.

It can be between hours and months. It depends on the context of how many databases are being used, fields, and calculations. You can bring 500 tables and none of them are difficult, but then you have one table with three calculations and takes three weeks to build because those calculations are complex. it doesn't matter which tool you use.

The amount of people needed to support the implementation depends on the customer. If it's a small business-sized customer with 10 to 20 users, I can do the implementation by myself. If it's a larger business then sometimes four, five people.

The maintenance can be very minimal because the data structure doesn't change. However, on the other hand, some customers have the requirements over time to change.

IBM Cognos can provide a substantial return on investment but it depends on the implementation and use case. I've been in organizations where I improved delivery from 24 hours to an hour. They had hardware coming in and it took them a long time to process it. I brought in easy-to-use reporting systems, which they could check the inventory coming in and approve it in less than an hour using barcodes. 

The barcode would send the information to the ERP system in a way that was easy for it to receive. However, the process was very slow. We added a few things, and the operation was doing better. If you use it properly, you can improve your business services immensely.

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.

I have evaluated other solutions.

I rate IBM Cognos a nine out of ten.

We use this solution to create and deploy security packages throughout the network, as well as system analysis reporting.

This solution has provided us with a single control tool, which allows us to easily provide reports for the different sections of our banking environment.

The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us.

We also like data module that comes with this product.

We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required.

We have been using this solution for five years.

We have found this solution to be stable, but the products performance can be affected by the servers in use, if it is being hosted on-premises.

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward, if the staff involved are experienced with the product. However, the deployment takes time to carry out.

We implemented the solution using our in-house team.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases for IBM Cognos are operational and other reports. 

The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson. 

I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information. IBM Cognos could be improved with some analytical solutions that could help us make predictions.

I have been using IBM Cognos for five years, I think. 

We have 700 individuals using the solution and plan on increasing that number. 

I think the IBM Cognos tech support is good. 

I don't know what the initial setup was like because I wasn't with the company at that time. 

I can't say much about the licensing costs because I am not privy to that information. However, I do know we are sharing a global license. 

On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would give IBM Cognos a nine for overall performance. 

I primarily use IBM Cognos for order management.

Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules.

There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data. In the next release, Cognos should include artificial intelligence features.

I've been working with this solution for over eight years.

Cognos' scalability is good.

IBM's support community is excellent, and there's a large knowledge base if we have any problems. When I have a problem, and I reach out to the support team, my problem gets addressed within a couple of days.

Positive

I've also used Tableau and Power BI, but Tableau doesn't support data modeling.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Anybody can learn to use Cognos, but they need some data analytics skills and knowledge of data warehousing, including the complete data pipeline from the source to creating reports. IBM's developer network provides lots of resources for learning this tool and documentation for all versions. I would rate Cognos as seven out of ten.

I am an IT project manager. We take the commercial data of one of our operators and use this information traffic as our ticketing service. These are very traditional and static needs that are being deployed.

We are able to automate annual reports.

We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time.

it avoids wasting time in repetitive actions such as monthly, quarterly and annual activity reports

I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers.

It would also be nice to be able to export the dashboard. Some dashboards can be deployed and seen by everyone. But the problem is, I have to go through the Cognos server to define each user. There is no flexibility to do it as a report that can be published as a web report or something like that for many users.

I think the solution is stable.

We utilized an IBM expert for support.

Implementation was done by an expert, we did not have any issues with the setup.

It is pretty expensive.

We looked at Tableau. This tool is fast and easy to use because it uses the desktop. Tableau is better for the advanced users in my opinion.

I think that Cognos is very efficient for the matured enterprise.

I also believe that the functions for the BI are not mature yet. I would advise asking for assistance whenever implementing a new function so that they can properly handle the configuration, adjustment, and tuning of the servers which will make it easy on you as the end user.

I am using  IBM Cognos for enterprise reporting.

The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting.

In IBM Cognos it always takes too long to build enterprise reporting, but I don't think that making another product can be solved.

Tableau and PowerBI is a tool, but enterprise reporting is a platform where you put all kinds of information together.

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.

I have been using IBM Cognos for many years.

The stability is good.

IBM Cognos is very scalable.

One of our customers has 1,000 users using the solution and 300 unique users every week running reports.

IBM has a good support when you have concrete technical questions.

My company decided to build a data warehouse and they wanted to have the best reporting solution on top of it. That was the reason we are using IBM Cognos.

I started with Portal Play and then moved to IBM Cognos which made the installation straightforward because I have known the history of these solutions and I had a lot of time with it. However, the challenge is to get people to build their own reports and to understand data.

The time for installation depends on a lot of factors. The last time we did an integration with an API, it took five months to build the dashboard, in IBM Cognos it took one hour. It took five months to get the data and one hour to build the dashboard.

We did the implementation ourselves. We used the Azure platform to receive the data from an API and we send it up to IBM Cognos for the database.

For maintenance of the IBM Cognos service, we have one person using 12 days a year, for patching or the install of new releases.

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.

My advice is if you are able to solve your problem with an easier tool than IBM Cognos, you should use it. However, if you have a complex problem and you want to distribute a lot of information about the users it is important to get the users to build good reports, then I think is the best tool in the market.

I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

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.

I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos.

It is also quite pricey.

I have been using Cognos for about 15 years. I used to work in a company that was a partner of IBM. I was selling this product formally, and I created solutions with it. That was about five years ago, and now, I have started to work with it in another company.

I mostly worked with Cognos. I have worked a bit with Tableau and Microsoft BI.

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.

I would rate IBM Cognos a nine out of 10.

Cognos includes a framework manager concept that allows you to build a framework model. Once you've built the model, you have to release the package and then it's available for reporting.

Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos.

I have been using Cognos for a few years.

In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager. 

Cognos is scalable.

Installation and configuration-wise, Cognos is more complicated than Tableau and Power BI — it takes more time. You have to install and configure it, then make the data available before you can do reporting. With Tableau and Power BI, the initial setup is very quick; you can just directly connect to Excel or a file on the desktop. Unlike Cognos, Tableau and Power BI eradicate dependency on a framework model. 

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

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cognos a rating of eight.