IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews

Scheduling reports, configuring prompt pages on reports for users to run a standardized report with custom filters are both fantastic features that I used hundreds of times across all reporting.

Report building was intuitive for a power user but average users found it overwhelming. This just meant a bit more training from my department.

Well established took with huge user base and support. Being IBMs main BI tool, it comes with a lot of Support and Knowledge Base. There are tons of supporting products for Advanced Analytics, Visualization and AI/ML which makes the tool both powerful and versatile. It fits into both departmental BI as well as for Enterprise wide reporting.

IBM should increase the support the provide for their products. It is difficult to get quick help from IBM.Self service features of the tool and not as easy as other contemporary tools like Tableau and Qlikview. IBM has catching up to do in this area. Also cloud based SAAS is not yet advanced for COGNOS.

Complex reports can be achieved with IBM Cognos Report studio, great for setting up scheduled reports.

Interface is not user friendly, certain features are not logically placed.Charts are not great when downloaded into Excel.

Cognos is an incredibly powerful reporting tool offered by IBM and it has a wonderful ability to be customized across different industries and companies. It can transform work efficiency but automating virtually any data that exists in a company's primary accounting and finance system.

Cognos is not very user-friendly and often times it can take a while for an individual working with Congos to get familiar with the functionality and the power this tool possesses. Furthermore, report writing and query studio functionality require some database knowledge so the true power of the tool is sometimes limited by these factors.

The ability to visualize data in many way all using the same utility is beneficial so we don't have to worry about multiple deployment/support patterns. Having an in-memory OLAP option made performance less of an issue compared to hitting an on-prem database directly for everything. The ability to add custom code allows for some really creative solutions to unique business problems in reporting.

We felt the interface and functionality was a little dated - our more technical employees were fine but the more analyst-type developers preferred something "prettier"/"friendlier" like Tableau/Power BI. It also got expensive for us which was one of the two the primary reasons we transitioned. This is obviously dependent on the number of users, so consider your own environment of course.

Cognos Analytics has really great capabilities. There is so much that you can do with the framework if you know what you're doing. Good security features. Good for enterprise level reporting.

If you're hoping this will replace a dedicated reporting team or IT team, it will not. The ease of use depends on several factors and be SURE that you have an experienced team built the framework. No support whatsoever from Cognos themselves for end users, and they take a long time to get back to us on issues. The new visualizations can be clunky, especially maps. They are unusable for detailed maps. Scheduling features slow down the system considerably.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a great data analytics tool. It can handle a lot of data and makes it easy for users to create reports to view their data. I like that it allows for a variety of output formats.

Cognos Analytics can be hard to learn how to use. You have to really understand your data first so that you can figure out how to make the tool do what you need it to do.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a great tool for data reporting. It is easy to use and easy to see data relationships. It has a lot of reporting options and the folder structure is nice.

It can be kind of hard to learn and there are not a ton of helpful resources online.

The best thing about this software is that it is a complete package for your BI Solution. The software is good for Standard Reporting as well as Adhoc Reporting. The new Analytics software has dashboarding as well as storytelling.

Too Many client tools for the same purpose Like Transformer, FM, Dynamic Query Analyser, Data Manager and Decision Stream. Maintenance is the biggest thing.

Before leaving their Web version, they had a very good desktop application, but they discontinued it. is a powerful tool, with ease for the reporter

it is traumatic for its administration, it depends on the active directory, which can be an advantage, but in other cases it makes it cumbersome

The software is very intuitive. If you have knowledge of SQL, it is a very easy software to pick up. The Help portion of the Cognos interface is very helpful also.

Customer Support for this product isn't the best. We have been on Cognos 10.1.1 for a while and when it came up for licensing renewal, we were charged for a newer version of Data Manger. When we inquired about this through our support contract we were going to be charged for the new software.

you can combine multiple queries in one report to create your desired report, which can be formatted in multiple ways to meet your desired structure.

its little bit tricky to handle. You need to understand it thoroughly which actually takes time to began working with it from scratch. Also lacks the graphics and user interface.

Handles all BI products very well, including but not limited to self-served reporting structure, reports, cubes, dashboards, and scorecards. Project deployment and duplication are easy and quick.

User administration could be very time-consuming and we use a third-party tool (which is not free of charge). Product upgrade is not simple enough and has to be planned and conducted with extra caution.

decreases support because of complete report inclusion and a zero-impression climate. abbreviates detailing time because of consistent reconciliation and versatile composing. Further developed independent direction reports and dashboards present information in handily gotten designs.

Investment in Cognos R&D by IBM is declining. Won't work smoothly with large data sets having many parameters. Cross-browser compatibility is often problematic.

Easy to use, easily connects to many ERP softwares. Houses budgeting and planning, financial reporting and dashboarding and metrics all in one suite.

Requires in-house administration, is not an out of the box software and requires monthly maintenance on the reports and the planning applications.

Its all of my majority. Planners are always analyzed in daily productions. Good design, dashboard, pivot tables. That's all i need analyse data and prepare to reports

No cons were added to this review

IBM Cognos Analytics provides drag-and-drop dashboard creator, and deals well with multidimensional and relational data sources. It facilitates the implementation of a logically reasonable BI solution and is very powerful in controlling different aspects of BI.

For users who are used to Excel, they might find it difficult to use this tool at the very beginning. The installation and upgrade usually is a pain. Its embedded administrative tools are limited as well.

We use Cognos to access our customer info. The IT team set ups the report and we are able to export it for viewing and analysis. If built correctly, the reports can be easily run by the users. The users do need to know how to enter the parameters and known the data structure to fully utilitzed Cognos. We run Cognos through the browser. No need to install software.

Users need to understand the data structure in order to enter parameters. If the parameters are not entered correct, there will be no data, exports, or graphs. You also need to make sure the back-end servers are fast if you have a lot of data.

Too many full features Very visual Off line optional download Customizable Program code similar to SQL The framework manager is the best diagraming tool for packages

The transformer software is not user friendly Slow learning Not life proof The LATAM partner is not efficient

If you can figure out how to make the reports run you can create nice reports with lots of information.

Not easy to create a report, some reports will stop working for no reason, they just will spin and not generate. Difficult to change the layout and information.

Enterprise level BI implementation can be with less customizations. Can build robustic solution using product.

Most of small and medium size will not prefer this product because of the cost. Real time analytics will not be available.

The ability to create custom reports makes it user friendly for anyone to figure out

the cubes tend to be confusing for file storage

Easy to create report

No cons were added to this review

Cognos is a great tool for reporting. The visuals are not awesome but there is a lot of customization you can do for reporting.

It can be difficult to learn at first. It is not as easy to pick up as Tabeau. Googling for solutions can be tough.

This software is very flexible and extensive enough to meet almost any of your needs. The reporting engine allows for complex queries and views that far surpass standard reporting methods.

While I was not involved in the purchase of the software it is my understanding the cost was a little high and this is not designed for novice users.