Platform and Technology

4.3
28 reviews
Made for

Report-writing, machine learning and predictive analytics

Not for

Companies who aren't willing to invest significant time and resources to their BI solution

 
Free version & free trial
 
Starts at $30/user/month
Pricing details

Features

IBM Cognos

Cognos Analytics offers smarter business intelligence capabilities and allows users to create and personalize dashboards and reports. Cognos also provides IT with a scalable solution available on premises or on the cloud.

Reporting and visualization features:

  • Drag and drop on mobile or desktop
  • Best visualizations recommended
  • Single interface to create ad hoc reports

IBM Cognos

IBM Cognos offers a complete web-based experience with easy upload of personal or external data, as well as the ability to report directly off a data source. Effortlessly combine data sources or automatically generate data models based on keywords.

Self-service features:

  • Integrated solution for data discovery and reporting
  • Guided experience to access data and create dashboards and reports
  • Consistent web-based experience on all devices, on or offline
  • Governed platform for performance and scalability

SPSS Modeler

Predictive analytics with the ability to deploy directly into business processes. User-friendly collaboration for survey data collection, statistics or data mining. Grow analytical capabilities within the enterprise at a pace that makes sense.

Key features:

  • Machine learning
  • Data mining
  • Non-linear and iterative
  • Automation and integration

SPSS Statistics

SPSS offers data munging capabilities, big data-enabled algorithms and geospatial, entity and text and sentiment analytics, as well as mathematical optimization and hundreds of native analytics functions. Embrace and extend open-source technologies like R, Python, Spark, Hadoop and more.

Key features:

  • Ad-hoc analysis
  • Hypothesis and model testing
  • Descriptive statistics
  • Statistical analysis

Watson Analytics

Watson Analytics offers the benefits of advanced analytics without the complexity. A smart data discovery service available on the cloud, Watson guides data exploration, automates predictive analytics and enables dashboard and infographic creation.

Compatibility & Integration

IBM partners with several vendors to offer Big Data analytics with its Open Platform for Apache Hadoop and real time visual analytics for IBM’s Big Data environment.

Information Builders is fully integrated with the IBM InfoSphere BigInsights platform:

  • Integrate any data source with quality and reliability
  • Easy-to-use predictive and sentiment analytics
  • Dashboards and BI powered by InfoSphere BigInsights
  • Tableau, SAS and Microstrategy also connect directly to InfoSphere BigInsights.

Mobile Access

IBM Cognos Mobile

  • Access and interact with reports and dashboards on tablet and mobile devices
  • Online or Offline access
  • Sync Cognos content through iTunes, email attachments, or the Cognos server

Support

Contact:
  •  Email
  •  Phone
  •  Chat
Forums:
  •  Developer forum
  •  Community forum

Pricing

Basic info

 
Free version & free trial
 
Starts at $30/user/month

Reviews

4.3
28 reviews
Sort by
 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

ERP modeling and forecasting

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.5
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Manufacturing
 
1001-5000 employees
 
Charlotte, NC
C Level Executive
1
The Review

Experience:

We have a huge amount of data and excel was just not cutting it. Even the database we'd previously had custom made wasn't capable of sifting through the amount of data we now churn out. Cognos was intimidating to our users to begin with, big data is intimidating all around. But having more information, accurate information more quickly has given us leverage in the industry and to me it keeps us all on our toes. The numbers aren't lying and they are available now to everyone. We know what the other departments are doing and they can show us as we can them what out points are and have the data to back it up. We've become more knowledgeable and efficient. We're meeting quarterly goals and exceeding them. We conduct enterprise planning with TM1. Cognos has performed splendidly, met and went well past our expectations. We use it for modeling, budgets, and forecasts. We exist in a sector with a lot volatility, so being flexible is everything.

Pros:

The upkeep and care has been relatively easy for our staff, and the price, for what we get in return is excellent. I just marvel at the ability of anyone in the company being able to sign into the TM1 and pull data out they need.

Cons:

This may not be what you are asking but they do have some server issues where tasks don't run and information is not updated. Maybe that is an issue on our side, I don't know.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Cognos: intuitive and powerful

4.0

Features: 
3.5
Ease of use: 
2.0
Support: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
3.5
See More
the reviewer
 
Information technology
 
101-200 employees
 
Columbus, GA
Senior Manager
1
The Review

Experience:

Cognos provides me with a toolset for reporting, analysis, scorecarding, and monitoring of events and metrics. Cognos Analytics introduces smarter self-service that guides me in generating insights from data for impressive and effective presentation. With experience in delivering mission-critical analytics, Cognos Analytics helps me meet all of my organization’s needs in one integrated solution. IBM Cognos Analytics also allows me to collaborate across teams, organizations, and ecosystems to amplify value and offer the scalability, governance, security and performance demanded by my clients.

Compared to earlier versions, what is most striking about Cognos Analytics is the new interface. It’s attractive, clean, and crisp, hiding excess adornment and focusing on the important elements I need to leverage for reports, dashboards and visualizations. None of the back-end functionality is lost and it’s easy to access my data with advanced features. My favorite features include stream lined modeling, built in guidance and a mobile-first mentality. Cognos provides a guided and personalized experience. You can create and customize your own dashboards and reports in minutes. You can capture and design all types of data effortlessly.

Pros:

Cognos is intuitive and powerful. IBM Cognos Business Intelligence presents information in a personalized format; users can analyze, share and collaborate on content in one dashboard. Language and location are no longer barriers to access and interaction with dashboards.

It's a great tool for analytics and reporting and its fairly easy to use. IT provides highly interactive and flashy reports that are portable on most platforms that are available today along with mobile platforms like iPad that are increasing being used by business for on the go purposes. Also, reports can be imported from other tools such as widgets into dashboards or you can use pre-built dashboards as well.

Cons:

Initial setup is not easy. It requires actual databases and this can be achieved using an ODBC or JDBC driver. Hard to work with CSV file formats. Moreover, the documentation that IBM provides is considerably technical and is lacking in proper examples. Oftentimes, I have found that the best way to solve something in Cognos BI is to structure the data differently either in Framework Manager or (when working with dimensional cubes) in Transformer.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Cognos scales well

4.5

Features: 
3.5
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Health care & life sciences
 
5001+ employees
 
Washington, Dc, VA
Manager
1
The Review

Experience:

Cognos is scalable and flexible, but it is expensive - still worth the money. The Report and Query Studio tools are sophisticated and support our talented user base. They provide flexibility and the ability to query the packages in an ad-hoc way. We've also seen some adoption of the Cognos Mobile tools which is really neat. We're working with end-users to make the mobile features more apparent so that they can access data on-the-go. We mainly use the Report and Query Studio tools. The architecture of the application can be tiered nicely for performance. This allows us to scale the application to support our growing user base. Cognos' mobile features are mature and we do use that as well.

Pros:

The Report and Query Studio tools are nice for sophisticated power users. This allows power users to query and report on data which has already been modeled.

Cons:

Licensing for Cognos is difficult to understand. It is based upon a proprietary 'PVU' or Processor Value Unit calculation which has been created by IBM. This effectively licenses each server by the number of processing cores. The software licensing is expensive. The product requires very technical staff to maintain and support. This adds greatly to the TCO of IBM Cognos that many overlook.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Simple Interface

5.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
5.0
Support: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Business services
 
501-1000 employees
 
Tampa, FL
Vice President
1
The Review

Experience:

As management strategies grow larger and larger, the nuances, aspects, details may be reduced to asking and answering just three questions on performance management. How is my company doing? Are we on track as compared to our competitors? Why is that? Are we fully or (under) utilizing our data in a smart way to mine for all of its potential? What to do next? Are we passively managing or actively managing data, are we able to sustain the good trends and reverse the bad?

I like Cognos because I feel that it addresses and answers these questions in a way that's relevant to our business model. Implementing IBM Cognos brings tangible results and profits due to driving better performance. Every employee gets information he needs - without engaging outside systems and tools. Sales and service are both engaged and the feedback, coupled with results, tells us that it is effective.

We have a solution that allows continuous comparing daily changes to the overall company strategy. We are more nimble and can make small mods on the fly to change if need be. Representation of gained results is effortless. We know that when C-Level reports are requested to gauge efficacy, there is no fluff, just action/reaction on revenue deliverables. All the steps of business intelligence implementing - starting with defining the needs, then turning the system on, answering the what-and-why questions and to finally connect all the enterprise workers to the platform makes me comfortable in answering the above questions with positivity and confidence.

IBM Cognos Express is sufficient for our company to give us the analysis, dashboard, visualization, scorecard, planning, budgeting and forecasting capabilities that work well within our budget. We are experiencing some dynamic growth and I feel confident that with Cognos Express being so scalable, that as our needs grow, we'll be able to discover more organic functions and uses to be able to act on new insights quickly.

The proof is in the pudding. Before we adopted Cognos, our BI was kind of a crapshoot and we spent more time extracting, modeling , analyzing and massaging data to reflect the revenue, retention, productivity and growth numbers we wanted to see. Cognos has been instrumental in taking a critical view of our business instead of collectively patting our own backs for a job well done. With Cognos, there is not hiding behind what the data is telling ourselves and as a result we are smarter, more focused and more honest with ourselves as to what's working and where our deficiencies lie.

Pros:

It is a simple interface that we can customize to fit our needs and requires less IT work to pore through data and reporting modules.

Cons:

Our only issues, and they are small, are with upgrades, updates, etc. But these are an IT issue, non-impactful to the end user.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

User friendly and accurate

4.5

Features: 
4.5
Ease of use: 
4.5
Support: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
4.5
See More
the reviewer
 
Other: Insurance
 
5001+ employees
 
Los Angeles, CA
Senior Manager
1
The Review

Experience:

This particular system is designed to house all our financial data for the whole organization which we gather various information to enforce budgeting and forecasting for the company. There are so many variables that this system allows us to streamline line our process to make it more effective and more user-friendly for other people with security access to check different financial data in their respective areas. It can get tedious sometimes but the method of compilation is so high level that you will not miss a single thing if you are concerned with the accuracy of data listed in IBM Cognos.

Currently, this is the company system of choice as it integrates very well with software and the way that my company does business. Possibly moving forward we may add other system most profitable to doing the business. We use various templates and styles for our financials with the inclusion of budgets and forecasting. This feature is synchronized with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for our in-house data and calculations. In this way it has better functionality and the ease of using the software is nice.

This solution has performed gracefully, employees and higher ups have been productive as ever in gathering and analyzing data accurately. It helps the company streamline the process of extracting information that is effective and secure. It adds value, boosts productivity and helps the company thrive.

Pros:

Cognos is professional, user friendly and accurate in all our practices. It delivers the results we all are looking for. My company is big on accuracy and deliverance. IBM Cognos delivers great value for everyone concerned.

Cons:

At the moment I don't see any cons since this solution really works great for the kind of business my company is in.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Logistics and data

4.0

Features: 
5.0
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
1.5
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Consumer products
 
11-100 employees
 
Orlando, FL
President or CEO
1
The Review

Experience:

My experience with this company has been pretty good, I get what I need and came for. I learn more about my business and things that need to be fixed. Customer service wasn't the best though, when I first started out with this company I was new to the whole thing so I kinda asked a lot of questions, the person I talked to made me feel ashamed to be asking questions and I felt like I was annoying or bothering them. That does disappoint me. We use IBM for data, and logistics. I've received the benefit of knowing what direction my business is going, what I need to fix and what I should applaud.

Pros:

Once again it allows me to learn so much more about my business.

Cons:

Customer service could be much better, ease of website on things like tablets should also be improved.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Cognos: Data Analysis

3.5

Features: 
3.5
Ease of use: 
3.5
Support: 
3.0
Willing to refer: 
3.5
See More
the reviewer
 
Information technology
 
5001+ employees
 
Louisville, KY
C Level Executive
1
The Review

Experience:

I have used COGNOS for queries, adhoc reporting, and automated reports for multiple IT organizations. The features we use include queries, reports, business intelligence, and analytics. We have seen improved operational efficiencies and better performance across multiple business units.

Pros:

Data analysis is amazing with IBM Cognos.

Cons:

Sometimes the queries can take too long to be produced.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Data Extraction and reporting with Cognos

4.0

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
4.5
Support: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
4.5
See More
the reviewer
 
Retail
 
501-1000 employees
 
Los Angeles, CA
Manager
1
The Review

Experience:

We selected Cognos because of its reputation as one of the leading software tools for Business Intelligence. The features we use the most are data extraction and reporting. Cognos allows us to create better solutions for end users.

Pros:

Cognos is a leading BI provider and it is easy to use or to get support for.

Cons:

none

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Information in a personalized format

4.5

Features: 
4.5
Ease of use: 
4.0
Support: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
4.5
See More
the reviewer
 
Business services
 
1001-5000 employees
 
Dallas, TX
Associate
1
The Review

Experience:

Cognos allows us to create custom profiles using personal and business data. We are currently using it to manage spreadsheets documents. We use it in conjunction with excel, including features like output theme designer, optimization of in memory custom profiles, etc. Cognos is good, it makes it easier to run the IT side of our business and keep track of everything.

Pros:

The various new updates are easier to navigate for most users. Cognos presents information in a personalized format; users can analyze, share and collaborate on content in one dashboard.

Cons:

The cost is high and the initial setup is complicated.

 
Survey Response
Feb 22 2016

Reports with Cognos

3.5

Features: 
4.0
Ease of use: 
3.0
Support: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
See More
the reviewer
 
Retail
 
5001+ employees
 
Jacksonville, FL
Senior Manager
1
The Review

Experience:

We have a long term relationship with IBM. We initially selected Cognos because it provided the best product for our needs. They had the best price for what we were looking for. We needed mobile Data and security solutions, and we also needed help sifting through internet data, specifically maximizing revenue through social media. We use Cognos connection, Query Studio, Report Studio and Workspace. So far, so good. The learning curve does vary from person to person. Overall, we get better quality data analysis and better reports.

Pros:

I like the report studio the best. It is a big time saver.

Cons:

I'd like a one week in house training seminar for hands on training, instead of having to learn on our own. Upper management has not yet phased in all of Cognos' features.