We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Looker based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"It could have more options for themes."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"Stability needs improvement."
IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews while Looker is ranked 5th in Embedded BI with 19 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Looker is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Looker writes "The APIs are exposed at every level, so it's highly modular". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and IBM Controller, whereas Looker is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, Google Data Studio, Databricks and Domo.
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