We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, it is a more lightweight solution than IBM Cognos.
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"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."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"PowerBi is used to import our production data and generate dashboards, then integrates other Excel sheets to provide managers dashboards. This helps them get insights to make better OEE improvement decisions, mainly where to focus resources. We became able to see indicators from any time frame (day, week, month, or year), then could make better decisions."
"My primary use is for view of the dashboard."
"It is stable enough. It has a lot of powerful functions. It can also be customized with the DAX language. It is also intuitive enough and incremental. You can start with something simple, and then step-by-step, you can increase the reports and dashboards according to your needs."
"PowerBI – Self-service BI."
"We encourage end users to use Power BI because it's quite easy for them to interact with the menus and the navigation bar. Even for ordinary users, they can create their own dashboard using Power BI."
"The one feature most of our customers like is data visualization. When we were doing BI directly from SQL, most users found it challenging to create their own reports. Power BI has self-serve analytics that the end-users can do themselves. On most projects, people are primarily using data visualization and self-serve analytics."
"I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool."
"It is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"The reporting could be a bit better."
"The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"I would like to see Machine Learning for Power Bi Pro users or an intermediate license to enable Machine Learning if you don't have access to a Premium account."
"Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product."
"The Microsoft BI interface should be simpler and more user-friendly. I find it very difficult to move between their data sources and their analytics section."
"The default parameters of the prompt could be improved by including a dynamic option."
"A lot of people work on Excel, so being able to export an Excel file as part of a subscription would be an improvement."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in Reporting with 297 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Power BI 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 Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". IBM Cognos is most compared with Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. See our IBM Cognos vs. Microsoft Power BI report.
See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.