IBM Cognos vs Sisense comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Sisense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Sisense Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution's initial setup process is easy.""IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets.""The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility).""The initial setup is very straightforward.""For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent.""Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'.""One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability.""Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

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"No issues with stability. It is a very stable solution.""Whenever we have an issue or are unsure how to proceed, they manage to simplify the issue and help us execute it in a graceful and scalable way.""A very simple setup: Easy to download, install, and updates are pain free.""The best part about this solution is how easy it is to mash up the data from many sources. Sisense is fast compared to other solutions.""The solution's technical support team is good.""We like that this solution allows us to use data cubes to set up specific visualizations.""The dashboard design interface is very intuitive and allows you to quickly and easily produce professional, innovative dashboards.""Ability to work with very large data sources without the limitations of Excel."

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Cons
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help.""I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like.""It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting.""IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner.""It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users.""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.""There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool.""Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."

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"This solution does not have tabs. In order to have tabs, you have to download an add-on to mimic the tabs. They should be integrated to improve the solution.""The solution's setup process could be easier.""They should improve the filters to create downloaded data by moving them to the top of the dashboard.""Larger datasets will sometimes give a "Accumulated logs" error when trying to make minor changes. T""At present there are additional costs involved if we wish to share our data queues within this solution, which we would like to see removed.""I would love to have more customization capabilities for building dashboards, especially in creating custom widget sizes.""The administrative side of Sisense is a little cumbersome and confusing.""The initial version we purchased only ran on Windows servers, which was less than ideal for our DevOps team. I believe that has been remedied in the latest release."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
  • "The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
  • "IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
  • "Pricing should be improved."
  • "The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
  • "It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
  • "Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
  • "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."
  • More IBM Cognos Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution is more expensive than Tableau, Qlik and Dundas. It is an expensive tool. They charge $75,000 while Tableau is $45,000."
  • More Sisense Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting.
    Top Answer:The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved.
    Top Answer:The solution's technical support team is good.
    Top Answer:Sisense is good in terms of visualization, but it has some drawbacks. For example, it doesn't have any way to sort or filter tables directly on the server side. Also, you can't have multiple tabs; it… more »
    Top Answer:We use the solution to centralize all processes.
    Ranking
    Views
    9,561
    Comparisons
    5,647
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    433
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    1,796
    Comparisons
    1,602
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    373
    Rating
    7.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

    IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

    IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

    • IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.

    • IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.

    • IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.

    • IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.

    • IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.

    • IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

    Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

    Sisense is an end-to-end business analytics software that enables users to easily prepare and analyze large, complex datasets. Sisense’s Single-Stack BI software includes data preparation, data management, analysis, visualization and reporting capabilities.

    Sample Customers
    More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
    Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization57%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    University17%
    Media Company13%
    Retailer8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Healthcare Company6%
    University5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business57%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise26%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cognos vs. Sisense
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Sisense and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 129 reviews while Sisense is ranked 17th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 39 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Sisense is rated 8.8. 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 Sisense writes "Business intelligence solution that has improved automation and provided meaningful insights". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion, whereas Sisense is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Apache Superset, Amazon QuickSight and Qlik Sense. See our IBM Cognos vs. Sisense report.

    See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors and best Reporting vendors.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools 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.