We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, Microsoft Power BI, and Oracle HFM 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 three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"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'."
"Many of my customers already use Microsoft products like Office 365, so I often propose Microsoft Power BI because it integrates well with all the standard Microsoft business tools. And it's the quickest tool to implement and start using daily."
"Good CS and administration."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."
"It has greatly improved our reporting capabilities."
"I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool."
"It's easy to create reports and it's easy to download the data from the corresponding report."
"Constant collaboration is the most valuable. I can build a dashboard, and several co-workers can access this dashboard. We can share information that is important for decision-making. It is a very easy-to-deploy solution. It is compatible with a lot of data sources. It is also very stable and scalable. There is also a very good forum and a lot of help and online training."
"The tool is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility and ease of configuration in terms of testing and formula creation."
"It is a very user-friendly software."
"You can bring in data from any source and from multiple sources, and you can consolidate that data in HFM."
"Financial consolidation and reporting tool with good built-in features such as currency exchange and elimination."
"The most valuable features are around consolidations, eliminations, conversions."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"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."
"The solution's support could be better."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire."
"I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data."
"Microsoft is behind IBM when it comes to security features."
"If you are having millions of rows of data or you have a large database, Microsoft BI's performance depends upon how powerful your hardware is. When I am handling large amounts of data I do not use Microsoft BI or Tableau because of this, I use D3."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."
"The upgrade process could be improved."
"The complexity is okay. I don't see it as super complex. The solution could have more functionality to make it a little bit more flexible."
"It's a difficult process to try to edit, configure, or change the business rules that exist and work within HFM."
"The intercompany reporting function in this tool needs improvement, particularly being able to run reports in batches, rather than one at a time."
"The solution has integration challenges. We need a simple tool that is fool-proof for the data that is submitted not only for consolidation purposes but also for performance management and reporting purposes."
"Integration is an area where it lacks and can be improved."
"In terms of improvement, one challenge with Oracle HFM is the need for technical knowledge in writing SQL syntax for custom extensions."
"If there could be data integration between HFM and the accounting software that would be ideal."
