IBM Cognos vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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9,284 views|5,390 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
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2,000 views|1,530 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and ThoughtSpot 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. ThoughtSpot Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,246 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 Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers.""It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports.""The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting.""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'.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""The solution's initial setup process is easy.""Security administration tools are powerful and flexible.""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."

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"The initial setup was very straightforward.""It is easy to set up the solution.""The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable.""ThoughtSpot takes the modifying of existing reports out of our hands.""I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases.""The scalability is good.""I like ThoughtSpot's search capabilities. You can also create custom analytics even if you aren't an experienced data analyst. We have users with no data analytics experience making some of the dashboards we've created, copying components, and customizing them to their specific use cases.""It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box."

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Cons
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it.""I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos.""Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures.""I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page.""The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions.""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.""There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required.""In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."

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"ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well.""In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do.""If I want to order columns, this feature is not there.""A customized visualization is lacking in this product.""The dashboards could give you more ability to fine tune the appearance. You get a great deal more control over how something looks in Power BI than you do in ThoughtSpot.""The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front.""I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins.""The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases."

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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 →

  • "I give the pricing a six out of ten."
  • More ThoughtSpot 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 the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.
    Top Answer:I like the pricing structure. I get billed by how much data I put in, not how many people are looking at the data. It's better for me as I can control pricing a bit more easily.
    Top Answer:We'd like more flexibility with the calendar as our fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. We have to load or create our own custom calendar to actually need our fiscal year-end. With… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    9,284
    Comparisons
    5,390
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    396
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    2,000
    Comparisons
    1,530
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    783
    Rating
    7.5
    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.”

    ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable. 

    The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.

    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.
    Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Insurance Company8%
    Healthcare Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization58%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business8%
    Midsize Enterprise61%
    Large Enterprise31%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business13%
    Large Enterprise88%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise78%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cognos vs. ThoughtSpot
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. ThoughtSpot and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews while ThoughtSpot is ranked 15th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 8 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while ThoughtSpot is rated 7.6. 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 ThoughtSpot writes "You can drill down into any data right out of the box, with a straightforward deployment, and great support". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion, whereas ThoughtSpot is most compared with Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker and Amazon QuickSight. See our IBM Cognos vs. ThoughtSpot report.

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