My advice to others is to make solutions with a bridge between them to optimize the use of the data. In addition, it's important to structure your data well to facilitate better understanding among your users. When users use a data module, for example, it must have well-structured folders which include the documentation, the calculations, the KPIs, etc. We train to make all the KPIs in the data module, because if you make the KPIs in the report or in the dashboard, then you can't use those KPIs in other objects. We have had other solutions from different consultants where they made the calculations with the reports, such that to make another report, you would have to repeat the calculation.

Another piece of advice is not to use the Analysis Studio's reporting tool, because it's very complex to maintain. Instead, we tend to use the dashboard, and that is what I would recommend to others as well.

On the whole, I would rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

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You can use the dashboard to determine where it stands based on the graph. The amount is included in the dashboard. We use data from the United States, the UK, Germany, and Japan. The data is stored in our CCS report. Based on the ID, we can retrieve specific data within that report. Certain portions of the data will display information for only one particular country. This restriction confines the data within the report. We are implementing security measures to ensure data integrity.

Some users access IBM Cognos directly for their businesses, while others log in to the Cognos console portal. These users interact with the actual JavaScript within the portal. This process may require additional time for adjustments, including those related to the DKA component.

If you have the budget, you can opt for Cognos; otherwise, you can opt for Power BI.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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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. It is mainly useful for management meetings since it allows one to see KPIs, which helps the management-level people in a company to make decisions.

Speaking about the tool's valuable features for analytics needs, compared to the previous versions of the tool, I believe that the new version of the solution has introduced auto-generated facilities, like drag and drop, which is very useful for business users to develop reports easily. In the past, packages were deployed using a framework manager, but now, with the new functionalities, you can directly upload CSV files to deal with areas concerning the sales team or validation of payments. The sales team can directly import the payment validation files. The product helps sales teams since it allows users to directly upload and see the results in reports without the help of any technical people.

I am very satisfied with the product's reporting capabilities. The use of Excel format before sending emails to users is very helpful, especially for those who are in different countries, like Australia or the USA. The sunburst part associated with reports is very helpful for many.

The scorecard widgets in the tool are mainly useful for the KPI part. It helps to keep a tab on the monthly achievements. It helps users to look at how much they have achieved in their company and the actual number of units booked or sold by their organization.

A minimum of two people are required to maintain the product.

With the new version of the tools having many additional integrations and connectivities, I can see technologies like Snowflake and Salesforce integrated with IBM Cognos. The tool's integration capabilities will be helpful in the future.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, especially for handling the reporting part. The product's security features are also very good compared to the other tools in the market.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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Because of IBM Cognos' design and implementation and because it better engages the user and customer, I rate it at nine out of ten.

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I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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I rate this product a ten out of ten. I would advise a new user of IBM Cognos to have good IT support and people.

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Once you develop the skill set to operate the IBM Cognos application, it's a very robust system.

IBM Cognos has come a long way and they've done a lot of things with dashboarding, but it could be a little, too late, and not enough. They need to do better.

I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

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My advice to others is to be very particular about the architecture that you are developing because once you deploy it, it's really difficult to change and very complex to change. Once you deploy it and start working on it, and then you realize that something that you had to do, you have not done it right, it's a really complex process to change it.

The second thing I would advise is always to keep on top of the updates that IBM Cognos sends over. Some of the features that you might require in your work environment only come with the updates. You need to upgrade your application and that is when the features would be available.

Lastly, make sure that you explore every bit and piece of the analytical world of application because there are some very good features that the IBM Cognos brings in. It would be great if you explored everything and then start using it. 

If the cost is not a problem for the organization, then I would highly recommend IBM Cognos.

I rate IBM Cognos a seven out of ten.

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We are customers and partners.

Currently, we are also using AIOps and IBM Watson also, which is an artificial intelligence tool that is also very easy.

We trust IBM and its platforms. They've optimized for monitoring very well. Their support is also excellent.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. So far, it's been a great solution for us. We're quite happy with its capabilities.

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Cognos provides a multitude of reporting options and I love working with it. I would recommend it as a reporting one-size-fits-all solution. If a simple reporting tool is all that’s required, other solutions might be more suitable.

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Overall, I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

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It is a good tool for a multinational enterprise. I rate it as an eight.

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I would give the same advice as I would with implementing any BI tool/solution. Focus on building a stable and scalable foundation that’s built to last and also intuitive to the end-user. Place an emphasis on data governance/quality, change management and continuous product training for developers and consumers. This is extremely important when implementing any new BI/Analytics technology.

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On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cognos a 7.

I do like the product. I think there is room for improvement. Cognos has started taking steps towards improvement like new solutions such as Tableau, however, there is still quite a way to go. Cognos's framework model requirement does restrict everything. If you want to make any changes to existing reports, it is a tedious process to add some new tables or change joints or things like that, to make it part of the data model. That's one of the main issues that we had. But other than that, I'm quite happy with the product.

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It's a good idea to take a course online to learn how it works before you start.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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Make sure you try this product well before implementation.

Accommodate resources.

Also make sure your users and internal assets (administrators, developers, and architects) get formal training.

Hiring professional services is always a plus during implementation and the first wave of development.

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I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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Be sure you have an expert Cognos consultant before starting.

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I'm a user, not a vendor or a reseller.

We use the enterprise version of the product.

In terms of BI tools, I'd advise others that this is one of the best. It was easy to use once we had the initial training that is required. The features such as storytelling, AI based sessions, are great. I would recommend it to other companies for sure.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at an eight.

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I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10, because of the support. Other than support, everything works.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: When we search for a vendor, we always make comparisons between them. In France, we were surprised by the product, what it delivers, and what is included in the package. There are a lot of different tools on the market that deliver on some points, but not all.

Cognos Analytics gives us a lot of possibilities, including dashboarding, which you would have to purchase additionally from other providers. Every three or four years, we do some benchmarking to analyze the product.

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Clearly define the levels of access and user groups to give access to tools and data. It is hard to change once something is in place.

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Take time to understand your data. Decide which reporting must be from live data and what data could be taken from a data repository. Prioritize your reporting needs. Add proper time for validation and training.

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We're an IBM customer and end-user.

With less volume, potential users should definitely go with Cognos. It's great for automating emails and other smaller duties. Cognos is better in those endeavors.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

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My advice is if you are able to solve your problem with an easier tool than IBM Cognos, you should use it. However, if you have a complex problem and you want to distribute a lot of information about the users it is important to get the users to build good reports, then I think is the best tool in the market.

I rate IBM Cognos an eight out of ten.

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Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cognos a rating of eight. 

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Understand your current and future BI needs. Understand the information/insight you are looking to get from your BI application. Understand how you would calculate your ROI on your BI investment. Tool selection should be the last step in the development and deployment of any BI environment.

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Make sure you have good IBM support in place before installing, and read all associated documentation. Third-party or IBM installation would be recommended.

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Spend a lot of time on your data model and then the Framework Manager model before starting any reporting. Also, before starting any reporting, set up report templates both for the prompt page and for the report page. Adding in a table, hidden with a conditional style, to track report changes is a good idea.

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On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would give IBM Cognos a nine for overall performance. 

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If you are new to the product and want to implement a reporting tool that will be free from issues, get an experienced consultant.

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• Understand your needs first.
• Bring in good experts for initial implementation.
• Gradually grow internal resources to be able to do self-support.

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Make sure you realize the scope of the product. It is not easily maintained by one or two people. It involves more than just Cognos for report writing; you also need to use Framework to create the data models/packages to use with it. I have done IT for 30 years; it is one of the more complex report writing tools I have used.

Also, make sure you are in it for the long haul with the costs that are associated with maintaining the software.

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I would describe a specific scenario or project where the solution improved our company's decision-making process by giving us some organization.

My company uses the tool for reporting.

My company manages IBM Cognos with another tool. My company has seven people to manage not just IBM Cognos but also other tools. One person will be enough to manage IBM Cognos.

Honestly, IBM Cognos won't be the first choice if I have to recommend a solution to others.

If the price of IBM Cognos is not very expensive, people can buy it, but for the same price, they can have Microsoft Power BI. I think I will recommend Microsoft Power BI to others.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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I think that Cognos is very efficient for the matured enterprise.

I also believe that the functions for the BI are not mature yet. I would advise asking for assistance whenever implementing a new function so that they can properly handle the configuration, adjustment, and tuning of the servers which will make it easy on you as the end user.

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I am a strong believer in having the right tool to do the right job. I believe IBM Cognos BI has been and continues to be a solution that I have seen great results in and continue to recommend. However, I recognize that there are strengths that other vendors bring to the table and solutions that could be a better fit in some circumstances.

It does a fantastic job of promoting true self service and allowing line of business users the ability to load their data without the need for IT involvement. Non-technical people can easily upload their data and start to perform analyses of their business creating attractive dashboards and asking key questions based on empirical data.

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If you are looking into BI tools, you need to go through how scalable and dynamic the tool will be, and how you're going to actually use it, how the users are going to use the tool in the end. There are various tools on the market. One can do one thing and another can do the other thing. There is not much of a comparison. If you look at Cognos, or if you look at other tools, Cognos is really good when you're looking for credibility of data. But if you're looking at other aspects of usability, then it's not that great. Investigate thoroughly is my advice.

Cognos is an eight out of 10 because it's still lagging behind in some of the capabilities which other BI tools in the market are providing. Images are one of those things. Otherwise, it's really good, it does the job. Still, people have the impression that Cognos still has that dependency on IT.

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It is a BI tool that covers concepts namely BI, visualization, mobile, cube and all modern concepts.

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Investigate the cloud option for savings in maintenance and patching.

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Appropriate data modelling is a must, if you want to increase self-service.

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Understand what level of granularity the users need and the speed of reporting. There may be other solutions that are better. Also, be aware that Cognos is not able to integrate with tools such as Tableau and many reporting solutions that would improve the product. So, you are pretty much stuck with the tools IBM provides.

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I rate IBM Cognos a nine out of ten.

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If implementing on-site, you will need to have skilled administrators and developers who are experienced with this solution. They are in demand, so they will command a high salary.

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Hire an experienced business partner, who can provide ongoing support and training.

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The product has a wide range of data presentation options. If an organization has too much reporting to do, then I would definitely suggest this product.

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If one has a complex consolidation structure, regular M&A activity (and hence changes in structures and rules), unusual transactions and a large user base, then I would think twice about Controller. If not, it'll probably work fine.

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Anybody can learn to use Cognos, but they need some data analytics skills and knowledge of data warehousing, including the complete data pipeline from the source to creating reports. IBM's developer network provides lots of resources for learning this tool and documentation for all versions. I would rate Cognos as seven out of ten.

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My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to ensure that they are clear with the business requirements. You have to define the model in the first place, so you want to design the model with all of the business hierarchies and attributes so that there will be no further re-working it, or any re-production of work in the future. This means that you have to plan your model, get a model, and then framework manage your model well in advance. Then your reporting and analytics will be very good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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Response times should fall in seconds, not minutes. Visualizations should be strong. System should be capable of guiding users in their data exploration.

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There is a huge cost up front to purchase and get it off the ground, but once you have it, you won’t regret it. To have access to all of your data at your fingertips is impressive and I think it’s a must have for medium and large companies (+500 employees).

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Plan your reporting strategy. Do you intended to implement self-service reporting so that end users are creating reports? Do you need structured operational and management reporting? Cognos often requires IT resources for metadata modelling. Will you have the bandwidth and time to move at the speed your business requires?

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The solution is easy to use. Our customers could learn cognitive algorithms quickly with its help. I rate it an eight out of ten.

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I would advise those thinking of implementing Cognos to look at their customers' requests. If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense. I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

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I would rate IBM Cognos a nine out of 10.

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I think as per my understanding, everyone has their own criterion and measure for the way a product fits into their scenario. If they have the resources and can budget for the investment in this product and if they have the kind of infrastructure that warrants the investment, definitely to go for this product. If the business or user has budget constraints, I would say there are a lot more other options. It comes down to the capabilities of the different solutions and how they satisfy user needs.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product a seven-out-of-ten. I keep three points back because I feel that in being a leader, they are missing some of the functionality that they should have already which is somewhat basic. Everything it should be supporting is not there. Big data support came very late into Cognos and the product is too costly, I would say.  

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You need to know the details of the product to love it. This product caters to all sizes of companies and easily accommodates growing companies. It can be used across an enterprise.

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This is a best-in-class reporting platform. But keeping in mind the high price of this tool, it is better to evaluate it before going for it. You might not need all the features provided by this tool, in which case you end up paying more. Also, it might not be suitable for small firms.

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I would certainly give it a nine out of 10, and I could be persuaded to give them a 10. It's very good. Done lots of things we needed it to do, some very, very complex reports. It's been able to develop them. It's delivered them. Very impressed.

Make sure you understand what you want to do with the tool, and make sure you have a good budget to make sure it's successfully implemented.

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2. Draw up a clear and effective communication with both the technical part and the internal and external staff

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Get a good local partner or take on an experienced Cognos contractor to help get your local team up to speed and be productive.

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There are many BI tools out there to choose from. Cognos might be the right solution for you but this decision needs to take into consideration the size of your user group, the cost per license, the functionality needed for your reporting infrastructure, and the in-house BI knowledge of the BI tool that you choose. View full review »

You need the resources and the budget but it's a great set of tools that can bring value to your business. View full review »

This product is easy to install and you can start reporting off. However, it needs a lot of tweaking according to the different setups and also has a lot of components that need different skill sets.

It's all consolidated in one solution, so it doesn't have a few things that the other small tools do better.

Cognos is easy to learn and I see a lot of the new consultants in this field, more than in any other BI tool. However, becoming an expert takes a lot of time.

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First look at what you need, before buying a BI tool and implementing it.

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If you go with Cognos Analytics, install at least version 11.0.4. It has backwards capability for old reports and dashboards, and includes the new JavaScript API.

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I believe it is important to evaluate similar products. I also advise to have a resident expert in-house to support and maintain the platform.

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If you are looking for an all integrated, scalable and high quality reporting tool, Cognos is a solution to consider. But, the price is a factor too.
You need to define well your needs for reporting, chose the right component you want to start first and start small.

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The solution's basic use cases are business reporting and data analysis, and it's bundled with most of the products. All IBM products in our region should be promoted more.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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Make sure your CFO understands the investment required for a successful BI installation that will give you one version of the truth, whether it's Cognos or another vendor. The investment is not only in software and hardware, but in the people who use it.

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Hire experts to come in and do the initial setup and meta-model. Learn from them. Get training. Training is invaluable when it comes to using the various tools.

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It is a great product. It is very simple to use and easy to monitor and maintain.

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• Resourcing: Don't underestimate the resources required to build good business intelligence reporting and analytics. For example, if you skimp on training, you'll have a great tool set that is going to be used poorly by its user community. Businesses implementing IBM Cognos need to get the balance right in terms of who carries out what activity, especially who and where report authoring takes place. One of the companies I've consulted for gave little training to people in the business outside of IT. As a result, poor quality and slow executing reports were the result.

• Culture: Use these tools to promote the right culture. A lot of the benefit of using IBM Cognos will depend on your organization's maturity level with regards to its use and implementation of these tools and how you integrate their usage into your business processes and decision making. The culture has to be present to allow any BI tool to be successful.

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Employ some experts with a lot of experience, or hire consultants with documented experience if it's difficult to recruit.

Be sure to give the right training to the developers/advanced users at the right time. In other words, don’t do it too early in the implementation phase before the product is used within the organization.

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You need an IT team to support the users. It is not a BI-as-a-service app.

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Framework Manager is the best Metadata Modeling Tool and also Report Studio.

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Go for it but it will require training.

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On a scale of one to ten I would give IBM Cognos a nine.

I would suggest to potential customers that if they don't have experience, there is a lot of information on the web. There are wonderful video clips in YouTube. There are wonderful blogs. Before you decide on a solution, check. There might be something that's even better than what you thought initially. The abilities are so wide and amazing that a lot of times people take a solution which is not the best, because they do what they know and they don't think, "Hey, I can do something much better."

Make sure you know all the options before you choose one. And again, reconsider. If you checked it three or four versions ago, then check again. There are new features all the time that are changing and improving, and you can get amazing results.

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• Consider carefully if you want a Kimball architecture with datamarts for your datawarehouse. If so, the Cognos Data Manager is a good option. If not, I think you should reconsider
• Consider what exactly you want to achieve with your datawarehouse. For having a historical database, it can be quite effective. For daily control, in most cases a datawarehouse architecture is unsuitable and unwieldy. Direct reports on source systems are than a better option
• If your organisation has issues with data qualities, a datawarehouse won’t solve these. It can only make these visible (and there are probably a lot of cheaper ways to do that)

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It is a good product for reporting, not necessarily for dashboards.

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Always plan for a scalable implementation that allows for a growing user base. Bump the server memory and processors up as much as you can so you're over and above what is suggested for each version.

Look at the IBM documentation on the server setup and organize the step by step guides for each server in a distributed environment.

Ensure that the security setup and groups are well thought out before starting.

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Look for a good implementation expert who can help you make it a success. And don't spare on trainings; it's a complex, enterprise BI product.

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This product is very useful and good to implement, but you must know that you need good support from IBM, if you face any particular problem.

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Cognos Analytics allows for many ‘styles’ of deployment, and can be done simply ‘out-of-the-box’. To get the most from the product, explore the different features. Some creativity and thought should be applied on how to engage your audience in most interesting and intuitive ways.

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The most effective way to get a sturdy result in the Cognos Datamanager, is to leave out the fancy stuff. Only use the jobs and jobstreams (and of course the scheduler to run them). Guard referential integrity by making the correct joins in the queries which are in the jobs (and putting these of course in the right order). Then, Cognos Datamanager can be very useful, sturdy, and flexible.

I understand from fellow forum user that the Cognos Datamanager will not have technical support from IBM anymore starting from 30th September 2015. If you haven’t made a choice yet for a datawarehouse solution, choosing the Cognos Datamanager could give you serious support issues in the not so far future.

In a more general sense, why do you want a datawarehouse? If you want to resolve issues with data quality, a datawarehouse can make these visible, but there are a lot cheaper ways to achieve this. And, of course, knowing about the problem, but taking no steps to tackle these, won't solve anything. If you want a sturdy, reliable, comparable, standardized and well organized data, a datawarehouse is a good option. However, it takes time and effort. However, quite a lot of organisations use the Cognos Datamanager. Migrating to another environment is a costly and potentially risky undertaking. I expect that a lot of Cognos Datamanager applications will probably be in use for many years to come. Some useful dinosaurs, such as COBOL, still survives. I think the Cognos Datamanager can easily go that way too.

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Before you start, request advice so you can select the most suitable option for you. You should do this because there are too many options in this product and you may pay for features that you will never use.

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It provides value for larger enterprises.

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Quality of data, flexibility and the performance of the tool(s) are the critical aspects of BI. Test the critical aspects by doing a proof of concept using a huge amount of data.

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If you choose a Cognos product, be aware to wait until at least the second or third fixpack appears.

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The best piece of advice I can give to companies considering Cognos is to factor in the cost of training or consultants. Cognos, despite what some sales people may say, is not an easy tool to start with. It requires a hefty amount of investment to implement. But with proper training, and working with the tool's strengths, the return is well worth the price.

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It is a very complete product that keeps getting better and better. It is complex software and you need a good level of expertise.

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Ensure your specific requirements are defined and that your data sources are clean. If you are not sure how to do this, work with a partner like Lodestar Solutions, who are experts in working with you to create an analytics roadmap.

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Go ahead, you will not regret.

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For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent.

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There are plenty of other cost effective and efficient solutions available, such as Tableau, cloud based solutions, and big data options.

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Please evaluate other BI vendors available in the market to make sure that you pick the right tool for your use cases.

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1. Read
2. Try
3. Ask
4. Repeat

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Learn the overview of the product first before the investing time and effort on features which you may not use.

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If your organization requires features like more stability and customization of reports, then the IBM Cognos Suite is your one stop choice as a good BI tool.

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If you don't have staff with previous experience in this product, it's worth engaging a partner you help you with installation and configuration options, training and early implementation.

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Consider other alternatives. View full review »

The product is very strong for an online reporting based solution.

However, if someone is looking for complex mobile based reporting, they might want to weigh other options for their organization.

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The product is as good as the team implementing it.

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It can do anything; you just have to study it a bit.

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Be willing to build up in-house knowledge of Cognos.

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The most important criteria when choosing a vendor would be that the product is the very user-friendly and that we can upload the files into the system for reporting purposes.

I give this solution a rating of five out of 10 because it's not very user friendly.

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Check all BI products, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Cognos. Check the pros and cons before making the choice.

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IBM Cognos is a good tool for viewing reports, allows us to use the tool in an interactive and easy way, with the option to display it on various mobile devices.

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If you have the budget to implement, then do it.

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It's not as good a MicroStrategy for data analysis, but better for static reporting.

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