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. Some reports have performance issues because of data value. Power BI struggles with datasets exceeding one lakh records, and IBM Cognos handles datasets ten times larger without delays. Generating reports with large datasets in Cognos may take around 30-60 minutes. The final output is delivered in Excel format.
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 aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product. The UI of the product needs to be similar to the one offered by Power BI, which has the most market share presently.
The solution could have more options for themes in terms of creating reports. Also, its drill-down feature needs improvement. In addition, they should include features for visualization in the next release.
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. IBM should provide more support for Cognos development. It is quite limited in Pakistan. In the next release, I would like to have a mobile app for Cognos. For instance, Power BI has a mobile app for their solution, and I would like Cognos to do the same.
@SalmanAhmad There already is an IBM Cognos Analytics Mobile app that's been released a long time ago now. It works great. In fact the original Mobile reporting app is still available as well. That makes two mobile apps for Cognos that are available. Error messages are very descriptive if you are the Cognos admin. The ability to see the descriptive error messages is configurable within Cognos administration.
Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre
Real User
Top 10
2022-07-27T11:17:40Z
Jul 27, 2022
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
@Carlos Larrad Salgado Please upgrade to the latest Cognos version to be allowed to use Data Modules and Data Sets so that you are able to use the web enabled data modeling tools as well as the default DQM based data record caching that makes reports and dashboards load with lightening speed.
CFO at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2022-07-01T13:43:00Z
Jul 1, 2022
We started working with Power BI, which we feel will be number one in a couple of years. Even though it still has some improvement, it's a promising tool. All BI tools have similar issues to IBM Cognos. Regarding additional features, it would be good if the solution had conditional formatting similar to Excel, where you can conditionally format based on colour. For example, colour scales like green, yellow, and red make it easier to categorize tables, rows or columns by colour. Unfortunately, this feature does not exist in any BI tool.
@Paulius Bistrickis 'Conditional formatting similar to Excel' is a feature that was added to Cognos several years ago now. It works great. I suggest taking another look at the latest version of Cognos as see for yourself how easy it is to use.
There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data. In the next release, Cognos should include artificial intelligence features.
In IBM Cognos it always takes too long to build enterprise reporting, but I don't think that making another product can be solved. Tableau and PowerBI is a tool, but enterprise reporting is a platform where you put all kinds of information together. 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.
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. In order for IBM Cognos to survive, they need to keep up with dashboarding. I know they're becoming more agile as far as being able to move away from a framework manager and use modules, which is great in order to build the models. They need to be able to compete with Microsoft B because Microsoft BI has beaten them up as far as reporting and dashboarding. They need to improve to better compete with other solutions.
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. That would be nicer if you'd have more charts, the ability to add charts easily. That would be a big improvement. However, the maps have been improved immensely which I am happy with. Once you put a few requests into IBM for changes, it might take six to 12 months. A lot of the requests are responded to and they upgrade or change the feature. When you make a report and you plan it in advance and you want to have smart dates in your planning, this is a bit limited. It is a small issue and you can work around it quite easily but it would be something they can improve. If you want to see the new feature in someone else's product it takes time, and for IBM Cognos it is approximately six to 12 months for it to be implemented. The other cloud competitors will have it.
Director at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-01-12T15:40:00Z
Jan 12, 2022
I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers. It would also be nice to be able to export the dashboard. Some dashboards can be deployed and seen by everyone. But the problem is, I have to go through the Cognos server to define each user. There is no flexibility to do it as a report that can be published as a web report or something like that for many users.
In terms of what could be improved with this product, the speed could be better. The second thing I feel is lacking in Cognos 11 is usability - ease of use. I find Tableau much easier to use. I have not used stories and dashboards extensively, but I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients. The other thing that should be included in Cognos is Landing Pages. It would be good for the Dashboard Landing Page, if they could make it as easily and attractively as Tableau, that's the only other tool I've used, and theirs is completely visually appealing. The client should want to click and open the Cognos portal to get their data. We have our own product and Cognos is integrated with it. If they're able to get similar data, even if it is not as detailed in our product, they don't have any motivation to go to Cognos. They need to polish their product a little bit to make it more user-friendly and customizable - that would help.
Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-09-13T21:24:00Z
Sep 13, 2021
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. It is also quite pricey.
@reviewer1620732 I totally disagree with your assessment. If you want speed, try using Cognos v11.2 Data Modules & Datasets and then enable the app server caching with the DQM (JDBC) loading of records. You will notice a lightening fast report execution times when using these new tools that come standard with Cognos v11.2.4
Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-04-24T08:56:01Z
Apr 24, 2021
As we get new requirements, we need to see if they fit into Cognos. As of right now, it fits our needs, however, that can change. We've had issues in the past that the solution is still working to resolve. The solution seems to slow down the servers. We're working with IBM to see if this can be resolved.
RPA Architect & RPA Product Owner at Francisco Sosa
Real User
2021-04-20T11:50:59Z
Apr 20, 2021
The online documentation is good, but it could be better. If the documentation could provide more examples, it would be nice. It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users.
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.
The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved. The way they have designed the framework, the framework manager is a critical part. If you have a properly-designed framework manager then whatever stories you generate through the Report Studio or Query Studio will give you better results. However, if the modeling is incorrect then it will kill your free memory and detract from the performance. You have to have complete control of the data model, including the hierarchy and the relationships. There are still a lot of loose ends. The way that a many-to-many relationship can be defined within the framework should be brought into the Report Studio and Query Studio. This would be an improvement. There can be a recursive effect, where you are pulling resources away from the users. This will eat away the resources and cause them a lot of lag time in their reporting.
Director - Metrics & Analytics at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2020-10-29T11:47:25Z
Oct 29, 2020
Overall, there aren't any features that are lacking in the product. The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution. I'd like to see more predictive analytics enhancements in future releases.
Senior Technical Coordinator - IM and BI at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2020-09-16T08:18:37Z
Sep 16, 2020
So far we do not have any issues with the functionality. The cost per year could be improved. They are the leader in the industry and they charge a lot. If you are the end-user and you want to work with the leader you cannot complain about the cost and you have to pay for it. If they were going to make improvements, I would say that they could do more related to big data. I think they were lacking in the initial phases of development in this area. I am not sure if they may have addressed these concerns already because I have not seen their new capabilities in more recent releases. But initially, it was lacking strength in the area of big data.
* Continue to develop the AI assistant so we can add business logic to the metadata. * Ability to insert own graphs in D3 through supported API. * Prompting should be better.
Senior Business Analyst - Reporting at Great-West Life
Real User
2019-01-10T20:50:00Z
Jan 10, 2019
The latest visualization doesn't give much flexibility to the users in terms of what can be changed. For example, there are fixed palettes. The dashboard interface needs tremendous improvement as it's not very fast as compared to Tableau and the likes.
Financial Performance Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2018-11-18T07:31:00Z
Nov 18, 2018
The charts and graphics are very weak. You can find some dashboards, but it is very rigid. It is not as fancy as what you find in another solution, like Microsoft BI.
Developer at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2018-07-08T08:03:00Z
Jul 8, 2018
What we have noticed is that it's lacking a few things which we want, especially on the visualization side of things. We want Cognos to improve, IBM to improve. But functionally, it has been working fine. 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.
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...
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. Some reports have performance issues because of data value. Power BI struggles with datasets exceeding one lakh records, and IBM Cognos handles datasets ten times larger without delays. Generating reports with large datasets in Cognos may take around 30-60 minutes. The final output is delivered in Excel format.
The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved.
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 aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product. The UI of the product needs to be similar to the one offered by Power BI, which has the most market share presently.
There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool.
The solution could have more options for themes in terms of creating reports. Also, its drill-down feature needs improvement. In addition, they should include features for visualization in the next release.
The solution's support needs improvement. Also, they should add better administrative tools.
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. IBM should provide more support for Cognos development. It is quite limited in Pakistan. In the next release, I would like to have a mobile app for Cognos. For instance, Power BI has a mobile app for their solution, and I would like Cognos to do the same.
@SalmanAhmad There already is an IBM Cognos Analytics Mobile app that's been released a long time ago now. It works great. In fact the original Mobile reporting app is still available as well. That makes two mobile apps for Cognos that are available. Error messages are very descriptive if you are the Cognos admin. The ability to see the descriptive error messages is configurable within Cognos administration.
We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required.
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
@Carlos Larrad Salgado Please upgrade to the latest Cognos version to be allowed to use Data Modules and Data Sets so that you are able to use the web enabled data modeling tools as well as the default DQM based data record caching that makes reports and dashboards load with lightening speed.
We started working with Power BI, which we feel will be number one in a couple of years. Even though it still has some improvement, it's a promising tool. All BI tools have similar issues to IBM Cognos. Regarding additional features, it would be good if the solution had conditional formatting similar to Excel, where you can conditionally format based on colour. For example, colour scales like green, yellow, and red make it easier to categorize tables, rows or columns by colour. Unfortunately, this feature does not exist in any BI tool.
@Paulius Bistrickis 'Conditional formatting similar to Excel' is a feature that was added to Cognos several years ago now. It works great. I suggest taking another look at the latest version of Cognos as see for yourself how easy it is to use.
There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data. In the next release, Cognos should include artificial intelligence features.
In IBM Cognos it always takes too long to build enterprise reporting, but I don't think that making another product can be solved. Tableau and PowerBI is a tool, but enterprise reporting is a platform where you put all kinds of information together. 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.
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. In order for IBM Cognos to survive, they need to keep up with dashboarding. I know they're becoming more agile as far as being able to move away from a framework manager and use modules, which is great in order to build the models. They need to be able to compete with Microsoft B because Microsoft BI has beaten them up as far as reporting and dashboarding. They need to improve to better compete with other solutions.
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. That would be nicer if you'd have more charts, the ability to add charts easily. That would be a big improvement. However, the maps have been improved immensely which I am happy with. Once you put a few requests into IBM for changes, it might take six to 12 months. A lot of the requests are responded to and they upgrade or change the feature. When you make a report and you plan it in advance and you want to have smart dates in your planning, this is a bit limited. It is a small issue and you can work around it quite easily but it would be something they can improve. If you want to see the new feature in someone else's product it takes time, and for IBM Cognos it is approximately six to 12 months for it to be implemented. The other cloud competitors will have it.
I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers. It would also be nice to be able to export the dashboard. Some dashboards can be deployed and seen by everyone. But the problem is, I have to go through the Cognos server to define each user. There is no flexibility to do it as a report that can be published as a web report or something like that for many users.
In terms of what could be improved with this product, the speed could be better. The second thing I feel is lacking in Cognos 11 is usability - ease of use. I find Tableau much easier to use. I have not used stories and dashboards extensively, but I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients. The other thing that should be included in Cognos is Landing Pages. It would be good for the Dashboard Landing Page, if they could make it as easily and attractively as Tableau, that's the only other tool I've used, and theirs is completely visually appealing. The client should want to click and open the Cognos portal to get their data. We have our own product and Cognos is integrated with it. If they're able to get similar data, even if it is not as detailed in our product, they don't have any motivation to go to Cognos. They need to polish their product a little bit to make it more user-friendly and customizable - that would help.
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. It is also quite pricey.
Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos.
@reviewer1620732 I totally disagree with your assessment. If you want speed, try using Cognos v11.2 Data Modules & Datasets and then enable the app server caching with the DQM (JDBC) loading of records. You will notice a lightening fast report execution times when using these new tools that come standard with Cognos v11.2.4
As we get new requirements, we need to see if they fit into Cognos. As of right now, it fits our needs, however, that can change. We've had issues in the past that the solution is still working to resolve. The solution seems to slow down the servers. We're working with IBM to see if this can be resolved.
The online documentation is good, but it could be better. If the documentation could provide more examples, it would be nice. It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users.
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.
The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved. The way they have designed the framework, the framework manager is a critical part. If you have a properly-designed framework manager then whatever stories you generate through the Report Studio or Query Studio will give you better results. However, if the modeling is incorrect then it will kill your free memory and detract from the performance. You have to have complete control of the data model, including the hierarchy and the relationships. There are still a lot of loose ends. The way that a many-to-many relationship can be defined within the framework should be brought into the Report Studio and Query Studio. This would be an improvement. There can be a recursive effect, where you are pulling resources away from the users. This will eat away the resources and cause them a lot of lag time in their reporting.
Overall, there aren't any features that are lacking in the product. The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution. I'd like to see more predictive analytics enhancements in future releases.
So far we do not have any issues with the functionality. The cost per year could be improved. They are the leader in the industry and they charge a lot. If you are the end-user and you want to work with the leader you cannot complain about the cost and you have to pay for it. If they were going to make improvements, I would say that they could do more related to big data. I think they were lacking in the initial phases of development in this area. I am not sure if they may have addressed these concerns already because I have not seen their new capabilities in more recent releases. But initially, it was lacking strength in the area of big data.
This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how.
* Continue to develop the AI assistant so we can add business logic to the metadata. * Ability to insert own graphs in D3 through supported API. * Prompting should be better.
The latest visualization doesn't give much flexibility to the users in terms of what can be changed. For example, there are fixed palettes. The dashboard interface needs tremendous improvement as it's not very fast as compared to Tableau and the likes.
The charts and graphics are very weak. You can find some dashboards, but it is very rigid. It is not as fancy as what you find in another solution, like Microsoft BI.
We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics.
What we have noticed is that it's lacking a few things which we want, especially on the visualization side of things. We want Cognos to improve, IBM to improve. But functionally, it has been working fine. 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.