--- title: "IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of IBM Cognos Analytics. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if IBM Cognos Analytics is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/ibm-cognos-analytics-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Reporting Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/reporting-tools/) / [IBM Cognos Analytics](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/ibm-cognos-analytics-profile/) / IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/ibm-cognos-analytics-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/ibm-cognos-analytics-profile/alternatives/) # IBM Cognos Analytics User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.2/5 - Total reviews: 138 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.8/5 - Customer support: 3.8/5 - Value for money: 3.9/5 - Functionality: 4.2/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 54 reviews (39%) - 4 stars: 62 reviews (45%) - 3 stars: 17 reviews (12%) - 2 stars: 2 reviews (1%) - 1 star: 3 reviews (2%) ### Most mentioned pros - IBM Cognos Analytics is an accurate data management and analytics platform. - IBM Cognos Analytics has been powerful, secure and accurate to use. - Additionally, the software offered robust collaboration and sharing features, enabling me to collaborate with team members and stakeholders efficiently. ### Most mentioned cons - Drill down in reports seems to take much time which make this software slow sometime. - You obviously require proper training, and anyone who aren't familiar with SQL will struggle to put it up. - Cognos, like most, hasn’t been able to put together the full package. ## IBM Cognos Analytics customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 138 (page 1). ### Great Analytics Tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Higher Education - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I would recommend using Cognos Analytics for data analysis. My whole company uses it from daily reporting to more advanced analyses. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros IBM Cognos Analytics is a great data analytics tool. It can handle a lot of data and makes it easy for users to create reports to view their data. I like that it allows for a variety of output formats. #### Cons Cognos Analytics can be hard to learn how to use. You have to really understand your data first so that you can figure out how to make the tool do what you need it to do. --- ### Cognos- All in one tool for data analytics - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros decreases support because of complete report inclusion and a zero-impression climate. abbreviates detailing time because of consistent reconciliation and versatile composing. Further developed independent direction reports and dashboards present information in handily gotten designs. #### Cons Investment in Cognos R&D by IBM is declining. Won't work smoothly with large data sets having many parameters. Cross-browser compatibility is often problematic. --- ### IBM Cognos 11 Analytics, the easy and reliable BI Tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Luigi S. - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Reliability, easy of use, complete set of functions, integration with other web tools, security and maintenance #### Cons The price is not for small companies, the implementation of the whole functions always requires an expert --- ### Business Intellegnce Software with Standard Reporting And Self Service BI - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Government Administration - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall it is a great product to use #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Cognos Analytics is a flexible software for Standard Business Intelligence Reporting as well as for Self Service Data Visualization capability. You have the option to connect to a variety of the Data Sources as well as Multi-Dimensional Cubes. The new invention of Cognos Analytics software provides a greater flexibility for enterprise deployments and upgrades. It has the new feature of NLP (natural language processing) for predictive analytics by IBM Watson. #### Cons Too many modelling tools (Cognos FrameWork Manager, Dynamic Cube Designer, Cognos Transformer) for modelling the content. Too many studios (Report Studio, Query Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio) for report development. Maintainence and cost is huge --- ### Effective Tool for Customer Management - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Electrical/ Electronic Manufacturing - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: November 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Great tool for Sales & Marketing Function #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros - Provides great Dashboards- Provides effective Reports- Helps in Data Visualization #### Cons - Requires training to understand it effectively- Not very intuitive --- ### One Of The Best Self-service BI Software - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered one of the best complete solution for delivering insights from data at enterprise level #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros the powerful framework manager, allow us to implement complicated logic into model and deliver a package to end user, business user can do ad-hoc report easily. #### Cons steep learning curve for beginners. not mention people who doesn't have BI experience, Had a few new team members from tableau background. the FM package complexity is much more than they have done in the tableau data source. --- ### A great solution for your financial planning - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Gerson M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used other for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Take your time and implement it right and the rewards will be very good. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It has integration with with other IBM products like business intelligence. The excel functionality is great for finances. The product to meet our needs perfectly for all our needs. #### Cons Creating reports is overwhelming at the beginning but if you dedicate time and resources there will be the face of your deployment. --- ### Cognos is sophisticated BI application for large enterprises - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Leon P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used unspecified for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2015 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Cognos is one of 2 major Business Intelligence tools on the market. If it is implemented correctly, it could provide complete web-based business solution based on the data analysis. It is a platform which allowing to deliver mission critical analytics to the business including but not limited to Enterprise reporting, Planning & Forecast, OLAP cubes technology, etc. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 #### Pros - The application designed to enable business users with limited technical knowledge to extract data, analyze it and make business decision based on the analysis; - It could be used within relational or multidimensional data sources; - It is included a mobile version allowing users to access a complete version of Cognos from mobile devices; #### Cons - very sensitive in implementation; - requiring significant resources in order to maintain and support; - too expensive for mid-size companies; --- ### IBM Cognos Analytics Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: VIKAS S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Services - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 12 months - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered It is AI driven, improves the business outcomes.It enhances decision making.Overall it improves business agility. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The best thing is "Quality reports can be run at any time and by any representative with a substantial log-in " at IBM Cognos Analytics.The AI enabled exploration and dashboard capabilities are easy to use and exceed expectations #### Cons It is not simple to use. User has to get the formal training to utilise it to maximum extent. Report pulling is not that much fast. It take quite some time to load and display. --- ### Cognos Developer - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Hilary S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Cognos is a great tool for reporting. The visuals are not awesome but there is a lot of customization you can do for reporting. #### Cons It can be difficult to learn at first. It is not as easy to pick up as Tabeau. Googling for solutions can be tough. --- ### Enterprise Reporting and Analytics Tool - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It has been a solid tool for our company for last so many years. IT meets out current needs in terms of performance and capabilities. However, as we start exploring more cutting edge technologies like cloud, SAAS and Advanced Analytics, we see the tool is not in the top 3. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Well established took with huge user base and support. Being IBMs main BI tool, it comes with a lot of Support and Knowledge Base. There are tons of supporting products for Advanced Analytics, Visualization and AI/ML which makes the tool both powerful and versatile. It fits into both departmental BI as well as for Enterprise wide reporting. #### Cons IBM should increase the support the provide for their products. It is difficult to get quick help from IBM.Self service features of the tool and not as easy as other contemporary tools like Tableau and Qlikview. IBM has catching up to do in this area. Also cloud based SAAS is not yet advanced for COGNOS. #### Reasons for choosing IBM Cognos Analytics IBM support. We have been an IBM shop since early 200s and continued with that --- ### Great capabilities, but really difficult to use practically. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Elaine E. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Cognos Analytics has really great capabilities. There is so much that you can do with the framework if you know what you're doing. Good security features. Good for enterprise level reporting. #### Cons If you're hoping this will replace a dedicated reporting team or IT team, it will not. The ease of use depends on several factors and be SURE that you have an experienced team built the framework. No support whatsoever from Cognos themselves for end users, and they take a long time to get back to us on issues. The new visualizations can be clunky, especially maps. They are unusable for detailed maps. Scheduling features slow down the system considerably. --- ### Cognos review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Edward H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, it was great once it was up and running #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It generated reports from data warehouse very well #### Cons The cubes were not easy to define at first --- ### COGNOS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: CHANDAR R. - Industry: Human Resources - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: November 2016 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Cognos makes it easy to design reports that match the look-and-feel required by the client. Report rendering time is also very fast. Browser support can be touchy and Dynamic Cubes are very hardware intensive.Cognos has strong out of the box capabilities with a wide array of add-ons, and good interoperability with other IBM analytics and data suites #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Compatibility mode queries allow for custom ODBC and JDBC connection to made, so even if there is no native compatibility other databases can still be used as a source if needed. Dynamic Cubes are capable of querying against millions of rows in seconds when properly set up with sufficient hardware resources. Standard Reports are snappy, returning data and rendering quickly, as long as the pagination is kept to reasonable quantities. #### Cons Due to Active Reports packaging all of the data in the file and prerendering charts, file size can get quite large (easily several megabytes) and the initial load time can be quite long when opening it. It is best used for basic overviews and other times when some "flash" is needed, but not a large amount of data. Configuring the interoperability with TM1 and SPSS is a little more on the technical side than most other tasks. You could call the development process "Front heavy" meaning most of the development will be modeling. This means that it will take longer to end up with visualized data than other tools. --- ### This report writer is linked to our accounting software. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Michelle W. - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros You can write your own reports and pull out the data you need from our accounting software. You have the ability to create advanced reports and format in multiple ways. #### Cons Sometimes the fields that are in Cognos do not match exactly or have different names from the actual software so it is a guess at what field you are pulling. The report studio portion is advanced report writing and in order to create these reports it is recommended to have additional training in order to make reports be beneficial for your company. --- ### Love it! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Health, Wellness and Fitness - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I love cognos. I can run any report, any time... past/present/future. So many options. Love the ability to create shortcuts to the reports I use on a daily basis as well. Quick & easy to use. #### Cons The only thing I don't like is the reports don't always give a good description before running them. --- ### Cognos pulls meaning out of any data - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Matt F. - Industry: Construction - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It gives big data meaning and helps us answer business question so we can make smart decisions and provide relevant and cleanly formatted data to our customers. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is straight-forward and feature-rich. We have combined dozens and dozens of queries into a single report without any issue before, so it has that advantage over most of the alternative solutions. #### Cons The version of Cognos we are running currently makes it difficult to pinpoint the bottle-neck of certain reports. --- ### Powerful tool for the good analysis of your data. can get quick information for quick decisions - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Felix F. - Industry: Primary/ Secondary Education - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Cognos is a very effective BI tool. you can create customized reports without having a very technical background ... It can be easily integrated with several data sources in a simple and consistent way and I find the interface to extract data on demand or send scheduled reports (Report Planner) excellent. good user experience with the drag and drop. . . versatility of the Live API to postgres, sql server and oracle databases. We use Cognos to deliver operational reports to all production units and great and very well presented reports and productivity indicators to senior managers #### Cons It is a very powerful tool but not as easy to understand quickly as other tools on the market for the same price .. The learning curve is broad. The initial configuration is not easy, the dashboard function does not have many options. Installation can also be a complicated issue and may require vendor support --- ### Used by team members across the world and in different markets worldwide - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros standard reports are great to pull from the system and tbhe user interface allows us to easily create new reports #### Cons file size get pretty large due to the data and the other info it needs to pull and regenerate charts. --- ### Best review - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Terrill J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Mechanical or Industrial Engineering - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: January 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. My overall experience with the software was very good and productive #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros The software was very productive and have very professional support . It was very useful and fast #### Cons The cons was pricing and overall learning curve of the software . But once the software was up and running it really was productive --- ### A self-service analytics platform that is able to fulfill almost all BI needs - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Jian R. - Industry: Civic & Social Organization - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Handles all BI products very well, including but not limited to self-served reporting structure, reports, cubes, dashboards, and scorecards. Project deployment and duplication are easy and quick. #### Cons User administration could be very time-consuming and we use a third-party tool (which is not free of charge). Product upgrade is not simple enough and has to be planned and conducted with extra caution. --- ### Powerful software; steeper learning cure - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Biotechnology - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: December 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We use this to analyze sales for our company by region, part, etc. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Once this software is set up and you know how to use it, it is great! There is so much data that can be sorted and presented with Cognos and you can really customize how you are viewing the data. #### Cons We have a team that set up reports for us and without them, I don't think this would be useful at all. You also need to know what you are doing for this to work. There are not helpful troubleshooting messages to help you correct errors, so it can get really frustrating if you get stuck and don't have a team to support you. --- ### Worst of all modern BI tools I've worked with - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: jakob A. - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: June 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Cognos is years behind the modern BI tools like Qlikview/Sense, Power BI and Tableau. I will hopefully never again have to work with Cognos products in the future. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Customizeable, if you know how to code. Probably could be a good tool if you have a team of trained Cognos experts that deliver all the reports and dashboards in very old-school Enterprise way. #### Cons Very very bad UI, unintuitive, messy and buggy. Very fiddly to get things right when creating reports. --- ### Cognos Sucks! - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Bret W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Electrical/ Electronic Manufacturing - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2017 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Cognos has some good time based accounting features that allow you to go back and look at how much was booked and when. #### Cons Getting the Cognos reports to match up. Some reports update once a week others are daily. This makes it difficult to see how much is actually going to be spent. Having to pull multiple reports to get the information that is needed wastes time. --- ### Expensive but Good - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Deb T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Primary/ Secondary Education - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros This product will do just about anything you want it to do. It does take more of a skilled employee in order to create things. However, anyone can run things once they are created. #### Cons This product is pricey, especially for a mid range company. It takes a lot of training and setup to get the product going as one would like. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/ibm-cognos-analytics-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- IBM Cognos Analytics Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice