Question: Is it wise to use Cognos for "all" my reporting needs?
My company, which develops billing software for our network television clients, is looking to make a change to our existing reporting tools. We currently have around 200 canned printed reports of various sizes and complexity - standard invoices, finance reports, inventory/scheduling reports, etc. It would be understood that all 200 reports would have to be ported to any new reporting tool. Is Cognos the right tool for these types of reports in an "off the shelf" solution for our customers?
We are still learning about Cognos and appreciate all of the analysis/adhoc tools that we would offer to our users. But, is it wise to build and distribute a software solution built around Cognos for the reporting solution for all of my clients?
I would appreciate any thoughts, opinions, and facts that might exist on this topic. And, please keep in mind, I think I understand the answer of "can Cognos" support this idea. I am looking for insight on whether "should Cognos" deliver on this concept.
Cheers,
P.J.
Quote from: ThePeeje on 28 Apr 2016 09:13:40 AM
Question: Is it wise to use Cognos for "all" my reporting needs?
My company, which develops billing software for our network television clients, is looking to make a change to our existing reporting tools. We currently have around 200 canned printed reports of various sizes and complexity - standard invoices, finance reports, inventory/scheduling reports, etc. It would be understood that all 200 reports would have to be ported to any new reporting tool. Is Cognos the right tool for these types of reports in an "off the shelf" solution for our customers?
We are still learning about Cognos and appreciate all of the analysis/adhoc tools that we would offer to our users. But, is it wise to build and distribute a software solution built around Cognos for the reporting solution for all of my clients?
I would appreciate any thoughts, opinions, and facts that might exist on this topic. And, please keep in mind, I think I understand the answer of "can Cognos" support this idea. I am looking for insight on whether "should Cognos" deliver on this concept.
Cheers,
P.J.
Hi,
Lots of businesses are looking to standardise on a single reporting solution to streamline license costs / training requirements / standardisation and re-use of effort etc. Certainly Cognos
can be that tool - it will easily deliver the types of reports you mention here and allow scheduling/bursting/emailing/mobile access and lots of other capabilities you might not even have considered yet. The important question really is whether it's the right tool for your business. It looks like you need an enterprise reporting tool rather than a data discovery tool, so that effectively rules out the dashboarding/data discovery niche players like Qlik/Tableau/Spotfire etc. If your underlying systems are primarily SAP then you'd probably look at Business Objects (plus Cognos). If you're on Oracle then maybe OBIEE (plus Cognos). If your data is in DB2 on a Power 8 then Cognos is a no-brainer. Microsoft reporting tools are very inexpensive, but there's a reason - everything needs to be hand-coded, so building and maintaining the reports is a much more arduous task, and non-technical users would struggle (and probably walk away in disgust) to create their own ad-hoc reports.
In all honesty the answer you're going to get on a Cognos forum is "Yep - go with Cognos". It will do everything you need, and far more besides. :-)
Cheers!
MF.
Disclaimer: Most of my in-depth experience for BI/reporting is with Cognos. I have had exposure to other reporting and querying over the years, and I am currently working a lot with the Microsoft stack (if you can call actually call it that).
MFGF made a great point about whether you want data discovery or reporting. Cognos can help with data discovery, but if you want heavy duty reporting it eliminates a lot of the competition. I think another differentiator is whether or not there is a meta layer. This sounds like overhead, and I suppose it is since you do have to build and manage it, but it is actually a big plus. This allows you to abstract the underlying data sources from user presentation, helping shield users from the inevitable changes to underlying data structure, and with Cognos at least gives you additional options like security filtering regardless whether the underlying source supports it directly or not.
I do not know if you are seriously looking at Microsoft versus the Cognos, Business Objects, OBIEE, etc. Frankly I think MS is quite weak for more complex or larger implementations. SQL Server and SSAS are capable, but beyond the back end they lack an integrated toolset. You really need to like Excel, and be willing to put up with SSRS limitations. It can work, but is not very ... robust. In my opinion.
I think Cognos is a pretty solid choice, especially for reporting. If you want just one tool, it is not inexpensive but is quite capable.
Thanks for the responses.
To fill in some of the blanks, our software is a .NET application using SQL Server on the back-end. We are currently using a toolset called Active Reports (http://activereports.grapecity.com/) as our reporting tool. We're a little behind on the version and we're evaluating whether a jump to a new reporting platform is a better investment over the cost of re-licensing for the newest version.
We've looked at the MS-stack and weren't really impressed for reporting. Our parent company uses Cognos (with Oracle on the backend) with some of their clients, but not as an integrated solution...rather as an aside or add-on functionality. Running Cognos on the side makes more sense to me (a newbie in this field of reporting); where we are looking for an integrated solution. I'm nervous about the process of integrating the Cognos platform into our deliverable software, the new system/hardware requirements for our clients, and supporting Cognos after delivery as part of our solution.
Again, thanks for you input.
P.J.
I've done Cognos as an integrated solution before. It can be done but you will need to bring in an expert in Cognos, with customisation and CMS experience on top of the more common Cognos skills. Also you'll need to make sure you understand licensing thoroughly.