Business Objects VS Cognos

[#1]

Hello,

My company has finally come to the inevitable crossroads of a Business Objects VS Cognos decision.

It is almost certain that SAP BW 7 will remain as the backend datawarehouse for our expanding ECC system, so this is strictly a decision about the professional grade front end tools and their associated capabilities, cost/benefit, maintanence/effort, long term viability, pros/cons etc.

I know that many companies have been down this road already and I am curious what information people are willing to share regarding this analysis, decision, results, resources for more information, and things to consider. I look forward to the discussion.

Our company is growing and will be standardizing on SAP as aquisitions continue. Some of our acquired/yet to be integrated companies have newly implemented Cognos.

I don't expect completely impartial answers considering this forum is SAP/Business Objects, but I am sure i can obtain great information none the less!

Thanks!

Nick

[Former Member]

Hi Guys,

Can we import SAP BusinessObjects Reports into Cognos? We already have many reports in BO and now we want same reports in Cognos. So instead to building reports from scratch in Cognos is their any possibility to use the already existing BO reports in Cognos?

Thanks and best regards.

Fahad

[Former Member]

Hi Nick,

You might be interested in this link: http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj/viewtopic.php?t=19625

Non-SAP BO board - discussion on comparing BO with other products, including Cognos.

Regards, Kai

[former_member142702]

Hi Nick,

one of the strengths of BOBJ compared to Cognos is the integration in a SAP BW environment. As far as I know in order to get the most of the Cognos performance you need to extract the data out of your SAP BW system in into the Cognos data layer (cubes). But this means that you cannot leverage the SAP BW security automatically into your report and that you do have a redundancy regarding data storage.

Initially BOBJ utilized a common interface to SAP BW (MDX) meant for 3rd party tools (as Cognos). This interface has been optimized significantly for the BOBJ products during the last year. Starting with XCelsius SP3 the integration has become more tight offering you access over a more efficient interface (BICS). And I assume that in the near future this interface will be available for all other BOBJ products.

Regards,

Stratos

[Former Member]

Hi Nick,

This is from my perspective in Australia.

In the last three years I have seen two implementations of Cognos and three of Business Objects Planning.

The two Cognos and one of the BOPs were government and the other two BOPS were corporate.

Both Cognos implements went well and both departments reporting processes were stable, informative, and very user-friendly, but only cover reporting and do not cover budgeting and planning.

I have not seen an implementation of BOP that was both stable and complete; one of them is stable but incomplete, the other two are not stable. To be fair; the IT departments responsible for those two unstable installs leave a lot to be desired and in the main I do not blame the product for most of the issues at either. All of these BOP implementations were done by gold partners.

I believe that BOP can be both stable and complete and that when done properly it can be very powerful. Maybe there just aren't the official partners in Australia with the level of expertise for that.Your country may be better serviced.

I also believe that it can be a very good tool in reporting actuals and actuals to budget, and for both forecasting and budgeting, and for working with both financial data and statistical data. Maybe Cognos can too, I have only seen it used for reporting, not for planning so I can't comment.

Further to all of this though a number of my clients that cureently use BOP or were recently implementing similar systems have expressed concern at some of the statements made by SAP about not supporting the product for much longer. Some clients believe that BOP is just being renamed BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) whilst some clients think BPC is a new product and the transition would be substantial enough that other options are being considered. I can't find anything on the SAP site to clarify this.

Generally I have found most clients here have stopped implementing Cognos since it was bought by IBM and are now considering Oracle/Hyperion. Definitely I am noticing that clients here are putting Oracle and Hyperion in one basket and SAP and BOP in another basket and thinking of them as 'going together'. I know both companies sell them as stand-alones, but the clients are not thinking of them that way anymore.

I have found working with BOP enjoyable but frustrating.

I hope this helps,

Kai

[Former Member]

Hi Nick,

If you read the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant article, it will give you some insight...

http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/sas/vol7/article1/article1.html

Please note that on the "cautions" section for SAP, the primary issue is the tech support. But if you read the "cautions" section on IBM Cognos, the issues are more alarming.

About four and a half years ago, I was involved in our company's BI tool search. We evaluated several BI tools, including BOBJ and Cognos, which were the 2 finalists. At the end, we decided on BusinessObjects over Cognos. Our decision was based on several metrics. But I would like to share with you on one....

We asked both BOBJ and Cognos to provide customer references that we can visit (not just talk over the phone or over email). Naturally, common sense will tell us that the vendors should give us the best customers they can find, right? You know what, the Cognos customer cautioned us during our visit that Cognos tool can be a royal pain to manage and maintain. Coming from a customer that was referred by Cognos itself speaks volume!!!!!

But of course, don't take my word for it, don't take Gartner's word for it, and don't take any other people's word for it. Ask both vendors to come to you and do a POC. And draw your own conclusion, based on your own requirements.

Hope this helps.