IBM Cognos vs. SAP Lumira

Technology has changed our perception of data, especially in making business decisions. Today, data analytics is a business essential for small, medium, and large enterprises. It has transformed the decision making processes of every department in all businesses and organizations across all industries.  

In business intelligence and data analytics, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and SAP have established their brands and emerged as industry leaders. Microsoft has Power BI, Google recently acquired Looker, IBM introduces Cognos Analytics, and SAP offers its own analytics and data visualization platform SAP Lumira.

If you’re looking for the right BI software for your business, use our Product Selection Tool. Enter your feature, price, and user requirements, and we’ll send you a list for free. 

IBM Cognos vs. SAP Lumira

IBM Cognos is a self-service BI platform that has artificial intelligence underpinning the entire data analytics process. It integrates with other IBM-developed technologies and applications that make it a complete package, from data discovery to operationalization.  

A visionary in business intelligence, SAP Lumira offers a data visualization and analytics platform that lets users manipulate, visualize, discover insights, and customize data to improve processes and services. It has integrations that make access to data easy and secure and collaboration with teams flexible. 

On-premise and cloud deployments

IBM Cognos connects to multiple data sources. It supports multiple environments, so you can deploy data on-premise, in public and private clouds, or via the IBM Cloud Pak™ for Data. Users can feed data from spreadsheets, CSV files, and on-prem or cloud-based databases. AI discovers and combines data from various sources into a single module that users can customize.

SAP Lumira offers similar capabilities: on-premise and cloud-based data sources and deployments, flexible and mobile access data and dashboards, and data security. With SAP Analytics Hub, everyone in your digital ecosystem can view and customize data for deeper insights and informed business decisions.   

Interactive dashboards

With IBM Cognos, AI helps you create and customize impressive dashboards and reports by dragging and dropping elements onto the canvas. You can share insights in reports and dashboards from the data that AI processed, analyzed, and interpreted for you. People in your team and across your organization can act on the AI-generated insights presented in plain language and easy-to-understand visuals. IBM Cognos helps build a data-driven culture within your company or organization. 

SAP Lumira has an equally impressive interactive dashboard with a simple, intuitive user interface. Users can easily navigate within the panel, and they can view and customize data, visuals, and reports. They can also create stories from the data with preformatted visuals, build applications, and set up interactive dashboards.

Read also: 5 Factors to Weigh During Your ERP Software Comparison

Harnessing the power of AI

AI is at the heart of IBM Cognos. It works wonders with your data — discovery, combining sources, analysis, visualization, reports, and insights. It simplifies and interprets complex data sets in a language people understand and recommends relevant visuals for your report or presentation including bar charts, tables, or maps. In other words, AI does everything for you. All you do is use the information and insights for decision making, business planning, or diving deeper into the data.

SAP Lumira speeds up data analytics with machine learning. Its AI-powered, self-service BI platform processes and analyzes data, predicts data trends, and lets users explore data to create narratives and change the way we look at data. SAP Lumira enables you to create advanced analytics from simple information and reports, helping transform your business.

Collaboration and integration   

IBM Cognos lets users securely access the same data, which enables flexible team collaboration. It integrates other platforms such as Oracle and Microsoft Analytics. 

With SAP Lumira, users can access dashboards, data, and applications. Thus, collaborating with teams from different departments is easy. You can share data faster, making it accessible anytime on any device. And like IBM Cognos, SAP has an open integration with many software providers including VisualBi, Infosys, Galigeo, Alpein, and more.   

Which one fits better with your business? 

It all depends on your business requirements. Both BI options are excellent choices, offering reliable analytics platforms with similar capabilities and range of applicability. Both are AI-powered and scalable at an enterprise level. And both have decades of experience in providing business intelligence solutions and have established a good reputation in the industry. 

If you haven’t decided on a BI software yet, use our Product Selection Tool. Tell us your desired specifications and user requirements, and we’ll send you the list. Save your time in research for the things that matter most to you.