ACG IBM Planning and Analytics Blog

Using watsonx.BI with IBM Cognos Analytics to Streamline Reporting

Written by Paul Nevill | Thu, Nov, 06, 2025 @ 07:22 PM

Watsonx.BI is the new IBM interface to allow users to speak to data. It provides a more intuitive and user friendly way to understand drivers of business performance. It can enhance the experience of existing Cognos Analytics users and help drive adoption and usage of the system.

IBM's Cognos Analytics is designed to integrate seamlessly with watsonx.BI to create a unified business intelligence environment. With watsonx.BI, the trusted metrics, relationships and business rules developed in Cognos can now be imported and extended through prompts and queries in natural language.  

How It Works?  

  1. Import existing models. Existing Framework Manager models (published as .xml or .cpf files) can be imported directly into watsonx.BI’s framework.  
  2. Convert to a semantic layer. During import, watsonx.BI automatically reads key elements (dimensions, hierarchies, joins, filters, calculated fields) and converts them into its native semantic model.  
  3. Enable AI-driven exploration. Once imported, business users can interact with and query the same model in natural language, using watsonx.BI’s conversational interface.  

 

Implementation Notes 

  • Before import: verify your model structure and ensure that relational or DMR layers follow IBM best practices.  
  • After import: validate governance tags, metric definitions and lineage within watsonx.BI. 
  • Start small: run side-by-side comparisons of reports to confirm fidelity, then expand into conversational BI use cases. 

Why It Matters?  

Beyond watsonx.BI’s conversational interface, there are a number of advantages to this implementation:  

Feature Advantage
Directly reuse Framework Manager packages  Minimizes the difficulty of extracting Legacy models developed and trapped in older versions of Cognos.  
Maintain a single source of truth in a unified semantic layer  Reduces data conflicts and inconsistent reporting by eliminating duplicate metric definitions across tools.  
Accelerate adoption by bootstrapping existing assets  Reduces long migration timelines.  
Preserve business logic continuity during innovation  Mitigates loss of institutional knowledge. 

By importing trusted Framework Manager packages into the watsonx.BI interface, users can access data through natural language to make trustworthy, data-driven decisions.  
View full post