We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Tableau based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In this comparison, IBM Cognos comes out on top. Users are happier with the support than Tableau users are, and IBM Cognos users also report an ROI.
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"The product’s performance is better than other tools."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"Tableau has comprehensive, insightful charts, which allow you to build stunning dashboards and enrich your support decision-making."
"This solution has improved insights into quantitative data."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."
"The solution allows for the possibility for end-users to do their own reporting."
"Partner support is very good."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool."
"It should offer better features for customization."
"Lacks customization in some areas."
"There should be stronger data modules for the platform."
"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."
"I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product."
"I have noticed that Tableau is not very compatible with ClickHouse. There's no direct connection to ClickHouse; you have to set up an ODBC connection."
"They need a write-back; that is what is missing. If they get the write back to the database, they will be fully automated, but for the time being, they are not."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 129 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 290 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Tableau is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Oracle Hyperion and Amazon QuickSight, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics and Oracle OBIEE. See our IBM Cognos vs. Tableau report.
See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.