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.
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The feature that is currently most valuable is the import feature where I can link to an Excel data source. I'm not using it with any other data source, such as SQL Server. I directly link it to an Excel sheet, and if I change anything in that Excel sheet, the changed data immediately gets reflected in the virtualization. This is something that is very convenient for me as of now."
"Tableau is easy to use."
"Tableau has improved my organization in a variety of ways, one of its uses being that of data analysis. A feature I have found most valuable is the ease of use and straightforwardness, in addition to the flexibility of Tableau."
"The solution helps users create dashboards and analyze data without relying on IT or product teams."
"This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration."
"It gives us a new dimension to the way that we analyse our data."
"The best part about Tableau is the visualization."
"The ability to deploy is the added ability to centralise the Tableau repository for all Tableau Developers."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"Reports should be downloadable as PDF files."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"We need big servers to perform the operations that we are doing. They should probably relook at its architecture."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"Improvements can be made in template support. The workbook file structure is really hard to version control. If there was some sort of version control support offered particularly for workbooks, that would help big time."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 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.