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.
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on."
"I like the visualization component."
"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."
"It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there."
"Easy for beginners to use"
"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"I have found Tableau easy to use and the features are superb."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"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."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community."
"In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
"I would like Tableau Prep to be integrated with Tableau Desktop. I would also like more customizations for tables."
"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."
"It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."
"Provide additional enhancements in any business process: Operations, Marketing and Sales, Finance, Human Resources, Logistics, etc."
"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."
"The pricing is a bit higher than the competition. They'll need to lower it to stay competitive."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 292 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 QlikView. 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.