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.
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"The best thing I like about Tableau is that you don't have to go for creating; it is calculated free."
"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"It's the ease of use. It is also a self-service tool so it decreases the burden on having centralized IT-type teams or developers."
"One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."
"The solution allows for the possibility for end-users to do their own reporting."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"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."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"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."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."
"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."
"It needs more ETL capabilities, to be able to address the end-to-end BI need."
"I would like to have the product be more flexible in terms of creating online shared dashboards."
"Whenever it comes to specialized visualization, Tableau is an absolute failure."
"The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input."
"Include forecasting on table calculation fields."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 131 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.