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.
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"It is a stable product."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"Tableau is easy to use. That's the first and most important thing. I not only provide consulting but I also train people to use it, so with its ease-of-use it's not as difficult for me to train executives and management staff, because they don't have the IT background, unlike when I'm using Python."
"The solution makes for very productive and really informative decision making. It can lead the whole business and build a strategy across whole working departments."
"Compared to other products, visualization features are really good."
"Since Tableau is on the cloud, we haven't faced any challenges around scalability."
"The most valuable feature is the aggregation function."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"The most important feature is the tool is very easy to use. This makes it simple to introduce it to CxOs. After a rapid demo, they are usual impressed by the results shown, because it has such a rare simplicity."
"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."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"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."
"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."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"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."
"Implementation requires a technical background."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"It is not so great when it comes to data exchange/integration, data mining, etc."
"I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product."
"I think Tableau could be improved with cheaper or more flexible licensing, though this is a generic improvement and applies for any product. It would be better if they had more flexible payment and licensing plans so that they could suit small- and mid-sized organizations."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"The cost of owning the solutions from Tableau is much higher compared to any other analytical solutions."
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.