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.
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"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."
"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."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"Tableau is very good in the front-end visualization compared to Power BI."
"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."
"Tableau is easy to use."
"The solution is configurable and flexible. We can customize the dashboards and configure the interface the way that we want. The data can be manipulated and arranged in different ways, such as columns."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Compared to other products, visualization features are really good."
"It is easy to use, and it can handle a large amount of data."
"The solution offers very good reporting."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"What is happening, with so many tools coming up in the market, is that people have to continuously get educated in order to use some of the more advanced features."
"The interface can be improved, in part because there is no indication that something is running or that it's processing."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"There should be more widgets that would help less trained individuals create charts with less difficulty."
"The charts need to be improved. The drawings and the visualization need to be more accurate."
"Lacks customization in some areas."
"I don't have the ability in Tableau to create a tooltip and see the picture of a piece of jewelry or watch that is a best seller."
"The ability to use it on MAC machines. As far as I know, this is not possible."
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.