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.
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"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."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The product has the best features for analytical views and filters."
"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."
"Good data flow and management."
"The use of a storyboard helps the flow of the data visualisation."
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive."
"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."
"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."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
"Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"When I've done presentations in the past, I've had issues with uploading the cartography."
"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"Formatting controls could use some improvement."
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.