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's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"Good data flow and management."
"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."
"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."
"It's easy to use."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
"It's intuitive and highly mature"
"The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness."
"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."
"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."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"The process of embedding the dashboards on external portals and websites could be improved."
"It is not so great when it comes to data exchange/integration, data mining, etc."
"There should be more GIS features, such as location analysis, which is quite limited. There are very few location-based functionalities."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"Licensing and pricing options could be made better so that more users would be able to use it."
"They need to improve the icons and the filters, because they look too old, resembling Excel from 1997."
"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."
"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 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.