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.
"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."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"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."
"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 is very easy to create dashboards, charts, and graphs."
"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."
"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."
"I like the visualization component."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"Since Tableau is on the cloud, we haven't faced any challenges around scalability."
"It's very easy to visualize data with this product. The visualization maps of and frames that we have been able to cross-reference has been excellent."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There's no mature ETL tool in Tableau, which is quite a negative for them."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
"The integration with other program languages, like Python, needs to be better."
"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."
"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."
"The process of embedding the dashboards on external portals and websites could be improved."
"Many things have to be improved in Tableau. Right now, we make the calculation, and then we get that information. It would be better if business users could do that. I would ask the people at Tableau to provide that option to business users to get that information in one click. It would be better if they automated some calculations. There should be more automation in Tableau. However, there are many things in automation mode, but it is very limited at the moment. We need automation for people who do not know much about Tableau. It would also be better if there were good community support like in Alteryx."
"We need big servers to perform the operations that we are doing. They should probably relook at its architecture."
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.