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.
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"It is a stable product."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"It is a stable solution."
"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."
"The maps and colors and interface are all fantastic."
"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 has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"It’s good for quick visualization and being able to quickly consume unstructured data to play around with."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"The best thing I like about Tableau is that you don't have to go for creating; it is calculated free."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"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."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The development part should be better. We are putting a lot of effort in during development, so if we face any struggles, we have to find workaround solutions on the internet."
"Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."
"When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster."
"In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
"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."
"The tool's OpenAI integration was announced last year. However, it is late. Tableau is a good solution for end customers. However, there are some concerns regarding the stability and performance of its server architecture, including SaaS services. The server side appears unstable, and performance issues are noticeable, often accompanied by unclear error messages."
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.