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 initial setup is very straightforward."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"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."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The maps and colors and interface are all fantastic."
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution."
"I consider Tableau to be the best analytical tool available. It's really handy to use and can be used by non-technical people."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"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."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"The solution's support could be better."
"It could have more options for themes."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"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 performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
"If I have to develop any, for example, pie charts, I can develop them just fine. However, if I have to develop a donut chart, that I cannot do it in a simple way. There are tricks that I need to use if I have to design a donut chart. It should be more flexible and provide more visualization options."
"I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product."
"We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"In the next release, I would like to be able to have the option to see more raw data that I'm converting on the dashboard."
"The solution could improve the scalability, it is difficult to make changes."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 131 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.