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 basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The initial setup is quick and easy and you don't need special outside assistance to set everything up."
"The most important feature is the tool is very easy to use. This makes it simple to introduce it to CxOs. After a rapid demo, they are usual impressed by the results shown, because it has such a rare simplicity."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"I have found Tableau easy to use and the features are superb."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"The best part about Tableau is the visualization."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."
"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."
"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."
"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 use of this service in the desktop version is annoying due to the constant updates which lead to reinstalling the application. If they could give support with updates on the same downloaded version, it would be great."
"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."
"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
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.