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.
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"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."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"You are able to see and follow trends."
"You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau."
"Tableau is easy to use compared to some other solutions, such as Excel."
"Tableau's initial setup was straightforward."
"It gives us a new dimension to the way that we analyse our data."
"It’s good for quick visualization and being able to quickly consume unstructured data to play around with."
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"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."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"Maybe the price could be a bit cheaper, especially if you're a personal developer that uses Tableau just to explore smaller data sets and you're not a company or something like that."
"If you mainly need a tool for BI reporting, it's not the best option. Tableau needs better abilities to generate simple reports, integrate, create databases, and work with data lakes."
"It will be good if the server, could be more stable, and I would like to have the technical service to be more reliable."
"The product's features for cloud integration need improvement."
"It's not an aesthetic platform at the moment."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"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."
"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."
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.