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.
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Provides a very good sound analysis quotient."
"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers."
"The best thing I like about Tableau is that you don't have to go for creating; it is calculated free."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."
"The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
"The price could be better."
"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 am a BI consultant. I have worked on different reporting tools, such as Power BI and MicroStrategy. As compared to other tools, Tableau lags behind in handling huge enterprise-level data in terms of robust security and the single integrated metadata concept. When we connect to large or very big databases, then performance-wise, I sometimes found Tableau a little bit slow. It can have the single metadata concept like other tools for the reusability of the objects in multiple reports."
"Users would like to be able to export an Excel file when they see a table or something like that. That's not an out-of-the-box feature for Tableau."
"Bursting email is needed to deliver the reports to many people in their inboxes and this functionality is not provided by Tableau."
"The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."
"Overall, the only major frustration that I have had so far is with Tableau Public. I first used Tableau Public when I was building capacity, and when there was a later release to download and you wanted to upgrade, all your work would have to be manually re-entered."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 129 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.