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.
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."
"The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."
"Tableau is easy to use. That's the first and most important thing. I not only provide consulting but I also train people to use it, so with its ease-of-use it's not as difficult for me to train executives and management staff, because they don't have the IT background, unlike when I'm using Python."
"There is a lot of APIs available, which means that Tableau can be customized to a large extent."
"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."
"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."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"It could have more options for themes."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."
"Reports should be downloadable as PDF files."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
"The solution does have scalability issues."
"Tableau support could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"They need a write-back; that is what is missing. If they get the write back to the database, they will be fully automated, but for the time being, they are not."
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.