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.
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"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."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Tableau is very good in the front-end visualization compared to Power BI."
"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce."
"The solution is being delivered to our customer, who appreciates the insights generated from the reports. It is easy for them to drill into the details and use interactive charts."
"The most valuable feature is the user experience."
"The solution makes for very productive and really informative decision making. It can lead the whole business and build a strategy across whole working departments."
"The most valuable part of the solution is the general dashboard features."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"When compared with Power BI, Tableau is much easier."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"Tableau has so many functions, so sometimes it's hard to find the right solution quickly. I have to search multiple menu bars to find the right command."
"When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers."
"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."
"If you wanted to create something without making it an extra column in the data set, you can't just rename it to a more user-friendly short name."
"Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made."
"The integration with other program languages, like Python, needs to be better."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
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.