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 dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"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."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"It provides supporting data for critical policy and operational changes"
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."
"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."
"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"I like the visualization component."
"I like Tableau's heat maps and the storyboard. You can create data stories and tons of visuals with it, and it goes together really well. Tableau lets you manipulate the data in various ways."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"It could have more options for themes."
"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."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"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."
"Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made."
"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."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"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."
"We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 291 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 QlikView. 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.