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.
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"Tableau is an advanced specialized tool. One of the best features I've seen is the lack of an intermediate semantic layer. I think that's an advantage compared to any other tool like BusinessObjects or Power BI, which are Tableau's biggest competitors."
"We frequently utilize visualizations using maps and different objects, all with rich coloring options. And tooltips are absolutely essential for us. Tooltips, like the pop-up descriptions when you hover over some object or graph. Those tooltips in Tableau are great features."
"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 that we can integrate with our own database, and it will displays the KPIs. This is highly required from the business side."
"It's very user-friendly. It's not like Power BI, Tableau is very user-friendly. Anybody can use Tableau. It's very easy to adopt things. I can visualize the stats."
"It gives us a new dimension to the way that we analyse our data."
"Tableau's visualization features let you present information insights quickly and practically. So it's something which I prefer with Tableau. In terms of reporting, I have to point out the sheer quality and function of the Tableau server, but the first impression is that it's a great visualization tool."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"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."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"The product's features for cloud integration need improvement."
"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."
"Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved."
"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."
"The cost of owning the solutions from Tableau is much higher compared to any other analytical solutions."
"The integration with other program languages, like Python, needs to be better."
"Include forecasting on table calculation fields."
"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."
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.