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 product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The best part about Tableau is the visualization."
"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
"Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool."
"Technical support has been responsive."
"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"It is a complete solution allowing a lot of integrations, different graphics, multiple operations and analyzes our date and gives us meaning from it."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"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."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"They need to improve the bar chart position and width."
"When we put more information on a single screen, it gets compressed and superimposed in many places while scrolling."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
"The solution could improve the scalability, it is difficult to make changes."
"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."
"There's no mature ETL tool in Tableau, which is quite a negative for them."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 132 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 292 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.