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 most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"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."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"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."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Tableau is highly scalable. Now that they've introduced Hyper, you can create an extract of more than 5 million rows in minutes and then do your analysis."
"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports."
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"You are able to see and follow trends."
"It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."
"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."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"It could have more options for themes."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable."
"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."
"In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"Implementation requires a technical background."
"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."
"When I've done presentations in the past, I've had issues with uploading the cartography."
"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."
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.