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.
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"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 solution's initial setup process is easy."
"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 correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."
"The solution helps users create dashboards and analyze data without relying on IT or product teams."
"When compared with Power BI, Tableau is much easier."
"The solution has great features which nobody can beat, you can do a lot of customizations, such as use different dimensions and colorize them. Additionally, you can use the numeric values for the customization, which is an exceptional feature."
"Tableau's initial setup was straightforward."
"The solution is configurable and flexible. We can customize the dashboards and configure the interface the way that we want. The data can be manipulated and arranged in different ways, such as columns."
"It's easy to use."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"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."
"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."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"I am not a frequent user of this solution, so I am not sure what they've been doing recently. The last time when I used it, I had to use other tools with it for data extraction and cleansing. Its price should also be improved. It is more expensive than Power BI. In terms of training, there is generally better online training for Power BI, but I am not sure of that. It would be helpful to know from where to access its training."
"Its integration with Microsoft products such as Teams should be improved."
"Lacks customization in some areas."
"The use of this service in the desktop version is annoying due to the constant updates which lead to reinstalling the application. If they could give support with updates on the same downloaded version, it would be great."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
"Lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python."
"The solution could use more features in data analytics."
"It needs more ETL capabilities, to be able to address the end-to-end BI need."
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.