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 feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"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 product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"I have found Tableau easy to use and the features are superb."
"Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good. It is a very good tool, and it basically brings life into data with good design. We have been creating a lot of interactive visualizations and dashboards. It has a public version. There are public communities from where you can get a lot of examples for practice."
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"The best thing I like about Tableau is that you don't have to go for creating; it is calculated free."
"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
"Provides a very good sound analysis quotient."
"It’s good for quick visualization and being able to quickly consume unstructured data to play around with."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"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."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"Implementation requires a technical background."
"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."
"The solution could use more features in data analytics."
"From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved."
"They need to improve the bar chart position and width."
"Areas for improvement would be visualization and augmented analytics. In the next release, I would like to see automated insights from the data added to the dashboard."
"It should offer better features for customization."
"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult."
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.