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 basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"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 most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"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."
"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce."
"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."
"I believe one of the most valuable features of the solution is trend analysis."
"Show Me is a feature to help with knowing which chart is an appropriate one for the selected variables, and it makes helps in creating appropriate visuals."
"The solution has a lot of customization when comparing to Microsoft BI."
"Tableau's most valuable feature is its ability to connect with various data sources and display real-time data on three different dashboards."
"I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"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."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"When we put more information on a single screen, it gets compressed and superimposed in many places while scrolling."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"The only issue with the solution is with its prices at a regional level."
"When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster."
"It will be good if the server, could be more stable, and I would like to have the technical service to be more reliable."
"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."
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.