We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, SAP Crystal Reports, and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in Reporting."Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"SAP Crystal Reports offers a plethora of features, many of which were available much earlier than in the Crystal Reports we previously used. We extensively use its capabilities for generating general reports, working with Kaspersky data, and even incorporating images into our reports. The range of functions available in SAP Crystal Reports is diverse, and we leverage them across various systems for our needs."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team."
"The most valuable feature is the aggregation function."
"You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau."
"Scheduled extract and the multiple connectors are fantastic!"
"The solution is being delivered to our customer, who appreciates the insights generated from the reports. It is easy for them to drill into the details and use interactive charts."
"Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on."
"It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as 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."
"It could have more options for themes."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."
"Tableau's automatic insight could be improved. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data, but I think they need more. Customers need more insight automatically from data—they don't want to discover them, they want to get the forecast automatically. The data preparation should also be improved because it's not easy. Tableau tries to focus on the business side, but the backend side has not improved much. They also have an ETS solution, but it's limited."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product."
"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."
"I have used Power BI as well as Tableau. There are a couple of interesting features that I like in Power BI, but they are not present in Tableau. For example, in Power BI, if I am looking at country-wise population, I can type and ask for the country that has the maximum population, and it will automatically give an answer and address that query. This kind of feature is not there in Tableau. Similarly, in Power BI, for integrating with the latest ML algorithms, we have decision trees and primarily multiple machine learning algorithms. The decision tree essentially visualizes the patterns in the data. We don't have such a feature in Tableau. If Tableau can integrate with the machine learning algorithms and help us to do visualizations, it would be a wonderful combination. Most of the people are going for Tableau primarily for visualization purposes. However, in the data science industry, users want to do model building as well as tell a story. As of now, Tableau is fulfilling the requirements for visualization purposes. If they can bring it up to a level where I can use it for machine learning purposes as well as for visualization, it would be very helpful. Many people who want to do data science don't want to write a code. Tableau is anyway a drag and drop tool, and if they can provide those options as well, it will be a powerful combination."
"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."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."