We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, Microsoft Power BI, and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in Reporting."Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"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."
"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."
"I have found the most valuable feature of this solution is the Natural Language tool."
"It provides good visibility."
"I liked that Microsoft Power BI handles a large amount of data. I can handle hundreds of rows from Postgres in a few minutes. I also like how it detects the relationship between the tables without explicitly saying that. It just detects the relationship automatically. That made it easier to work with the data."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable features are the user interface, which is easy to use and light."
"We've used Microsoft BI for the general use cases around reporting and dashboarding."
"It provides easy integration with Office tools."
"It integrates with all of the Microsoft tools."
"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"It is very easy to implement and to use."
"The dashboards are amazing, with different report types and stunning visuals. Most importantly, Tableau's AI with machine learning automatically predicts features and reports based on historical data. These are the three most valuable features for me."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
"It gives us a new dimension to the way that we analyse our data."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"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."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"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."
"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."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"It could have more options for themes."
"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."
"The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team."
"Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems."
"These licenses are in US dollars. With a long-term license, the client is unaffected when the exchange rate goes up. However, if the exchange rate goes down, you don't get refunded from the excess money you've paid. I guess that is a risk you take in business."
"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"The cost of the solution can get high."
"Needs single sign-on."
"The way you navigate the product, compared to other products in this industry, that could be improved a bit."
"When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster."
"I think Tableau could be improved with cheaper or more flexible licensing, though this is a generic improvement and applies for any product. It would be better if they had more flexible payment and licensing plans so that they could suit small- and mid-sized organizations."
"The user story model is the most deceptive part of Tableau. It is a big marketing option, however, the reality is that it is not enough."
"The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."
"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."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization."
