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 dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"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 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."
"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."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"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."
"The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team."
"I have found many of the self-service features valuable."
"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"I like the solution's web version, more so than Power BI's web version. It just makes it easier to drag and drop things and to blend data on the backend. It simplifies the process."
"It is easy to use, and it can handle a large amount of data."
"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."
"There are already connectors to almost every single major database and service that you can possibly think of."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"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."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."
"Its integration with Microsoft products such as Teams should be improved."
"The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input."
"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."
"The only issue with the solution is with its prices at a regional level."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"It's already using 32 gigabytes of memory, but the performance is not so good. It's very heavy."
IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting with 11 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 18 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.