IBM Cognos vs Tableau comparison

IBM and Salesforce are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 3.8% mindshare in BIT, compared to Salesforce’s 20.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 134 IBM Cognos reviews

7,680 Views
4,182 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 294 Tableau reviews

22,137 Views
19,072 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Tableau and IBM Cognos are key players in business intelligence, focusing on data visualization and analytics. Tableau, with its intuitive design, seems to have an edge in ease of use, while IBM Cognos stands out with robust analytics features.

Features: Tableau offers drag-and-drop functionality, a wide range of integrations, and strong visual interaction capabilities. IBM Cognos provides advanced reporting tools, enterprise-level scalability, and sophisticated data management features.

Room for Improvement: Tableau needs stronger data preparation tools and enhanced integration capabilities. It could also improve mobile support for seamless access. IBM Cognos requires modernization of its visualization tools, quicker performance for large datasets, and more intuitive user interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau is straightforward to deploy with consistent support, enhancing the user experience. IBM Cognos, despite a more complex setup, offers comprehensive documentation and reliable support for large-scale implementations.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau often has lower initial setup costs and a quicker time to value due to ease of use. IBM Cognos typically involves higher initial investment, but its extensive features provide justified value over time, representing a long-term investment for enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Tableau Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Tableau

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

7th

Ranking in Reporting

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tableau

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

2nd

Ranking in Reporting

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

294

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 20.6%, up from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Jul 27, 2022

Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department

I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

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ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

Mar 22, 2022

Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time

When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."

"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."

"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."

"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."

"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."

More IBM Cognos pros

"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."

"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"

"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."

"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."

"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."

"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."

"The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."

"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."

"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."

"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."

More IBM Cognos cons

"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."

"The price could be better."

"Requires a lot of user training."

"The solution does have scalability issues."

"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."

"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."

"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."

"Lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"It is pretty expensive."

"It is averagely priced."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."

"The price of this solution could definitely be lower. It's quite expensive."

"ROI is very high, but it requires a data preparation/blending tool."

"It is expensive when you compare it with Power BI. It should be cheaper."

"There is a license required, we pay an annual license which is priced fair."

"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."

"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."

"In Indian Rupees, Tableau costs about 30,000 to 40,000 per year."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

40%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great f...

See all answers

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?

Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Tableau?

Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 20% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Tableau

Compared 2% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

October 2024

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Learn More

IBM

Salesforce

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos vs. Tableau

November 2024

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