Looker Studio vs Zendesk comparison

Google and Zendesk are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.2, while Zendesk is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.7. Google holds a 2.3% mindshare in RT, compared to Zendesk’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Zendesk users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio and Zendesk based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Zendesk

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

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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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

May 28, 2024

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

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Ahmed Nassar

Technical Consultant at Spectrum Group

Oct 17, 2023

Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup

It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

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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

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."

"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."

"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."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"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."

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

More IBM Cognos pros

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."

More Looker Studio pros

"It is a scalable solution."

"The stability has been very good."

"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."

"The most valuable features of Zendesk Support are collaboration, reports, and a self-service portal. The customer and team can see all the information needed from the portal."

"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."

"One of the most valuable features is the ease of use. If you take the standalone product, it is so easy to use, but if you want a tailor-made Zendesk Guide, you can't do it yourself. However, you can use a template that already exists—they have a lot, and they're very cheap, around 300-400 euros—and use it on all your brands. It's a very easy product to use."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"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."

"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."

"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."

"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."

"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."

"It could have more options for themes."

"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

More IBM Cognos cons

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

More Looker Studio cons

"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests."

"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."

"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."

"The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay."

"Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could be improved as compared to Talkdesk."

"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"It is averagely priced."

"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

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

"It is pretty expensive."

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

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"The price is very competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

22%

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

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 ...

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 version...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicati...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards.

See all answers

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive. One of the reasons for shifting from Zendesk to Talkdesk w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

Sometimes, the calls do not record, and your conversation is cut midway. When you want to do a call calibration, you ...

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

Tableau 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

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 45% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 22% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Looker vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

ServiceNow vs Zendesk

Compared 23% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Zendesk

Compared 13% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Zendesk

Compared 12% of the time

Freshservice vs Zendesk

Compared 9% of the time

BMC Helix ITSM vs Zendesk

Compared 6% of the time

More Zendesk Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

October 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

October 2024

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Zendesk

October 2024

Download Zendesk product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Data Studio

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Learn More

IBM

Google

Zendesk

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.”

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

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.

Genesys, Shueisha

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Zendesk

October 2024

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Zendesk

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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