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QlikView vs Tableau comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
QlikView
Ranking in Reporting
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (4th)
Tableau
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

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 QlikView is 3.2%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 24.3%, up from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Q&A Highlights

MR
May 08, 2015
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Arjun Meda - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 4, 2024
Useful for data visualization and business intelligence
Many of the features in Qlik Sense need to be available and reintroduced in QlikView. I believe many of the features have been added to QlikView after the layout containers were introduced. QlikView used to be a way more customizable tool than Qlik Sense is in the present time. Improvements are required in the hide and unhide functionality that falls under the layout container feature that has been used in my company in recent times. Hiding off the apps in the app overview tab based on the access was a really good feature that needs to be introduced back in the product since I see that, at the moment, there are multiple groups on the tool, owing to which multiple changes on the QMC part is required to handle the solution. Only the person with access to the dashboard in QlikView could have a link to the dashboard through QlikView's hub or access points. With Qlik Sense, one can see whatever is available in the stream. If a user wants to control everything in the product, then there is no need to make multiple changes in the QMC at the individual app level. The aforementioned area can be considered to improve Qlik Sense.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"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'."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"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."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"Our Qlikview applications help us to get a good idea of our Client Base Performance and assist us in the decision making for Seasonal Specials. On the other hand QlikView helps us to get a grasp on our Suppliers and helps us to negotiate pricing with them."
"The platform's most valuable feature is its associative data model. It allows me to discover hidden data and gain insights that are not immediately visible."
"The language support is very good."
"It has user-friendly data visualization features, supporting our decision-making process with its business intelligence capabilities"
"You can switch views easily."
"The most useful feature of QlikView for me is the QVD concept."
"It is a stable product."
"It enables us to configure various elements, such as dashboard settings, including factors like color schemes and other customization parameters."
"The solution has a lot of customization when comparing to Microsoft BI."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"The most valuable feature is the 3D charting."
"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."
"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."
"I believe one of the most valuable features of the solution is trend analysis."
"Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports."
"You are able to see and follow trends."
 

Cons

"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."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"QlikView certainly lacks in its ability to share visualizations or create visualizations easily."
"The user interface is old."
"Error handling."
"There is no automation or drag and drop functionality."
"The product's visual capabilities could be improved. The graphs and visualizations are not as aesthetic or easy to create."
"I really wish the application was easier to use in the development phase."
"There is a challenge on the frontend when it comes to browsing data through QlikView, as it isn't entirely compatible with other platforms we use."
"There's room for improvement in the area of management's handling of concerns."
"When there are millions of records, scaling up is quite difficult."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."
"There's no mature ETL tool in Tableau, which is quite a negative for them."
"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"They need to improve the icons and the filters, because they look too old, resembling Excel from 1997."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"It's reasonably priced and falls on the more affordable side."
"QlikView is a reasonably priced solution."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one being low price and ten being high price, I rate pricing a four."
"It is expensive for small companies."
"Pricing is a bit too high and I think licenses should be unlimited."
"QlikView pricing and licensing is on the high side for a small sized company, but it's competitive among its peers."
"It is quite expensive, rating at around nine out of ten on a cost scale."
"The pricing is too high compared to the other solutions on the market."
"The company chose to purchase a creator license for me, which was $70. With that license, you can also be an administrator. We also have 20-25 extra licenses and they cost around $20-$35 each. Those are for normal users who will be viewing the dashboards. Those are monthly charges."
"The solution's licensing is based on user-basis. It depends on the business ROI it offers. It's not on the higher side or too cheap; it falls in the medium-cost range. The price is determined by user usage, so the cost will also increase as the number of users increases."
"In Indian Rupees, Tableau costs about 30,000 to 40,000 per year."
"I downloaded the solution online for free."
"The license is very expensive."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
"It's an annual fee with everything included but it's quite expensive."
"It is more expensive than other solutions."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Answers from the Community

MR
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015
If you want real world proof. Have a bake off or POC with a real world set of criteria: 4 or more data sources, 100M or more records and mobile, etc. You'll be glad that you did!
2 out of 26 answers
Mar 5, 2015
Each of these DV providers have a strong offering but subltle differentiators: Tableau is your general purpose BI tool-great visuals and user friendly UI. Spotfire is geared more towards the data scientist and incorporates more statistical analysis functions. Qlik excels at reporting and their data association model. Excuse the shameless self-promotion but If you are interested in unique capabilities like connecting to real time streaming data sources and/or semi/un structured data for more sophisticated analysis, I’d recommend also taking a look at Datawatch.
Mar 5, 2015
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 ...
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.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
What do you like most about QlikView?
If you correctly use the product for your use cases, it provides value for money.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for QlikView?
QlikView is probably on the pricier side than other BI tools. It's more expensive than the overall implementation of ...
What needs improvement with QlikView?
Creating an out-of-the-box solution for modeling capabilities might be beneficial.
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 be...
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....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

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.
Canon, Gatorade, Amcor, Panasonic, Fila, Cambridge University Hospitals, Global Retail Bank, North Yorkshire Police department, Lanoo Group Publishers, and AonGroep Nederland.
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about QlikView vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,572 professionals have used our research since 2012.