Tableau
October 22, 2013
Tableau
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
8.0
Modules Used
- Tableau Server
- Tableau Professional
Overall Satisfaction
- The best feature of Tableau is that it is easy to use. It gives those with an analytical mindset the ability to analyze data without having to navigate technical obstacles such as SQL, coding, etc.
- Quick dashboarding with easy to use drill down & drill across. Setting up an enterprise quality dashboard is pretty simple and there is a lot of functionality that can be incorporated using actions to allow for drill downs, filtering, etc.
- Implementation is a breeze. Tableau is quick to implement and upgrade. Unlike traditional BI Suites that have months-long implementation cycles, Tableau is pretty quick. Additionally, it does not need to sit on top of a data warehouse it can be fed via Access, Excel, or text - which makes it perfect for ad hoc analysis as well
- Ipad reporting seems to be a pain point for all BI sytems, Tableau included. In previous roles, we had more issues with security (internal to our company), but it seems like you have to download large files to the iPad to run the visualizations/dashboards, which can be a challenge for a mobile workforce.
- Blended data sets were always tricky in Tableau. It is pretty simple to get them up and running, but advanced features always seemed to be challenging.
- We had some issues using Essbase/Multi-Dimensional Sources, early on, but the Tableau support team was quick to churn out a solution.
- Limited implementation - we can spend less time implementing and more time doing.
- Ease of upgrades - again, less time doing maintenance and more time producing quality data visualizations for our customers.
Product Usage
15 - They are primarily in the operations space. In previous roles we had most of our consultants licensed to access reports via Tableau server and had a number of licenses (40+) for ad hoc usage in finance, IT, operations, etc.
- Ability to quickly get data and data visualizations out to users. Tableau is a quick implementation and most changes can be completed outside of a typical build cycle.
- Simplicity of use, non IT and non BI users can easily get access and get going quickly. Our company has a number of non-technical people (finance, etc.) doing analysis. Tableau gave them the ability to access and manipulate data without knowing SQL or the data warehouse.
- Tableau provides better visualizations over the leading BI players.
Evaluation and Selection
No - None. Tableau was used as a platform for getting data visualizations out quicker to our constituents as well as for ad hoc analyses. We supplemented our current offering of a custom analytics/reporting portal used Essbase cubes as the foundation.
For full blown BI Suites, Microstrategy, Oracle and others were evaluated. However Tableau is used to supplement those systems in our case.
Implementation
Training
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
It was easy to learn without training. I would recommend watching the free videos online and playing around with your data before engaging more advanced training.
Support
Usability
Reliability
Integration
- Tableau server was integrated with our custom online reporting portal. The level of integration was simplistic, but worked very well.
- All of our data sources (Oracle DW) were integrated into Tableau, so we could easily access the reporting data sources.
- Easy to embed Tableau visualizations into corporate intranet sites using Tableau Server!