Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month
Yellowfin
Score 8.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Yellowfin is a cloud-based business intelligence and dashboarding platform.
Our reporting group uses Tableau extensively and compared to Yellowfin, Tableau is much easier to use (partially because more time was invested in setting it up properly, but also the design and features).
We ran a full procurement project to select Yellowfin and started with a long list of over 20 BI products. Key reasons for choice were ease of use, visual looks, product integrations and cost (both licence purchase and development of content).
Yellowfin BI has a strong focus on a clear structured and easy to use user interface. Furthermore, the licence model was adequate for a BI system with a lot of end users.
My selection of Yellowfin based on following criteria for the Indian market:
Availability in Linux platform to process high volume of transaction with CAL (concurrent user access license) model to use multiple server with high concurrent users
Features
Tableau Desktop
Yellowfin
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
3% above category average
Yellowfin
7.6
15 Ratings
7% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports
8.1145 Ratings
7.08 Ratings
Customizable dashboards
9.1174 Ratings
8.315 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates
8.1151 Ratings
7.513 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
4% above category average
Yellowfin
8.2
15 Ratings
2% above category average
Drill-down analysis
8.5167 Ratings
8.714 Ratings
Formatting capabilities
8.4170 Ratings
8.715 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8.0126 Ratings
7.011 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration
8.5165 Ratings
8.714 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Yellowfin
7.8
14 Ratings
5% below category average
Publish to Web
8.0155 Ratings
7.714 Ratings
Publish to PDF
8.0154 Ratings
8.314 Ratings
Report Versioning
8.3120 Ratings
7.511 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling
8.6128 Ratings
8.014 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers
8.778 Ratings
7.38 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
We can recommend this software without hesitation, as it has the ability to generate reports and data analysis, as well as process the data automatically, which saves time. It is ideal for small and medium-sized companies that wish to improve their services in the business world
An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Yellowfin’s Storyboard, Timeline and Collaborative tools make it easy to share data and insights across an organisation.
Strong Operational and Executive Dashboards that reflect the business KPIs and can send out prompts to people within the business based on rules.
Yellowfin makes it incredibly easy to create dynamic reports and dashboards which incorporate maps through locational intelligence functionality.
Yellowfin is a single license and all access is via a web browser making it perfect for both on-premise and cloud deployment. Mobile apps are also available.
User roles and source filtering allows Admin/IT to offer different functions/views by user group/role.
Mobile BI applications to support any device ..
API connectors ( YF 7.2 on the way in Mar16 ) for a range of third-party Web-based applications, data sources, Enterprises CRM/ERP apps & open data platform apps, including Salesforce, Google Analytics, Twitter, Youtube , Zoho CRM, XE.com & more coming to make endusers to integrate their applications for better benefits
Yellowfin Integration with Predictive analytical and Big Data processing tools like R, UDF, Spark to build rich applications for end users
The ability to predefine a colour for a specific graph as a selection option dynamically.
The ability to customise the label of a chart, especially with respect to performance related reporting graphs we need an increase in dynamic charting options to meet our more specialised requirements.
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
As mentioned previously, if a newer company is looking for a strong, polished BI tool, Yellowfin would be a great software vendor to consider. Unfortunately, the high cost might be a barrier to these newer companies who dont have any legacy software/agreements such as an EA agreement with Microsoft.
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
They have good support in what they provide. But what they provide is not what is promised. I would stay with them if I can. Be very careful before signing up with them. They are not what they seem in the sales pitches. Be very careful and make sure you test and test before you sign up.
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
Yellow Fin platform is browser agnostic and is accessible from desktops as well as mobile devices. It is very simple and fast, it is integrated with Big Data, clients do not require a great training. It just works. But it’s easier to have things on the cloud, especially if you need to use different computers. Yellow Fin lacks the cloud feature.
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
