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Great tool for data cleaning, manipulation and consolidation--and a huge time saver
February 04, 2020

Great tool for data cleaning, manipulation and consolidation--and a huge time saver

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Tableau Prep

We use Prep in our finance department to connect to our live data (Microsoft GP) to consolidate with our budget files to produce an output that is clean and thoroughly categorized and ready to be used consistently across Tableau workbooks, allowing us to more easily produce reports to be published on our server. We also use Prep to pull in several invoices (for example, cellular, shipping, etc) to reformat the output such that it is organized and clean for accounts payable to enter into our system.
  • Data cleaning.
  • Data exploration/validation.
  • Automated flows.
  • Bug fixes with updates.
  • Quicker invoicing.
  • Quicker updates of financials.
Before Prep, we had to do all the data joining and connecting in a Tableau Workbook. Not only did this cause workbooks connected with live data to run frustratingly slowly, a new connection and set-up had to be established every time a new workbook as created, even if you were working with the same data. The extracts produced by Prep allow several workbooks to be working from the same data set-up without any additional work, saving time and stress.
Because Tableau has such a great and active user-base, most real issues that we face with Prep can easily be solved by searching for your issue on Tableau's support site. There is likely someone else out there who has experienced your issue, and so many willing users out there willing to help share their workarounds. I have never had an issue arise to the point that I need urgent support with a live helper, so I cannot speak on that.

Do you think Tableau Prep delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Tableau Prep's feature set?

Yes

Did Tableau Prep live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Tableau Prep go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Tableau Prep again?

Yes

Tableau Prep is a great tool for consolidating budget with actual data. When joining sources, it gives you all the insight and transparency you need when joining data sources and any cleaning/aggregation needs to be done. If financial data comes from multiple sources (ex. a budget platform and an accounting software), Prep allows your organization to build a flow to consolidate the two sources so that everyone can open a workbook and begin from the same point. Once flows are built (especially when connected live), refreshing reports can be done with a click of a button. The capabilities Prep has to manipulate, clean and join data goes far beyond what was possible in Workbook. The extracts that are created as a single output allow working with multiple data sources in a single workbook to be a lot smoother and quicker.