Tableau Reviews

For visual data analysis, discovery analysis and usability, it is the best product on the market.

For data cleaning, it can be very helpful in showing you where there are holes or mistakes in your data.

In our Project Management office, it has provided us better insight into the breadth of our work and made it much easier to see which projects are at risk. Once we retire our old reporting system (Word docs/PowerPoint), we will be saving about 20 people four hours per week. You can do the math on the annual impact.

Getting buy-in from all of the department leaders has been the toughest part. They are tentative about letting go of the old systems, we have to really prove that our Tableau dashboards fully meet their needs.

This is tough to answer. The company puts more $$ into R&D than any other in the industry and I don't even use all of its current abilities. They put out releases regularly, so at this point this is more about keeping up with the changes and understanding how they are useful to us.

The tool was not created for data structuring, but does provide some functionality.

I have been using it for about 15 months, off and on, at times more than others. I use it on any piece of analysis I can.

We were unable to use LDAP or Active Directory, so all server users have to be created locally. Stability and scalability are not issues; we are just trying to grow adoption. Of course, we have experienced some growing pains but that is normal with any new technology.

Customer support always gets back to me within 24 hours. However, they are not always able to help me resolve my issue.

We have the EBI tool, Oracle OBIEE. Although I never used it personally, our department has experience with several of the top competitors of this product. Despite owning licenses to those tools and using them, the decision was made that Tableau offers self-serve BI better than any of the others. (I was not a part of this decision process, but was moved over from another team to manage the product once the decision was made.)

Initial setup was straightforward. One thing Tableau excels at is documentation that is user friendly. We did bring in a consultant to help this go smoothly but honestly I think he did more harm than good. Could have just followed the playbook.

Implementation was done by a vendor team and in-house. Our middleware team did the heavy lifting and we brought in a vendor team with experience to help us.

ROI has yet to be determined as the implementation is less than a year old. Adoption has been slower than expected but gaining momentum lately. I attribute the slower adoption to the fact that using Tableau is a shift in thinking for those wanting to use it and therefore involves some growing pains that some are hesitant to embrace. However, those that have embraced it are beginning to reap the benefits.

The pricing is a little steep. However, if used correctly, the improvements in productivity will more than outweigh the cost.

It does require you to think about your data in a slightly different way as this is totally different than Excel, so take a little extra time when starting out.

Tableau helps people see and understand their data, answering valuable business questions and giving insight into mountains of information collected over time.

Our clients from different industries use Tableau for data visualization purposes. 

Tableau's most valuable feature is its ability to connect with various data sources and display real-time data on three different dashboards. It stands out in handling and utilizing data compared to other products like Oracle BI.

There should be stronger data modules for the platform.

We have been using Tableau for the past one and a half years.

The platform is relatively stable. I rate its stability a nine out of ten.

The platform is highly scalable. I have five clients, and the total number of users across all clients is around 300 to 400. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The platform's technical support services require improvement. There should be enough support during the deployment.

Neutral

The platform is deployed on the cloud and on-premises. Its initial setup is straightforward. It took about an hour or two to deploy. I rate the setup process as a nine out of ten.

The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives like Power BI. By adjusting the pricing, it can appeal to a broader range of markets and attract more customers.

I rate the platform an eight out of ten.

We can do many things with Tableau. I only use it for simple cases, but you can do many things with the device.

Tableau makes changes frequently. Any feature I am looking for usually is part of the next upgrade within a few months. They have a very good dynamic evolution.

The user story model is the most deceptive part of Tableau. It is a big marketing option, however, the reality is that it is not enough.

I have been using Tableau for two years.

Tableau is a good product. 

The advice I would give to someone looking to use Tableau would be to get prepared.

I use Tableau for BI and business subject, I would rate it a 9 out of 10.

Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates.

Areas for improvement would be visualization and augmented analytics. In the next release, I would like to see automated insights from the data added to the dashboard.

I've been using this solution for about six years.

Tableau can be a little slow when loading, and it can fail with higher gigs or terabytes of data.

From working with my data analyst, I get the impression that Tableau can't take the load when scaling.

We had embedded technical support from Tableau in our enterprise, who was awesome and kept Tableau updated at all times.

Tableau is pretty good, interface-wise - it's easy to understand and to download data. It also has the most functionalities and capabilities of any tool. However, it doesn't have anything that differentiates it from its competitors, unlike Adobe Analytics' strength in visualization and data capture. If someone is looking for routine dashboards and wants operational dashboards, Tableau is the best solution. However, if they want to drive strategic decisions, they may have to look into a different product. I would rate Tableau as seven out of ten. 

It is usually used to visualize how the data looks. It is used for drawing charts and different types of visualizations. You can visualize sales, profits, and metrics by geography, product categories, and so on.

I'm using the 2020 version. The latest version came out in 2021. I've not downloaded that one yet. I'm using the last year's version.

It is easy to use, and it can handle a large amount of data.

An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization.

I've been using this solution for five to six years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have around 10 users.

I have not contacted their technical support.

It is just a matter of downloading the file from the internet and installing it. That's it.

It is pretty simple to use. We don't require anyone for its deployment and maintenance.

I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Tableau an eight out of 10.

• Creating dashboards to generate value out of data
• Great features and functionalities with customized dashboards
• Very intuitive and massive user support base.

It has helped to save millions by making informed decisions which are data driven. Visualization of data with great efficiency has helped to integrate dashboards across the organization.

• Platform to automate and make user-defined customized dashboards. 
• Very well integrated with other applications which helps to move data from one application to another with much ease.

Sometimes it crashes because of the huge database. This could be fixed so that it works smoothly with large databases.

Three years ago, Viber didn't have any visualization tool to present its massive data inside the company. One month after implementing Tableau, inside Viber we were able to understand much better the business, opportunities and technical problems.

• Drag and drop: It's easy for beginners to use Tableau as it's very intuitive and simple to create insights.
• Quick table calculations: There are some best-practice shortcuts for tables, which means Tableau can be implemented very quickly.
• Data Connectors: Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on. Just name it and they have the connector; the work they do is very impressive.

Data science: Tableau lacks machine learning algorithms that you can implement using R, SPSS Modeler, and Python. It has clustering and time-series forecasting abilities which are helpful, but adding machine learning capabilities like decision trees, CHAID analysis and K-means would make this product perfect! Tableau has a connector to R; you can use the ML algorithms there and visualize it back in the Tableau.

Previous versions suffered from instability but that has been fixed in later versions. The current version has no issues with stability as far as I can see.

Tableau is not scalable on the desktop version. On the server version, you can scale it by adding more machines and configuring Tableau to use all of them.

One of Tableau’s secrets is that they have one of the best tech support in the world of BI. The community of developers is great, with a lot of contributors; very nice and helpful – for beginners and professionals.

In the past, I used QlikView as the BI solution. It's also a great tool with many features and great support. The problem with QlikView is that it's expensive and it takes longer to implement inside organizations.

It's very simple and quick to implement Tableau in an organization; you can have helpful dashboards in a matter of hours.

Tableau pricing is low compared to other solutions that are in the market; for small-medium businesses, that would provide good cost-effectiveness. For big business, Tableau could be expensive as having a lot of Tableau server users (entering with a browser to reports) could be a bit expensive.

We compared Tableau to QlikView, Panorama Necto and TIBCO Spotfire. We evaluated them by:

• Price
• Ease of use
• Speed of implementation
• Use-case visualizations

Don't visualize more than 2M data points in a report. Use extracted data and not a direct connection to the database; it will run faster. Don't use too many sections in a report; 3-4 at most. Make most calculations during the ETL process and not in Tableau; every calculation that Tableau does will make the report go slower.

The ability to make interactive graphs, tables, and maps that can be shared on social media, linked to, or embedded on a website are the most valuable features. The ability to allow readers to view and download the underlying data is another valuable feature.

I just did an analysis of real estate sales in my county (Bay County, FL) and it allowed me to share the results with the public in a way they can make their own discoveries beyond what I have presented. 

Tableau Public is free, which is incredible. However, the paid version is too expensive per user. They need to reduce the cost of the user that is not making the analysis, but only reading / drilling down on the results. It is hard to get a client to pay that kind of money to view reports.

From my conversations with Tableau, their product Tableau Online is what allows others to view and interact with data online privately. The cost per online user is $500 per year. There is a free Tableau Reader, but it is limited. So, if I wanted to make data visualizations for a client or within my own company, I would have to pay for the desktop software to make the visuals plus pay an additional fee for everyone who wants to use the full functions online. Tableau Public is free and an awesome tool, but it is all publicly available.

I've had no issues with deployment.

I've had no issues with stability.

I've had no issues with scalability.