The speed with which it is possible to explore data is, for me, the best thing about Tableau. By this, I mean it is extremely easy to drill into data, which in turn shortens the time from having raw data to having useful, actionable insights. The aesthetics of the dashboards and adherence to data visualization best practices by default is also great.
Industry Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It allowed us to easily monitor adherence to workflows.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
Our organization’s workflows dictate that the front desk staff are supposed to collect demographic data from our customers. However, we knew that this was not happening. Tableau allowed us to very easily monitor which staff members were adhering to these workflows and which weren't. We could then do very targeted re-training of those staff members who needed it.
What needs improvement?
Two major improvements that I would like to see:
- A better/quicker interface for formatting graphs and dashboards. The current design takes too much time and doesn't really allow for the same formatting to be applied globally across all of the visualization.
- Improved data formatting prior to visualization. I do know that some improvements are coming with the next major release - for instance, the ability to join data across disparate data source types (e.g. joining CSV and SQL Server DB) - but this is currently a major limitation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for 2.5 years.
Buyer's Guide
Tableau
January 2025
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
For the most part, we have not had any real issues here. That said, our "biggest" data is 10 million rows of mostly discrete data, so we aren't pushing the envelope.
How are customer service and support?
Customer service and technical support have been very good for us. It's worth mentioning that the community forums are VERY active and will often provide answers from Tableau Masters faster than actual Tableau support can respond.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In late 2013, we tested QlikView Desktop and Yellowfin Analytics. They did not seem quite as powerful at the time. However, I have not evaluated those products since. In early 2016, I explored Microsoft Power BI and found the interface clunky compared to Tableau. It is, however, much cheaper.
How was the initial setup?
We found setup straightforward with relatively few surprises. We did have to work through some issues with drivers to connect to a SQL Server 2008 database, which customer support did help with.
What about the implementation team?
We had an in-house implementation (4 desktop licenses, 25 server licenses) and found learning Tableau to be relatively easy for our dedicated analysts (the desktop users). The biggest difficulty we found was getting the Tableau Server users to actually log in to look at the dashboards that we had created for them - often providing them with the data they requested. Getting the adoption by the business decision-makers was the hard part (and obviously that is a problem that would apply to any BI tool).
What was our ROI?
While I don't have specific $$ numbers, I can say that several reports that we were maintaining previously in Excel that took 4-5 hours to be updated manually each month, now can be updated in 20 seconds. I do think that this would probably be true of any of the products similar to Tableau available on the market now.
What other advice do I have?
The video tutorials available on the Tableau site are very helpful. We spent many hours watching both the step-by-step tutorials as well as the broader webinars highlighting an organization Tableau use case for education and ideas on novel dashboards/metrics to develop.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Manager Business Intelligence and Analytics at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It connects to data sources without needing to develop a reporting or meta-data layer.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Tableau are:
- The ease of learning and use. Tableau is very user friendly. I have a few colleagues at my place of work that had never used it. Within a few months, they created brilliant content.
- The ability to connect to any data source without any reporting layer or meta-data layer needing to be developed. I can connect directly to Oracle tables & views, SQL Server objects, flat files, Excel files, anything. I don’t need to do any additional work in order to achieve this.
- The capability of creating brilliant, creative insights while still achieving data discovery. Tableau makes creating analysis fun and beautiful, while still finding incredible gold nuggets in the dark data of enterprises.
- The culture and support community around the product. There is a true excitement in the Tableau community and anyone who uses Tableau knows what I'm talking about. There are many user group community meetings around the globe that are educational, helpful and fun.
- The ability to share, collaborate and view content through Tableau Server or Tableau Public. It is easy to send users to a web portal to see content analysts create.
- The cost. Tableau is much lower priced than an Oracle-, SAP-, MicroStrategy-type product. The cost is similar to QlikView and a bit more than Microsoft PowerBI on its own (but you need an EA from Microsoft to leverage the lower pricing on PowerBI).
- The support. I can pick up my cell phone and call four people I know from Tableau and get their feedback and help right now.
How has it helped my organization?
We now are starting to remove the data silos. We are seeing how data visualization helps to lead to quicker actionable insight. It also has helped reduce the number of reports and dashboards the organization needs.
What needs improvement?
I am very excited about Tableau 10 and what has been built into the beta. I think with those changes and some we saw at TC15 that are coming, the product is poised to remain the industry leader.
I would like to see Tableau provide a bit better integration with the Microsoft Office platform. You can download your dashboard data to CSV or crosstab, but it’s not optimal. Even if it’s the best dashboard design ever, there are users that still want to see the numbers underneath. Until data visualization reaches a critical mass, like Excel did in the late 90s to early 2000s, we still will need a way to give access to some of the underlying data in an easy way for Microsoft Office to consume.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used it for 3 1/2 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I have not encountered any issues. Deployment, stability and scalability have been fantastic. We've had a few bugs, two of which were fixed by Tableau support and one took a bit longer and was fixed in a release. However, we've not had long-term outages due to any issues. Installing Tableau is easy. Upgrading the server could be easier, but I think they have addressed that with version 10.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer service and support at Tableau is top notch. I haven't seen a better organization in technology with this.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used Oracle OBIEE before and Tableau beats that product on cost, usability and ease/speed of development. I don't have to know how to develop the RPD or meta-data layer. Tableau does that behind the scenes when I import a data source. Tableau was also much cheaper than OBIEE.
We also own PowerBI and Tableau is significantly better at ease of use and the number of data sources.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward. We had a rapid start-up "team" come and help us but it was one person and he was done in two days.
What about the implementation team?
Tableau sent out one of their partners, Interworks. I would highly recommend Interworks to help with Implementation. They can make the most of the implementation with their Drive methodology.
What was our ROI?
Our first dashboard caught an issue in the system and almost completely paid for the server license with the money saved.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Negotiate the server license. The desktop license price is pretty set.
What other advice do I have?
Find a couple of good, quick-win use cases and don't necessarily re-create the dashboard or report in Tableau, but find a way to tell something about the business that wasn't already known.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Tableau
January 2025
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Data Warehouse Manager at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
We use it to illustrate trends in cash balances, research grant expenditure trends, and student metrics and performance.
Valuable Features
Valuable features include the various “Show Me” graph options; the ability to do forecasting (which is an area that Tableau needs to continue growing its modeling capabilities); and the immediate responsiveness to adding dimensions/measures and their effect on the visualization.
Improvements to My Organization
We have used Tableau to develop institutional dashboards for the university. We’ve used it to illustrate trends in cash balances, research grant expenditure trends, and student metrics and performance.
Room for Improvement
I’d like to see the forecasting capabilities expanded from an algorithm standpoint to offer different options for multi-variate forecasting. I think they can improve the ability to integrate with web pages. I’d like to see a more secure option for data regarding HIPAA regulations.
Use of Solution
We’ve been using the Tableau solution for over three years. We started out with about 30 users and have grown to over 350 interactors and 50 authors.
Scalability Issues
A strong guide to help determine the scaling up options does not exist; it is still new to third-party support consultants which performance options are the best. I do like the fact that AWS has a one-click solution, but it needs more of a config wizard to better outline what storage/memory impacts choices will produce.
Customer Service and Technical Support
We have experienced less-than-preferable service with the technical support. For a while, it felt like they were experimenting for answers, even with complete log and infrastructure details. Their response time to issues is not acceptable for customers who are paying for core licenses, and they acknowledge that.
Initial Setup
Initial setup was straightforward; the upgrade path is also straightforward.
Implementation Team
We implemented from within our team. We did engage with a consultant about two years later to see how we were doing and discuss the next steps with server admin training. The results were acceptable.
Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing
Pricing continues to be a sore spot. Desktop licensing discounts in bulk do not exist, which is challenging for a non-profit. Server core licensing is also prohibitive from an expansion standpoint.
Other Solutions Considered
We only went with Tableau based on the feature set and the user base reviews.
Other Advice
There is a lot of competition brewing with other visualization providers that may be at better cost points. Definitely go in and deep dive/experience the other solutions. Though Tableau has a great reputation for ease of use, there definitely is a learning curve to optimize it, and other solutions like Microsoft Power BI and Qlik are making progress.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Product Manager - Emory University (Tableau) at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Data cleaning: helpful in showing you where there are holes or mistakes in your data.
What is most valuable?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer support always gets back to me within 24 hours. However, they are not always able to help me resolve my issue.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.)
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is a little steep. However, if used correctly, the improvements in productivity will more than outweigh the cost.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Manager at Arabian Cement Company
Great perforamacne with good dashboard options and a simple initial implementation process
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is simple."
- "In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
What is our primary use case?
I'm collecting some information and some reports from SAP and sending them to users as a graphical report. That's basically how I use the product.
What is most valuable?
The new pre-built application of Tableau is amazing.
The initial setup is simple.
It's a very stable, reliable solution.
You can scale the solution.
The dashboard has a lot of great options.
What needs improvement?
I'd like it to work without the workflow or pushing options from the build, every time you need to do a refresh. We need a workflow for pushing the data to the cloud or to the server when you are using the pre-built application, the new application.
In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been good. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have found the solution to be scalable.
At my organization, we have about ten to 15 regular users.
We use it pretty extensively - at least once a week.
I'm not sure if we actually have plans to increase usage at this time.
How are customer service and support?
So far, I haven't needed any help from them. It's a good application in and of itself. I haven't needed technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used a little bit of Power BI. I know Tableau better, so I moved to Tableau Arabic.
How was the initial setup?
The initial implementation process was straightforward. We did it without any problems.
Since the solution is on the cloud, you don't need a lot of staff for maintenance tasks.
What about the implementation team?
You do not need an integrator or consultant to assist you in the implementation process. We were able to do it ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a standard license that we renew yearly.
What other advice do I have?
I'm an end-user.
I'm using the latest version of the solution.
I'd recommend Tableau to others. It offers good performance and the dashboard options are solid.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Partner at Bambino & Partners
Scalable, easy to learn and very easy to use
Pros and Cons
- "It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."
- "It's not an aesthetic platform at the moment."
What is our primary use case?
I use it for management control and for balance sheet analysis. As corporale finance consultant, the core of my job is financial analysis/modeling. I added Tableau to my workflow to improve the decision making process of my clients make decisions but I found it very useful also to produce reporting for Financial Istitutions, Investment Fund, etc.
How has it helped my organization?
Tableau has improved the way our clients “read” what’s happening in their company,
What is most valuable?
I think one of the best feature is usability: understanding dragging & dropping Measures & Dimension is so simple that you can easily learn the software.
Tableau is very intuitive, it has not a deep learning curve so you can build your dashboards in short time.
What needs improvement?
The forecast instrument. I still use my primary software (that is Quantrix Modeler) to build my financial models.
I’m not saying that is a “static” platform at the moment, it’s dynamic due to the fact that you can build parameters, however it's not the same as a spreadsheet in which you can write formulas and algotythms that are more and more complex.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Tableau since 2018. It's been about three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been good. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution can scale well. There shouldn't be any issues if a company needs to expand.
How are customer service and technical support?
I've dealt with technical support in the past. Two years ago I had a problem, a technical problem. It was a very serious issue with the software in my first installation and I came in contact with the engineer in London. They solved my problem very, very quickly. I've been quite satisfied with them overall.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very simple. It's not overly complex or difficult. A company shouldn't have any issues.
What about the implementation team?
While I handled the implementation myself, I chose to do a period of learning with the Information Lab a Tableau Partner company. I took two courses to have a better understanding and to more quickly understand the possibilities I had to work with.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have a Tableau license. It's very, very cheap. For the use and the capability of the software, it's $70 per month, it’ an awesome price.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yes I did: MicroStrategy because , it was the first competitor of Tableau. However, there is no comparison. Tableau's the best platform for me and offers the best software.
What other advice do I have?
We are only customers at this time.
We are focused on producing and using Tableau only for our clients. We bought a number of view licenses and we give them to our client so they can use Tableau via the online version.
I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I've been very pleased with its capabilities.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Owner at Richard Duggan Pty Ltd
Powerful visualizations, easy to use, and stable.
Pros and Cons
- "It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
- "I am not a frequent user of this solution, so I am not sure what they've been doing recently. The last time when I used it, I had to use other tools with it for data extraction and cleansing. Its price should also be improved. It is more expensive than Power BI. In terms of training, there is generally better online training for Power BI, but I am not sure of that. It would be helpful to know from where to access its training."
What is our primary use case?
I am using it for personal and organizational purposes. Most recently, we used it to collect and analyze the personal and geographic data input by people over the web.
How has it helped my organization?
Makes analysis fast and easy, providing insights that could be missed otherwise.
What is most valuable?
It is easy to use with very powerful data visualizations.
What needs improvement?
I am not a frequent user of this solution, so I am not sure what they've been doing recently. The last time when I used it, I had to use other tools with it for data extraction and cleansing.
Its price should also be improved. It is more expensive than Power BI. In terms of training, there is generally better online training for Power BI, but I am not sure of that. It would be helpful to know from where to access its training.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution off and on for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable if you use it with other tools. I have used it with other tools.
I am a freelance consultant. I use it myself. My clients have hundreds or thousands of users.
How are customer service and technical support?
I don't have any experience with their support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I also use Power BI. Tableau is very comparable to Power BI.
How was the initial setup?
If I remember it correctly, it was easy.
What about the implementation team?
I can do it on my own.
What was our ROI?
My clients don't measure an ROI, they are interested in getting insights faster and when the get past the basics right then modelling scenarios. If you invest in BI tools it is part of a journey requiring investment. Analysis often helps to increase revenues and reduce costs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is expensive when you compare it with Power BI. It should be cheaper.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have looking at SAP SAC and Oracle / Essbase for a client.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution. I would rate Tableau a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Manager at California Department of Corrections
Allows insights into business performance issues, but dashboard deployment to viewers can be prohibitively expensive
Pros and Cons
- "It provides supporting data for critical policy and operational changes"
- "It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers."
What is our primary use case?
Business Intelligence for operational and executive dashboards. It is used to create real-time operational insights which start at the line-level staff person who manages their own productivity and performance indicators. This gets rolled up to middle and upper management and provides a full sense of operations and targeted goal achievement.
How has it helped my organization?
Excellent product: Great visualizers and it is easy to use.
Allows insights into business performance issues, providing supporting data for critical policy and operational changes.
What is most valuable?
It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers. Powerful aggregating and drill-downs are critical for effective insight discovery.
What needs improvement?
Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost is high.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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