Tableau Reviews

We use this solution to create dashboards, analyze data and create presentation of data to have discussions with clients. We also use it to sort huge amounts of data. 

The solution is very user friendly, particularly in terms of the ease of analyzing data.

Tableau would be difficult to implement without training or the in-house technical support we have.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The stability is very good, especially now that they've joined with Salesforce.

We have support from within the company. 

The initial setup is straightforward because the solution is already set up in the company. It was just a matter of requesting it and downloading.

We have a global package but I'm not involved in licensing and don't know the cost.

I had a look at Qlik but didn't get a chance to really evaluate the benefits from one platform to another, other than what you find on the internet. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10, there's always room for improvement. 

It was for dashboards. The key use case was for creating visibility to performance metrics for the leadership team. It was the most recent version, and it was deployed on-prem. 

The key use case that we were going after very specifically created visibility to performance metrics for the leadership team. So, it allowed us to give that common view of performance metrics and drive business conversations based on the common shared set of facts. We were able to expose data and relationships that we otherwise couldn't do in our enterprise system silos. From that perspective, we were incredibly successful in really driving performance. When you combine that with some real championing in the business and with some leadership to push it down, the fact that it was Tableau wasn't as relevant as the fact that we had the championing pushing the process and pushing it down.

The number one thing was just the ease of getting something up quickly. The other thing that was good about it was that it was fairly fast for decent-sized data sets in terms of performance and run time.

From a downside perspective, some of the more advanced modeling techniques are actually fairly difficult to do. In addition, I just fundamentally disagree with the way you have to implement them because you can get incorrect answers in some cases.

One of the key challenges is that you never know whether it is how your developers developed it or whether it was the tool. We did find that once we got into more complex models, the ability to keep objects that should tally the same way but didn't became more and more difficult. That was probably the big thing for me. I don't know enough about how the tool was developed to know whether that was because they didn't follow a recommended practice. That was probably the number one thing that I found frustrating with it.

When we started to try and get into some very granular data sets that had some complex relationships in them, the performance on it degraded pretty quickly. It did degrade to such an extent that we couldn't use it. We had to change what we were trying to do and manage its scope so that we could get what we wanted out of it or reduce the scope of what we needed out of it. It doesn't have a database behind it, per se. So, while doing some of the more complicated things that you might otherwise do on a database, we started hitting some pretty significant challenges.

I used it for about three years.

Tableau worked fairly well for straightforward data sets, but it struggled when we got into the more complicated data sets and larger data sets. 

We were able to deploy it fairly broadly without a whole bunch of work. From that perspective, it worked fine. I was deploying my stuff to about 200 users across Canada, and I don't think we saw a blip on the server when people logged in. It was fine. If we were to roll out some of the bigger applications broadly, like the ones that we were having performance challenges with, we probably would have crushed the box. We would have had to get more CPU. Most likely, it would have been a memory issue, but we never hit that inflection point.

There were about 200 users of the solution. It went all the way from the equivalent of a senior vice president and all the way down to the equivalent of a line manager. So, we had business unit leaders, vice presidents, and operational managers.

It was being used extensively for a specific use case. There were lots of other use cases that it could be used for, but there needs to be an appetite from leadership to go, drive, and commit resources to go do that.

I didn't have to deal with technical support. Mr. Google is pretty good on the topic.

We had previously used Cognos to do the exact same thing. The only reason why we replaced it was that the business decided to go towards Tableau. Otherwise, there really wasn't any real reason to replace it. It was probably a little bit easier and more interesting for people to learn and to develop applications in the program than in Cognos. The ramp-up time to get to reasonably proficient in Tableau plus the support through Mr. Google made it a lot easier for me to get resources and do development on Tableau as compared to Cognos.

The organization decided to move away from the old platform. So, basically, I was lost when they asked me to shift off so that they could shut it down. I personally prefer the previous platform. I understood it very well. I had used it for years, and it worked just fine. For the most part, the challenges that we had on the old platform were not resolved by Tableau, which just reinforced to me that it wasn't a tool problem. It was a people problem.

It was pretty straightforward. The big thing that confuses people in a project that involves Tableau is that Tableau is a very visible but small component of the overall solution. That's because 80% of the work is data. It is not Tableau. So, Tableau is actually a fairly small component over that overall solution. It took a few days to get it up and going. Almost 80% of the work is actually on the data side, which takes forever, but the actual Tableau component of it was pretty straightforward. It was not that difficult.

You can get a Tableau dashboard up on a weekend. It is not hard to get something up and running. It is pretty trivial. It isn't any more or less difficult than any other tool to get up and going. I've used a number of them, and they're all pretty easy to get up and going. Tableau was the first one out of the gate with this democratized data perspective, where they were going to do departmental BI and up to enterprise BI years ago. Now, they now charge a fairly hefty premium to leverage that product. It is not a cheap product.

In terms of maintenance, it can take as much or as little as you want because it just runs. So, technically, you don't have to have anybody to do very much. You just need a very skeleton crew to operate as is. The challenge that you run into with solutions like this is that you need to continue to refresh the information with new and different views because people want to know more, and they want to go deeper into it. It is not a function of the technology. It is a function of the use case. So, you tend to have lots of new requests for new reports and analysis, and that's where you tend to have more challenges.

We didn't get into analysis users who are able to sort of do a little bit more themselves. There were viewer licenses where you are just using preset reports, but there are obviously additional training and things like that, and you have to deal with it if you start getting into more advanced power users.

I was at another company, and we were the integrator.

It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid.

A good chunk of it has got nothing to do with the tool. It has everything to do with your leadership and your governance requiring it. We had our IT team roll up Tableau multiple times and not a single person used it because there just wasn't enough leadership support to use it. There is nothing wrong with the tool, and it worked fine for what it did, but every time I logged into it, I go, "Okay, but what did you want me to actually do with this? I see all this information. I understand it clearly. I'm not sure what I do with it though." So, without that additional guidance from leadership, rolling it out is irrelevant. You need to have that strategic leadership associated with it.

The key piece of advice would be that you got to look beyond your tool. You need to look at how you're going to get this information used in your organization. What kind of leadership support, governance support, and ongoing support are you going to have? It is all based on trusted data. The value of the tool is based on the quality of your data and the leadership's support to use it. So, if you don't have high-quality data and you don't have leadership support to use the data, you don't need any tool because nobody is going to use it.

I would rate Tableau a seven out of 10. It suits the purpose, but in and of itself, I don't think it is significantly better or worse than its key competitors.

I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good.

I have been using Tableau for two weeks.

The solution is stable compared to others solutions.

The setup was easy but we are having some problems with the configuration that is taking a long time. We have done some initial tests and some of the delays could be from bandwidth issues. However, the whole installation process should be simplified.

We have evaluated Domo, Microsoft BI, and Qlik, and we have found Tableau is much better.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Tableau a seven out of ten.

It is mainly for reporting purposes. We have our users who are using the desktop, and I, as an admin, provide help and support the backend activities. I don't really develop the reports.

It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI.

It should have more integration with different tools and technologies. Its licensing cost should also be improved.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It is stable.

It does manage a good amount of enterprise data, but it is not like Oracle BI or MicroStrategy. They can handle huge volumes of enterprise data. Tableau doesn't have the same efficiency in terms of handling a large amount of enterprise data.

In terms of the number of users, I work for a client, and they have a user base of 14,000.

When I get questions or doubts, I just Google them and find the answers. In my one year of experience in working with Tableau, I've not really found out any kind of difficulties. I have also not heard much about any difficulties.

Its installation is straightforward. I have never done it, but I have seen my colleagues do it. I have worked extensively on Oracle BI or OBIEE, and I know how difficult it is. The installation of Tableau is comparatively pretty straightforward.

In terms of the technical team for its deployment and maintenance, we don't need many people. Most of the things, users can do themselves. We only provide the required support and do the admin tasks. 

Its licensing cost should be improved.

I would recommend this solution. It is quite good. It is an upcoming technology, and people are using it quite widely.

I would rate Tableau a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for enterprise reporting, dashboarding, and insight.

We have an eight-core server. There are up to seven hundred unique consumers weekly, and twelve hundred monthly. There are twenty-five power users that publish to the server on a regular basis.

This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration. We don't just look at the numbers, we can easily explore why a number is what it is.

The most valuable feature is the "drag and drop" environment. We also appreciate the ease of use for adoption with "row-level" internal customers.

I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles.

• Rapid visualization of data
• Interactive views connecting multiple data sources
• Reduces need for IT cycles (hours vs. weeks to create report)
• Ability to analyze problems quickly
• Ability to share reports and analyses quickly

• Ability to focus staff on more analysis versus reporting
• More/Better/Faster analysis by staff

Pace of improvement to product has slowed. Most additions are now just nice to have.

More than eight years.

No.

No.

No.

I haven't really needed customer service. Help from the sales staff is okay at first. The community is amazing. You can google any question and usually find an answer.

I haven't really needed tech support.

Very straightforward. A lot of free training available online.

In-house. Easy!

• Spotfire
• MicroStrategy VI
• Qlik

The ability to create visualizations of data is the product’s most valuable feature to me because it provides a meaningful view of the data and the metrics used by our clients.

The ease with which users can visualize and share data has improved how we look at our metrics.

It’s a very basic thing, but being able to copy and paste data elements from the screen would be nice.

I have used it for nine months.

I have not really encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. Our issues are not related to the function of the tool, but more to do with attitudes concerning looking at data and metrics.

It is well received when people see what it can do in transforming their data and metrics into meaningful displays that allow for greater insights.

Tableau Desktop is equipped with so many valuable features that it is difficult to know where to begin. The functionality that allows users to join multiple source files and create visualizations using the fields from each of the joined source files is certainly nice to have. While the list of graphs and charts on the “Show Me” menu is impressive, one can do so much more with Tableau. With a little imagination and ingenuity, customized visualizations can be created easily and quickly.

It is far easier for my audience to grasp the key takeaways of an analysis by viewing a data visualization than by reviewing a spreadsheet. Tableau Desktop simplifies communication between analytics and senior executives.

I have not yet transitioned to Tableau Desktop 10.0, but I understand version 10.0 has functionality that allow users to perform cluster analysis. I am sure that I will be using this functionality frequently going forward.

I was introduced to Tableau as part of an online course on data visualization offered by the University of California, Irvine. Although I have been using Tableau for less than a year, I use the product frequently.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Tableau provides an enormous number of online resources that are clear, concise, and very thorough. You are almost guaranteed to find the answers you are seeking within this online documentation.

We did evaluate a number of other BI solutions before selecting Tableau Desktop. In the end, we chose Tableau Desktop because of its flexibility and superior graphics. We are a fairly small organization. While we do not currently have a data warehouse, we are planning to build a BIDW within the next three years. Once the data warehouse has been rolled out, we will transition from Tableau Desktop to Tableau Server. In the era of big data, Tableau Server offers a number of attractive features including the built-in interface with both the R Project and various open source big data applications.

The initial setup for Tableau Desktop is about as straightforward as possible. Once you download the software to your computer, you are ready to use the application.