Tableau Reviews

I use Tableau for analytics development for different clients. It doesn't serve a specific use case for me as each customer has their own analytics development. I develop and provide analytics for various clients.

The most valuable features of Tableau include building hyper extracts and creating visuals. These functionalities are very useful, especially the ability to create visuals without much pre-work, which is a great advantage. Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.

Tableau's data blending feature could use some improvement. Previously, I used other tools, such as Alteryx, for data blending because Tableau had limitations. Although the hyper extract and data modeling capabilities have slightly improved this feature, there is still room for enhancement.

I have been using Tableau for around six to seven years.

Tableau is pretty stable, and I have not found any problems in terms of performance.

The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.

Technical support has been very responsive. Even if there are any issues with Tableau Server, writing a ticket results in a prompt response.

Neutral

Tableau installation is easy, both for server and desktop versions. One person is enough to manage the installation.

Pricing for Tableau is slightly higher, which is why I generally suggest Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.

I have worked with QuickSight, Tableau, and Power BI.

I rate my overall experience with Tableau an eight out of ten. In terms of suggestions, I feel that Tableau needs to improve its AI capabilities. In comparison, Power BI offers features like Copilot and AI-enabled visuals, which Tableau currently lacks. Enhancing AI features would be beneficial. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We use the solution for operational reporting, dashboards, metrics, and ad-hoc analysis.

The best thing about Tableau is that you don't need a database connection and can generate a dashboard from a spreadsheet. It's very open. It moved the responsibility to the end user rather than in a closed control loop. There are a lot of widgets. Tableau looks for the data and suggests cool widgets. The community is growing, and there is always someone who has tried something before.

If you go to Tableau Cloud, you will see tons of visualizations and things that have already been done. You don't need to struggle a lot. If you post a question, someone will always answer you. The product is also getting better. Tableau's performance is really good, and it is adding new features.

When Salesforce bought the solution, they claimed that Einstein would be part of Tableau, but that indication is not working. Tableau's integration with Einstein Analytics could be better. It's not even up to par with other products. The ad hoc, self-service, and data analysis features are not working.

I have been using Tableau for 11 years.

We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

Tableau's scalability is much better than the other previous clunky tools like MicroStrategy and Cognos. Around 300 to 350 users use the solution in our organization.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward, and its details are available on the internet. The solution's cloud service can be deployed within a day. However, the on-prem deployment depends on many other factors and might take a couple of days.

We have seen a return on investment with Tableau.

Tableau is an expensive solution.

The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. If Tableau is on-premises, you have to monitor the server, recycle it, and restart it. However, if it is in the cloud, the admin role is completely reduced. We don't have a Tableau admin. The solution solves my problem, it is working as expected, and I have no complaints from my end.

There will always be complexities. We have to create a good data model so Tableau can use it. It's up to the team to make it complex or easy. Very good.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I use it for sales tracking, incident management, and monitoring proactive tickets from different tools and systems. These are my three major use cases.

The biggest benefit is significant time savings in creating reports and dashboards. We now spend less time creating dashboards and reports. It's also very user-friendly and easy to work with.

The dashboards are amazing, with different report types and stunning visuals. Most importantly, Tableau's AI with machine learning automatically predicts features and reports based on historical data. These are the three most valuable features for me.

Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau. 

These are the two major challenges I see, especially for smaller organizations. Perhaps introducing lighter options or scaling solutions could be helpful.

Tableau offers some of the best features in the market. Enhancements are always ongoing, and it's already one of the strongest BI tools available.

I've been working with Tableau for over five years.

Everything seems fine. They provide good materials and articles for updates, so it's not cumbersome. It's quite good, actually.

It definitely scales well. It's one of the best in the market for that. We have over 300 users in my organization using it.

I use various BI solutions. Primarily, I work with Power BI. We use two services: the server to upload reports and the Power BI Service. 

We also use Tableau for one client for reporting, dashboards, and reservations. Additionally, I use SAP Business Objects for reporting purposes.

One of Tableau's big objectives is reporting. It is superior compared to other tools. 

For on-premises Power BI, the biggest challenge is it's not fully integrated. We need separate applications and deployments on different machines. That's cumbersome. 

With the Tableau server, everyone can share reports on one server, which is much more efficient. Reporting with Tableau is amazing compared to Power BI Desktop. 

As for cons, the application size is quite high, and 128 GB of RAM is needed for the Tableau Server so if we need a lighter version of Tableau.

The initial setup was not cumbersome, it was straightforward for me. It is like a default application in my system, I was not part of the infra team. 

As a user, I haven't encountered much maintenance myself. Infrastructure management manages it.

The value for money is definitely there. Tableau is a bit higher side as compared to Power BI services because Microsoft is offering really, very amazing prices. At the organization level, Microsoft provides PowerBI service as a package, and they are offering more than 30% to 60% of their end customer. 

But, Tableau is on the same side, cost-wise,  Tableau is a bit high.

I would like to recommend Tableau because of the dashboarding, reporting and the features they are providing to end customers. So it is very commendable.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

On-premises

We do tons of data analysis for the organization to try to plan for resources that are needed in the infrastructure, specifically servers, storage, and that kind of stuff.

There are about 30,000 devices that we have to manage. We need to make sure that we have what we need for our internal customers, which is a really tough task unless you can analyze data every single day. We look for all sorts of anomalies about how the devices are functioning or how they are growing in consumption. We pull up about 1.1 billion rows of information every single day about what they're doing, and then we've got to take that mountain of data and pick out what we are concerned about. Tableau is key in providing that information to our internal customers and just analyzing different sets of data, such as the asset data and the consumption data. It is just data analysis all day long. That's basically what we do.

The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features.

Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation.

I have been using this solution for ten years.

It is a stable and mature product.

It is able to scale to the user base that we have, but pulling large sets of data into the dashboard can be problematic. You have to reduce the data to only what you're going to present, and that's it. Otherwise, it is unusable in my opinion.

We've got hundreds of users on the product. When I came to this organization about five years ago, Tableau was fairly new, but it grew very quickly. Initially, only I and a couple of other people were using it, but now the user base has grown significantly.

Their support is good. They provide good training and all sorts of stuff.

We have a whole group that manages that. We don't get involved in it. We just ask for it to be installed and available, and they support it.

Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. My guess would be that it is $1000 or less per year.

We might go for Power BI in the future because of its umbrella with Microsoft licensing. It is much cheaper for us to use Power BI, and some folks will go in that direction because they don't want to pay the higher license.

I would recommend getting Tableau to help with the training because there is a learning curve with it. Make sure the training piece is in place, and your account rep provides resources to get people started because it does take a little bit of training to get proficient at it.

I would rate Tableau an eight out of ten. It is not perfect, but it does the job for us.

I handle the development and administration of dashboards. I primarily use it for HR and finance. Assurant Financials specifically.

I find it to be the best BI tool for visualization. 

We use most of the features from the analytics menu, like getting trends and forecasts. 

We also love creating stories by combining sheets together, which is a really nice feature. 

We frequently utilize visualizations using maps and different objects, all with rich coloring options. And tooltips are absolutely essential for us. 

Tooltips, like the pop-up descriptions when you hover over some object or graph.

Those tooltips in Tableau are great features. Tableau even lets you call another dashboard from within the tooltip itself, which is truly amazing.

I've been following Tableau, and they're definitely making great progress. For instance, they added some generative AI features which I haven't used yet.

More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement.

I have been using it for eight months now. 

It's been very stable for us. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

Based on my understanding, it's a highly scalable solution. However, I haven't personally tested it with Tableau, which is used for integration. But for the features I've used, I'd rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

There are only around 30 key users. But they're very satisfied with it, even though we're still in the initial stages and changing our data culture.

So, we plan to expand the usage further. 

The customer service and support are very responsive and supportive. 

Positive

I briefly explored Oracle Analytics, specifically a development tool called Oracle APEX. It includes some visualization features, but they're not as advanced as Tableau's.

In terms of visualization, Tableau is the best.

The initial setup was very easy, especially on the cloud. So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, with ten being very easy. 

The deployment is very quick. Installation takes just a few minutes, definitely less than an hour.

We're still in the early stages of our project, so we're using the cloud. But I've also used Tableau Desktop, which is the client software installed on a PC. That was smooth as well.

It's too early to calculate ROI definitively, but we're seeing progress.

Pricing might be slightly more expensive than some competitors, but for our organization, the cost hasn't been an issue.

I highly recommend exploring Tableau's cloud-based demos and templates. You can learn a lot without purchasing the software. Also, tap into the Tableau community to gain knowledge and expertise. By doing this, your initial setup and learning curve will be much faster.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. I really like it.

Operations Perspective:

The most valuable aspect of this product is the ease of deployment from the Tableau Desktop to the server, providing the ability to either connect live to a data source or create a cached dataset that can be published and updated separately. The deployment of a Tableau Workbook can even be packaged up and sent to someone with a Tableau Reader installed. This makes the solution very agile and scalable.

The ability to deploy is the added ability to centralise the Tableau repository for all Tableau Developers. We have initiated a central shared directory for each Tableau platform, Dev, UAT, and PROD with each containing subdirectories for each Tableau Site and Project. Being a financial institution we must provide data segregation to comply with legislation and Data Governance policies enforced by brand segregation.

Development Perspective:

Ease of use is the most common call out from the developers. There is a thriving user group online that provides any number of ways to build reports quickly and easily, but the most important ability is to allow the Developer to storyboard the information in a dashboard. Tableau provides the developer a means to provide captions and business information on the dashboard to tell the story of each Workbook. This ability to break down a complex Workbook into an easy to digest narrative provides the business stakeholder a way to really understand and discover the story behind the data giving them the necessary insights and metrics.

Tableau has provided the organisation a means to allow business people to explore their data at their pace. They can either review the reports online, or on their Tableau Reader or they can download it into other formats for use in data analysis. The key insights and graphic representations through the dashboards has also provided them a quick and painless overview of their current status, whatever that may be.

At this stage, we haven’t had any suggestions since moving to Tableau 10.3, so there may be improvements requested further down the line.

Six years.

We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable.

This is no longer an issue in Tableau 10.3.

A nine out of 10. With all first line support, sometimes these support people need to read the question a couple of times before responding, but this is typical of any first line support for any vendor.

We are still using another solution. However, this will be shutdown next year due to the decline in development on this platform. The development cycle on this legacy platform has been too slow for any type of turnkey solution and the end result did not provide a proficient self-service capability that satisfied the customer. Performance has been another factor in this platforms decline.

The initial setup of Tableau had been developed with a DevOps lens. I wanted to build a platform that had rigor and a platform with a level of governance of aspects which could guarantee report certification and certainty for the business stakeholder. These processes were carefully thought out even before the product was installed.

Once the process was developed and tested, we rolled out the solution to the business with a migration form for developers to fill out as we needed to meet audit policy guidelines and brand segment legal requirements. We allocated several business people to be software advocates whom were familiar with the migration requirements and liaised with the business to guide them in their approach to using the Tableau solution.

After six years, we can confidently say that any report in production is guaranteed to be correct (within limits) and the data source has been certified for provisioning.

At the time, this did have pushback from the vendor, but we’ve seen the chaos caused in other organisations that we mitigated right at the start.

Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward, so you can meet demand for licenses by having them available.

We have also added the vendor into our internal order system for ad hoc requests that we meet the needs of those that want a license on their own terms.

Actually no. This was a spontaneous purchase by an executive and we basically ran with it.

I’d strongly advise going to the forums, attending the Tableau conferences, and ask questions about governance, report certification, and capacity. These questions and the corresponding answers should guide you on how you would best implement your own solution. We did not want to be dictated to by Tableau to install it as a free for all. We wanted to future proof the product and provide certainty around the reports being developed and deployed to the business.

My team is working with Tableau to give presentations, create dashboards, and fetch reports from the system.

Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.

The solution’s pricing could be improved.

My team has been using Tableau for the last eight to nine months.

Earlier, we were using only Power BI, which had certain limitations. We could not go beyond the maximum output we had expected. We observed multiple facilities or benefits after buying Tableau. The dashboards are getting more presentable, and we are getting customized reports. Things are in place after getting Tableau into our systems. We are getting appropriate dashboards and reporting with the solution.

Tools like Tableau are not cloud-native services of the cloud and the cloud environment. So, it is very difficult to secure things, move to the cloud, and deploy things onto the cloud. Setting up Tableau on the cloud requires a different skill set because the cloud is a different environment altogether, and data center technologies are something else. Although it's more or less the same, people are unfamiliar with the cloud these days.

Once the environment was set up, it hardly took a week to configure everything in the cloud environment. The team concerned worked with system integrators, who successfully set up everything. We are working seamlessly, and there are no problems as of now.

Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI. We have paid the upfront cost for Tableau, which is 40% more expensive than Power BI.

We realized the benefits of Tableau within a month or so. We got the appropriate skill set to work on the solution directly and got fantastic outputs after deploying it in our systems.

We are working with the government directly. The government has observed that the tool is fantastic. The tool has multiple features, and they are getting the desired output. We are still exploring how many other features and functionalities of Tableau we can use.

We are still trying to integrate Tableau with other platforms to exploit the maximum potential of the portals, services, or software. We are still exploring those opportunities. We have integrated the solution with different schemes and applications, and it works seamlessly.

We are still discovering how many other platforms can be integrated with Tableau. As of now, we haven't faced any issues. We may face some challenges because we are currently trying to integrate it with the SAP environment.

I strongly recommend Tableau to other users because it is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We have been using Tableau for all sorts of analytical tasks. When I was having an ERP SAP practice, we used SAP analytical tools and IBM Cognos plus Tableau for dynamic display session purposes. Tableau ended up being the best solution. That is why we moved over to Tableau. We predominantly implement and use Tableau. 

It's a pure data platform. Everyone relies on Tableau. Our departmental meetings and reports for monthly meetings and reviews happen live on Tableau. We can prepare all of our KPIs on it. In fact, all of our KPIs can be placed onto one single screen and divided into nine tiles that can be further divided.

We can easily review and define all of our KPIs. The data is perfectly validated. It allows us to run corporate and board presentations purely on Tableau's visualization center.

It's an extremely good product with respect to performance and analytics. 

All the transactions that are happening are happening in SAP and some of the solutions are in Oracle as well. The combination, the data extraction which is filtered into authenticated, validated financial data, sales data, material data, etc, into Tableau platform is very useful for us.   

The solution makes for very productive and really informative decision making. It can lead the whole business and build a strategy across whole working departments.

The licensing costs of Tableau are on the higher side and probably if you wanted more adaptability in usage across business divisions you need to have more reasonable pricing of licenses of Tableau. Tableau is a standalone product. That is a disadvantage.

Due to the fact that it is a standalone product, it has to extract the data from other ERP systems or other bespoke systems and other data systems, etc. If you have big data systems and you have got other informed decision-making tools and the data is being extracted into Tableau it is dependent on many other platforms.

In contrast, if you use SAP vertical data systems and you have SAP's Data Hub, etc., then everything is vertically integrated. The whole data pipeline is vertically integrated and there is a visualization screen right there as well. Therefore, you don't normally have to go for a separate integration process altogether or need a data extraction solution.

In the end, Tableau has got two or three disadvantages in the sense that it is not a seamlessly integrated platform, end-to-end platform. It's purely a standalone reporting tool. On top of that, the licensing cost is extremely on the higher side. Thirdly, IT divisions probably are a little bit hesitant to use Tableau due to the fact that separate training is required, and separate skill sets are needed to develop everything. 

The cost of owning the solutions from Tableau is much higher compared to any other analytical solutions.

We've used Tableau for the past two and a half years or so.

Technical support is okay. It depends on the countries. I was in Australia for some time and there the support is much better than in India. This is probably due to the fact that a number of users are struggling with it and you get delayed support here. It's better to use Tableau proactively and develop a center of excellence in our organization. That is what I did and it helped us out a lot. I don't have any complaints about technical support per se.

Tableau is undisputedly the number one analytical product in the world. I have given a long presentation to management and the CEO about what differentiates Tableau over other products such as Cognos and Hyperion, SAP, etc. Lumira also is a strong contender, however, Tableau is way ahead because of the dynamic reporting that is possible and the whole virtualization that is very easy to produce, or reproduce. The business users themselves enjoy working on Tableau much better than other solutions like SAP, Cognos, Hyperion, etc.

The pricing of the solution is a bit high.

We're only customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We have not moved to the cloud so far with this product. Only SAP Ariba is on the cloud. The rest of our solutions, all analytical solutions, are on-premise solutions only.

Businesses should know what exactly they can do with Tableau. It's not just a visualization center or dashboard. You can contact a lot of assets that are in use - such as institutional analytics, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics. It can integrate with any artificial intelligence learning solutions and analytic solutions. That is where big data analytics play an important role. Modern business is more focused on all sorts of big database analytical solutions, especially for retail and other larger CRM business.

A company needs to decide answers to questions such as "how do you extract data?" or "Which department wants what data?". They would definitely need to have an initial, extremely focused approach of implementing it, with the full participation of the business teams. That is how a successful Tableau implementation needs to happen. However, it doesn't end there. You also need to educate business users or corporates on the solution as well.

Tableau is an extremely good product. I'd advise other users to use all aspects of and take advantage of its capabilities. Tableau has many licensing products available and a whole analytical model should be under one platform rather than going for bits and pieces from Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, etc.  Tableau is undisputedly the leader of the whole analytical solution and it should remain so only because it should have a larger use phase.

The training of Tableau is good, however, users should be aware that the consultants' availability across various countries is limited. I'm from Bangalore and if I need a Tableau consultant it's very difficult to locate one. You can, however, often find freelancing consultants. They can also get the job done.

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

There are so many solutions on the market. Primavera solution is a project management software. There is no product that can beat Primavera in the project management functions so you have many such project management products, SAP Project Manager, Product and Portfolio management is there, Microsoft Project is there. There are other Oracle project management solutions out there and then Primavera is there. 

When Oracle purchased this solution, the popularity of Primavera died out. I've personally stopped recommending that particular product. There are others that cost less, so why use that one?

Tableau should learn from Primavera, and ensure it builds its user base and market its abilities so that corporates understand the depth and breadth of its usage. Many only use 10-20% of its capabilities. It's the duty of Tableau to ensure potential use cases are advertised and more information is disseminated to corporates to help them understand how it can benefit them and why that should adopt it.

On-premises