What is our primary use case?
Our company uses dashboards to understand how much we can improve the situation, track performance in real-time and help managers react faster to non-obvious things.
For our clients, we carry out system integration, and pilot projects, develop first dashboard layouts, provide system support during integration and post-sales service, and provide training to our clients. The main goal of customers is to understand whether they will get profits in the future or not and be able to influence the situation right now.
How has it helped my organization?
Tableau helps the company to see insights. It will allow profit or loss to be predicted, but very flexible to react to changes.
Tableau's dashboard allows teams to see what's going on at a high level. Our company sells software licenses and it's very important for us to be able to track license expiration dates that may expire in the near future and to be able to contact customers and ask them to renegotiate contracts or to warn customers in time about possible license renewals or additional purchases of new licenses.
Instead of going deep into the CRM in detail, we can do it directly from the dashboards generated by Tableau, saving ourselves time and increasing our productivity.
Other customers can use the solution to check the duration of certain transactions. They can see how quickly they are completing transactions in a call center, for example. They can look at targets and get alerts to help them improve results.
What is most valuable?
Users don't have to wait for monthly reports, Tableau allows users to view numbers to make real-time decisions. It is easy and intuitive to use and has quick access to analytics, high performance even for very big data, and a built-in ETL tool to clean and prepare data.
Both web and mobile versions are supported. Updates take place at least once every three months. We always get the latest version with the latest features.
There is a huge community of Tableau users - 99.9% of questions are answered.
The solution integrates well with Python and R. The solution scales well and it is very stable.
The setup is quite easy and the technical support has been responsive.
What needs improvement?
Despite the number of available interface languages, I would like to see as many languages as possible represented in Tableau. So many companies really want to use this program and it suits them better than any other similar programs, but due to the lack of understanding of English, it is difficult for them to decide to integrate this particular product.
In addition to the existing set of common data types, Tableau Desktop has such a wonderful thing as a union of data on the principle of relationships for Multi-table. This type of union is very easy to work with the data source itself and does not overload the system.
At the moment, this type of union only exists for connections from databases. It would be nice if Tableau added this type of merging for data sources that are on the Tableau Server/Tableau Cloud.
Every three months, Tableau adds new features. There are always new features coming up.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable. It's reliable and has a good security program.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very easy to scale. The Blueprint methodology shows how large companies can successfully implement and develop it.
We are a small company. Right now we have about eight users of the solution. Part of them prepare analytics and manage the solution on the server side as the analysts, architects, and solution engineers, and the rest are people who use the solution as users, viewers, and explorers.
How are customer service and support?
We have full technical support for our clients. When we get a new client, we provide full support and handle pilot projects. We can also provide dashboards. We have a community for clients that are new to the solution.
Our company would like to improve the culture of data in our country. We're working to provide learning resources and free YouTube lessons to help new users understand the product.
As a company, we provide Tableau support for our clients. If our company cannot find any solution ourselves, we contact the brand's technical support, and they respond very quickly. Depending on the complexity of the problem, a solution can be delivered within two to three days up to a week.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In the past, I have also used Excel and some Power BI.
In our company we like to say that there is no perfect BI, only the tool that suits you and your goals. Therefore, most companies choose to work with a different set of tools, sometimes combining several different ones. The main thing is that they all work towards your main goal and the achievement of your results.
Despite the fact that the company sells both Tableau and Power BI, we mainly use Tableau.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very easy. That said, it's best to prepare your system. You need to understand how your system will be able to integrate with it. You also have to understand your data.
It can be set up by one person if it is a small company and he is well versed in the product and in his system. However, if the company is large and the process is complex, then of course a team of several people may be needed to share the integration process between working with server setup, analytics department, and working with clients.
The service can be set up completely automatically. This will depend on the server the company uses and whether additional add-ons for working with Tableau are enabled. Automation makes it easy to check data flows and dashboards, simplifies server operations and monitors errors that occur, and sends alerts or warnings if they occur.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price is still quite high for many Tableau customers. That said, the company understands the value the solution provides. That, and the integration process is so much easier with Tableau. Even with the licensing being so high, it is worth it due to the simplicity and finally, they see the financial return of using the product.
What other advice do I have?
I'm an analytics lead. I'm an integrator of the product.
We work with Tableau Cloud and with the Tableau Server.
Make sure you are really ready to integrate with Tableau. That will make the deployment go much more smoothly. Users that are fully prepared will be able to get the most out of it. If they are not prepared, they will not use it to the fullest extent possible. Sometimes you have to change not just the tool; you have to change the entire company's process. The product implementation needs to be considered at all steps, both within the company and for all stakeholders.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator