SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SAS Visual Analytics and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Data Visualization solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: Does Tableau have any limitations compared to SAS Visual Analytics?
Answer: There are platforms available that enable bridge between technologies. Tableau/Qlik is great visualization from performance and user interface as compared to SAS - #askginie.ai
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We've found the product to be stable and reliable.""I use Visual Analytics for enterprise reporting.""It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective.""The flexibility of the configuration is valuable to me.""The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed.""The technical support services are good.""It's relatively simple to create basic dashboards and reports.""It provided the capability to visualize a bunch of data in an organized way."

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"The initial setup is quick and easy and you don't need special outside assistance to set everything up.""The most valuable part of the solution is the general dashboard features.""Visualization attributes: Marks – Color, Size, Label, etc.. Easily Accessible and Intuitive.""You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau.""The most valuable feature is the drag and drop, then the simplicity to build dashboards which allows us to provide more usable data to our customers.""The solution offers very good reporting.""One of the most valuable features of Tableau is that it's a visual analytics solution, not just a dashboarding solution. Compared to Power BI, which is a dashboarding solution, there are no limitations with Tableau. For example, when you add a chart or a map to Power BI, it has a 3,000-point limitation. When you try to track your whole vehicle on the map, you only see the first 3,000 rows on the map, and Power BI doesn't tell you which part of the data is shown on the map. But Tableau doesn't have any limitations, which means that you can see five million data points on a map. It starts the project by creating the visuals that directly converts to SQLs. In that way, all the components have no limitations. When we compared Tableau to Power BI, we also found Tableau to be more fancy. Fancy means you can create more visual graphics and more visual dashboards. With Power BI, this isn't so—it's just some tables and some simple charts together. Tableau is more for business users who want to analyze data. Tableau can directly connect the analytics systems, like R or Titan, and get the results in screen, so it's a good solution for analytics scientists. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data.""The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."

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Cons
"The solution is a little weak at the front end.""The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages.""A bit more flexibility in the temperatization will be helpful.""The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy.""There are a few little things that are predefined and can be done out of the box immediately. There is no business intelligence application that is predefined, which is something some customers or prospects would love to have. Small and mid-sized companies would struggle with it because they prefer something standard that has been predefined by somebody else.""SAS Visual Analytics could be more user-friendly.""There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance.""There is a need for coding when it comes to digital reporting which can be intimidating."

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"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.""Users would like to be able to export an Excel file when they see a table or something like that. That's not an out-of-the-box feature for Tableau.""It needs more ETL capabilities, to be able to address the end-to-end BI need.""The development part should be better. We are putting a lot of effort in during development, so if we face any struggles, we have to find workaround solutions on the internet.""The pricing is a bit expensive.""It should have more integration with different tools and technologies. Its licensing cost should also be improved.""The only issue with the solution is with its prices at a regional level.""The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Licensing is simple."
  • "$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
  • "The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
  • "Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
  • "SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
  • "It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
  • "It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More SAS Visual Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."
  • "Paying for users you never setup or buying expensive desktop licenses for users who can solve their users with web editing on the server are the two biggest expenses."
  • "Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
  • "Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"
  • "I wish there was more of a subscription model with the pricing when it comes to Tableau, so you can get all the latest version upgrades/features if you pay monthly/annually."
  • "The cost is high."
  • "Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
  • More Tableau Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts use to create and share insights. It is also the tool of choice for rapid prototyping of dashboards. Tableau is very flexible with its data import. Tableau's data blending capability is very intuitive. This capability is useful when you have data spread across several different sources that has not gone through ETL processes. This is a problem analysts deal with routinely. They are unable to wait for the data warehouse team to develop ETL processes to provide the physical models they need to build an analysis. The Tableau interface is Excel-like and has a low barrier to entry for analysts that are used to working in Excel. Building a dashboard by mashing up visualizations in a Tableau worksheet is extremely simple. Users are able to build good presentation-quality dashboards in a very short amount time. Tableau's annotations capabilities and its time and geographical intelligence are key differentiators. Tableau has overcome limitations in data sharing with the introduction of a Data Server in Tableau 7.0. The Data server allows Data sources and extracts to be shared securely and opens up interesting new possibilities. If your application can take advantage of the above… Read more →
    Answers from the Community
    Kim Nachazel
    Hessa Motah - PeerSpot reviewerHessa Motah
    User

    It totally depends on what SAS licensing are in place. Tableau provides integration with R as far as I know.

    reviewer1268517 - PeerSpot reviewerreviewer1268517 (Head of BI at a tech services company with 51-200 employees)
    Real User

    These products all do more or less the same things but often in a very different way. The differences that I am able to report are mainly:
    -Look and feel and here Tableau is definitely superior.
    -Usability, both on the user and developer side and here the products are not very far apart, I would say Tableau a little better.
    -Managed data volumes and here SAS is unmatched (in Unicredit I have seen an installation that serves about 11000 users).

    RaviLagu - PeerSpot reviewerRaviLagu
    Real User

    Tableau is a great tool for visual analytics but when it comes to statistical analysis, it has limited features. You can find basic descriptive statistics like mean, median, mode, SD, Skewness, Kurtosis, etc but for advanced statistical analysis, you can have machine learning models too along with advanced forecasting. If your work does not involve advanced statistical analysis then Tableau is a great tool for basic statistical analysis. In case you have further doubts, please feel free to ask.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with… more »
    Top Answer:The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages.
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies… more »
    Ranking
    7th
    out of 70 in Data Visualization
    Views
    3,574
    Comparisons
    2,854
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    393
    Rating
    8.5
    1st
    out of 70 in Data Visualization
    Views
    12,563
    Comparisons
    10,902
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    620
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SAS BI
    Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
    Learn More
    Overview

    SAS Visual Analytics is a data visualization tool that is used for reporting, data exploration, and analytics. The solution enables users - even those without advanced analytical skills - to understand and examine patterns, trends, and relationships in data. SAS Visual Analytics makes it easy to create and share reports and dashboards that monitor business performance. By using the solution, users can handle, understand, and analyze their data in both past and present fields, as well as influence vital factors for future changes. SAS Visual Analytics is most suitable for larger companies with complex needs.

    SAS Visual Analytics Features

    SAS Visual Analytics has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Data
    • Interactive data discovery
    • Augmented analytics
    • Chat-enabled analytics
    • Sharing and collaboration
    • Visual analytics apps
    • Embedded insights
    • Location analytics
    • Security and administration
    • In-memory engine

    SAS Visual Analytics Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing SAS Visual Analytics. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Machine learning and natural language: SAS Visual Analytics uses machine learning and natural language explanations to find, visualize, and narrate stories and insights that are easy to understand and explain. This enables you to find out why something happened, examine all options, and uncover opportunities hidden deep in your data.
    • Easy and efficient reporting: With SAS Visual Analytics, you can create interactive reports and dashboards so you can quickly summarize key performance metrics and share them via the web and mobile devices.
    • Easy to use: SAS Visual Analytics was designed to be easy to use. Its easy-to-use predictive analytics enables even business analysts to assess possible outcomes, which also helps organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions.
    • Self-service data: Self-service data preparation gives users the ability to import their own data, join tables, create calculated columns, apply data quality functions, and more. In turn, the solution empowers users to access, combine, clean, and prepare their own data in an agile way, which helps facilitate faster, broader adoption of analytics for your entire organization.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SAS Visual Analytics solution.

    A Senior Manager at a consultancy says, “The solution is very stable. The scalability is good. The usability is quite good. It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective.

    PeerSpot user Robert H., Co-owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH, comments, “What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes.

    Andrea D., Chief Technical Officer at Value Partners, explains, “The best feature is that SAS is not a single BI tool. Rather, it is part of an ecosystem of tools, such as tools that help a user to develop artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on. SAS is an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem of products. We've found the product to be stable and reliable. The scalability is good.”

    Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights. 

    Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

    Tableau has many valuable key features:

    • Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
    • Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards. 
    • Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions. 
    • Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data. 
    • Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries. 
    • Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

    Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

    Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.

    Sample Customers
    Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
    Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government21%
    Insurance Company16%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Transportation Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Government13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Healthcare Company7%
    University7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise39%
    Large Enterprise47%
    Buyer's Guide
    SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    SAS Visual Analytics is ranked 7th in Data Visualization with 35 reviews while Tableau is ranked 1st in Data Visualization with 290 reviews. SAS Visual Analytics is rated 8.0, while Tableau is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of SAS Visual Analytics writes "Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". SAS Visual Analytics is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Databricks, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio, Dataiku Data Science Studio and SAS Enterprise Miner, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAP Analytics Cloud and Databricks. See our SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau report.

    See our list of best Data Visualization vendors.

    We monitor all Data Visualization reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.