Tableau Reviews

The most valuable feature of Tableau is the possibility to provide an overall view of the analysis done and let the users get the visualization the way they need/want.

Another valuable thing about using Tableau is that you just need to create the dashboard once. Any type of data update is done automatically.

It is also possible to combine many different types of data sources on a single data connection.

When I started using Tableau, one report that provided customer perception feedback involved a lot of manual effort, and every single month the historical number changed. Using an automatic way to analyze and provide the results increased accuracy to about 98% and reduced 99% of the rework.

There is still room to improve visualization when more than two dimensions are synchronized. Sometimes when you need to use more than one measurement from 2 different data sources, you won't be able to show the values.

Also it would be nice if it was possible to have more than one type of maks used on a single sheet, e.g. use trafic light together with text.

I have used it for about five years.

I did not really encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues. There is a whole support team inside the company to solve these type of issues.

I did not really encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues. There is a whole support team inside the company to solve these type of issues.

I did not really encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues. There is a whole support team inside the company to solve these type of issues.

I did not really encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues. There is a whole support team inside the company to solve these type of issues.

Every time I needed support directly from Tableu, their response took less than four hours to contact me back with an initial solution to my problem.

I get the first draft of our dashboards already done. Because it is a really friendly user tool, it didn't take too long for me to start developing my dashboards. Of course, after a while, I developed my skills and it became even easier.

I can say that it took about six months for Tableau to payback the investment done just by the fact that it reduced 99% of the rework for a single report.

If you are a student Tableau provides a 1 year license for desktop version. You can also publish your work on Tableau Public.

I strongly recommend using the trial version of Tableau before buy it. If you are not the type of person that is familiar with programming scripts, this is the perfect tool. It is really simple to create the first views, even though it will take a while to understand how some of the details work. Watching the tutorial videos helps too.

The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team. The ease of blending data from multiple sources has allowed us to generate new insight and bring a different level of questions to the meeting table. The type of dashboards we have been able to create have made it easier for individuals who are not use to looking at data to navigate and drill into their own material to find answers or ask questions they never thought to ask in the first place.

We’ve been able to replace several manual spreadsheet reports that took hours for individuals to complete. With Tableau Server and some automation processes put in place, those reports are now automatically delivered to the end users, saving time and money. We can also develop reports much faster than in the past plus provide an interface to a database which in the past might not of been used as much due to the lack of technical skills to write the queries.

Formatting controls could use some improvement. We’ve found that to be the most confusing part of developing reports, at least until you get use to where all the controls are at and how to use them. Ideally, making a user-friendly interface for formatting the worksheets and dashboards would be a big improvement and time saver. Recent version upgrades have added some new features such as being able to change the format for your entire workbook all at once. Still a work in progress though.

I have used it for eight years and sever administrator for 2 years.

Deployment and stability have been flawless so far. We’ve not encountered a data set that has slowed the software down and we use records with millions of rows. There is no clear-cut line of determining when best to consider switching over to an enterprise-wide model vs. per license, so there could be a better way of informing their customers on when to flip that switch.

We have never experienced an issue with the server software or any technical problems with the desktop or interactor licenses.

Once others in the company start seeing what it can do they immediately ask what needs to happen so they can get a license. We started down the path of looking at core enterprise licensing but were told the company is moving away from that model and sticking with a per user/license structure. Depending on how many in the company want to start using the software plus needing the additional interactor license to access the server the purchases can add up quickly.

Very little need to contact their customer service but when I did they were professional and quick to respond.

Both customer service and technical support have been excellent. Sales reps have been very nice to work with and you don’t end up with that used car salesmen feel. In fact, we typically meet with our reps about 3-4 times a year and have been extremely supportive.

No - most of our reporting was done between MS Excel and MS Access.

Setup was extremely easy. Essentially a plug-and-play right out of the box.

We implemented it in-house. Implementation was easy in comparison to other systems we’ve worked on in the past. QA testing was seamless and found no integration issues.

We’ve found quite a bit of savings using Tableau, based on the time it takes to develop ad-hoc reports, changes in process due to new insights and report automation.

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. Note that for others to interface with a published report on your server, they need what’s called an interactor license. We acquired several guest interactor licenses in order to lend out to departments so they can see the benefit of accessing their reports on the server vs. static reports. This encourages them to purchase their own interactor licenses or at least plan to purchase when preparing their budgets for the following year.

We evaluated several potential software systems such as Visier, Lumira, and Qlik, but found Tableau the easiest to use for individuals who did not need to have a programming background. Plus, the freedom to develop from a blank canvas with data that could be from any corner of the company appealed more to our team than working with a set of canned metrics to one specific department.

The annual Tableau customer conference is a huge learning opportunity for new and seasoned users alike. The week-long conference provides a large number of workshops to help increase your skills and many of these sessions are hands-on training. Also a great way to network with other users and see how they are using Tableau.

I have been using Tableau since 2006; 3.5 years as an employee of Tableau Software and 7 years as a trainer/consultant. The more robust features include improved geo-encoding. Shape content is a big winner, as is cluster analysis. Cross-DB joins are helpful, as well. A huge improvement is the ability to render DV to any device from phone to PC.

As a training organization, the subject of improving organization functions is somewhat opaque. The overall view is that we see software as a service as the big win for any client. Note well: To truly realize organizational change, top management must embrace the use of Tableau.

• 100% in the cloud.
• Reduce the price once in the cloud.
• Go back to emphasizing simplicity.

I have used it for 10 years.

We have not encountered any deployment issues; still fast and easy overall.

We have not encountered any stability issues. The QC process seems to improve with each major release.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

On a scale of 1 to 10, customer service is an 8. It is helpful to hear a tel call from support but not without advance notice. Also, some of the new support folks are not up to speed with more challenging subjects.

There are no 10s in real life; technical support is 8.5.

Initial setup was not complex at all.

Generally, assessing ROI is a very open-ended question. Real ROI if that significant will never be revealed. Day-to-day savings are in time savings, which are viable, to say the least.

We do studies for firms as part of our services. QLTek is still viable but more and more we are hearing about Power BI. Carolina Health Systems just adopted Power BI to replace Tableau due to server costs.

We find that there is a new type of Tableau user emerging. These new users do not abide by the tenets of data visualization by thought leaders like Stephen Few. Hence, we created a blog for an open discussion comparing the work of the artist Jackson Pollock with this new generation. That blog is accessible below.

http://www.viainsights.com/Blo...

Note well: VIA Insights has no formal relationship with Tableau; we are completely independent.

Tableau Desktop - The product is easy to use, and does not require IT skills. I can create dashboards and connect to databases very easy and quickly.

We experienced an 80% reduction in the amount of time it takes to prepare reports and dashboards using Tableau. Before that, we had to use Excel spreadsheets and that consumed a lot of time to prepare data monthly. In addition, there was a problem related to the amount of lines in Excel that are not enough for our database.

I’d like to see a better ETL preparation engine.

I have been using Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server for four years.

The product is very stable and ease to deploy. We can deploy an enterprise solution in two days.

Technical support is very helpful and provide quick answers. In addition, their technical support is in many languages, which is very helpful when you face some issues.

I previously used QlikView and MicroStrategy, and they are not as friendly as Tableau for the end user. If you do not have IT skills, you probably will be stuck with a basic level of visualization.

For simple and more complex setups, it is easy to set up the product without too many issues.

If you want to start with Tableau Desktop, you can choose an in-house implementation, but if you are going to set up an enterprise solution, my advice is to use a vendor team to support your implementation. It will be faster.

The pricing and licensing model is very simple. There is one price for Tableau Desktop and two types of enterprise prices. You always know which price you are going to pay.

If you have a lot of databases to bring together, you might experience some ETL issues. But in the next release, version 10, the product will have a cross-join database, and that will help a lot to bring in many datasources.

The most valuable feature of this product is its visualizations.

It helped us deliver highly dynamic visualizations and dashboards to our clients.

It is not scalable at the enterprise level. Performance degraded massively when we scaled up backend data.

They have not developed a feature to re-use components.

We have used Tableau for over one year.

Performance degraded while scaling up the database.

Customer service is average.

SAP BusinessObjects does not offer similar visualization. Tableau’s visualizations are definitely a plus.

Initial setup was straightforward.

In-house and client site implementation. Product manuals helped achieve it.

The per-user licensing model needs to be improved, based on the type of user. Currently, all users have to pay the same price, irrespective of user type.

It is very good for local standalone databases. Enterprise-level implementation degrades performance.

There are many features which I can speak about, but its overall ease with which you can analyze your data within a couple of clicks is an outstanding feature. Also, the stunning visualization with lots of statistical options, makes it a valuable product.

When we started with Tableau, it was basically used for converting existing Excel reports. But later on, after exploring the features and with latest releases, it had a greater impact on the way we interact with the data. We were able to connect the data from different source of data together. We were able to relate the defects, quality and cost aspects of the products of our company from different regions in a much more efficient way. The visualizations gave a better picture of the current state of affairs and we got an idea of what needs to be improved in the line of business. Now, Tableau has become an integral part of our organization for any analytical solution.

Tableau comes out with one major release every year and minor releases frequently, which is very good. Also, most of the changes are done based on the ideas posted on the community, which means it listens to the user base to come up with the changes, which is phenomenal.

As far as the changes I would like to see, they could improve performance with respect to big data connections and cube data sources. Many users in my organization feel that Tableau is great with RDBMS, but with Hadoop or cube data sources, the performance is not so great.

I have been using Tableau for nearly four years for the majority of my reporting and analytical solutions.

We did not face any issues with deployment, stability or scalability. The deployment was simple and we have not faced any issues until now.

I would rate customer service and technical support as 9/10, excellent. The turnaround time for any issue is very good.

The initial setup was straightforward. The only thing you have to check is for hardware compatibility. The rest is very simple, with just a click of a button.

As implementation is simple, we preferred an in-house team. But you will get assistance from a vendor team if required.

ROI depends on how effectively you utilize the tool and explore the data.

Pricing of the tool would be expensive for any small organization. I would suggest sitting with the vendor's relationship manager to discuss your strategy and the pricing model you’re looking for.

We explored other tools such as QlikView and Pentaho, but Tableau stood out in terms of its ease of use, great visualizations and simplicity. We already had an ETL solution in place, so Tableau complemented it well for our use cases.

Tableau is more than a reporting tool; it has the analytical capabilities which need to be explored efficiently to get the best out of the tool. If you just want to replicate an Excel report, it would not help much in terms of ROI.

Tableau is a very good analytical reporting solution. It is improving its features with every release.

The dashboard with graphs is this product’s most valuable feature.

Previously, we were maintaining an Excel file for graphs and tables. With Tableau, dashboards are released and we have requested employees to access the data directly from the dashboard. Also, now the process is automated, so there are no manual errors.

I feel Tableau didn't cater to each and every requirement within the team. For example, we have an SSAS cube and I don't remember that I could connect that in Tableau. Maybe in the latest version this has been taken care of.

I used it for 18 months.

I did not encounter any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Technical support was very good. 7/10.

I had been using SSRS, but the company where I worked had started using Tableau before I joined it.

It is a nice product and quick to get started, as compared to other products and technologies.

The ease and speed of creating visualizations and interfaces with any database are this product’s most valuable features.

It is able to provide answers within hours instead of days. Typically, we would have to create a SSIS package to connect to that database, then create a SSRS report and meet with the users a few times before coming up with the final visualization product. With Tableau, we can create all of these in one session.

It would be great if the licensing cost per user was cheaper.

I have been using it for one year.

We currently cannot use version 9 because we have to wait for our Tableau Server to be upgraded to version 9 first.

Technical support is good.

We were previously using SSR for reports and SSIS for retrieving the data.

Installing Tableau Desktop was easy.

We worked with the Tableau team.

I would recommend lowering the licensing cost per user.

I would recommend that everyone use this product.