Business users moving from Tableau to MS Report builder
How difficult or easy would it be for a business user using Tableau to start using Report Builder 3.0 when the Reporting solution moves over to MS BI solutions?
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when?
How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? You get the picture.
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
Manager of Data Analytics with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Top 20
May 15, 2014
Sorry to hear you have to move to Report Builder. Tableau is superior by a long shot! Find another gig. Don't go backwards. Move forward with Tableau !
Tableau is more suitable for somebody that is not developer and it's very easy to use and to create great visual presentation. For developers Report Builder would be more domestic.
Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
Feb 11, 2014
It is really the outcome and target goals that are achieved with the right set of BI solutions,people using it to add more efficiency and productivity at all fronts is the kind of result you want to see. Tools include human and technology bonded together to produce results, After all it is the function of both parties to work together, collaborate and share resources together. In the human perspective we look at the training and how best we can create solutions . With the BI solution it is the way we distinguish between the existing solutions that will to the best of its capability serve our business interests and requirements.
Current business leadership include the VP of Finance, so determining a business case was and is a problem for him and those directly under him. So is a no my problem.
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
Database Expert at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 6, 2014
Reading through the responses from all you knowledgeable persons out there is so very enlightening. It's like sitting in a room and getting your experiences on these tools first hand. Thanks a lot for your inputs, which will help in putting pros and cons for the company to make a trade off and choose over the two.
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
I wouldn't feel too sorry, it is a very good group to work with. After a lot of years working in IT both in the US and Europe one of the things I find interesting is that Americans in business, especially with regard to software, feel they must have the latest, greatest and most feature rich everything when very often being a little behind the bleeding edge gets the job done and costs less. The real issue is to look at the problem being solved and find good enough while keeping an eye on where you are going.
Having said that took a brief look at the link you indicated and I like the fact that it runs on Linux. Thumbs up on that aspect.
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when?
How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 6, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
Rich - I feel for you. The supposed benefits of standardisation of end-user tools that do not have to be supported by a central IT groups are way over-estimated. Closest possible process and skills fit for each reporting chain is probably much more important. In your case, one problem with trying to do 'everything' in Tableau is that Tableau does not have much in the way of a data transformation workspace, where data extracted from reference repositories can be further transformed by end users who know the data intimately, can spot and standardise errors etc. With Tableau you cannot even enter corrections manually. Consider Omniscope. It has all the same advantages of Tableau, plus an end-user drag-and-drop no scripting/no coding data transformation workspace where final tweaks can be put on structured and unstructured data sets to really make the data ready to tell highly-visual interactive story. Omniscope ntegrates with any existing MS 'stack', but adds essential elements of completeness, end-user sufficiency and repeated, automated refreshable data wrangling/munging that Tableau (and certainly MS tools) do not. The way to educate in this case is to add a broader next-gen tool to the shortlist. It will set those trying to dictate to you right back on their heels...they do not know near as much as they think they do, trust me. Omniscope is free to try:
www.visokio.com/downloads
What you have indicated is pretty much what I see and have been quietly trying to push. If anything the two are complementary, but I have management above me who see it more as one or the other. So what I am doing is slowly grinding my way through Tableau, have a learning curve to conquer after all, and it is as you indicated a much different tool than the SSRS/SSAS set. So I have been proving that what we have now can be done quite neatly in Tableau, and hopefully what is planned for in the future.
So, two prototypes based upon our current reports have been built by myself in Tableau which has shown a small bit of the capability of that tool. But I am still being directed to try to find a single tool that solves all. A mistake in this case based upon what I am seeing. But as we both know often organizational politics is a far greater factor than actual technical capabilities of any software.
Today I was told to also scope out the IBM and Qliktech tools. Mind you I am supposed to wrap up making any choices by the end of this month. I have been told to put some of our requirements out to the sales groups of some of these outfits with the idea that they should indicate what they can handle, to which I replied that in my experience with sales people almost none of them will ever indicate that the product they are selling cannot but do all that is asked and at least 50% more. The real warts are only discovered after the PO has been put through.
Thanks for the email, it is nice to know one is not going the wrong direction in the wilderness.
Director of IT at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Feb 5, 2014
I can't see one replacing the other. They are two distinctively different tools.
We use Report Builder for creating SO, AR, PO, and WO forms.
We do not use Report Builder for BI. We use Tableau for that.
Using Report Builder requires using other MS technologies such as reporting services. If you want to use Report Builder for BI you will need MS analysis services too.
I'm not saying these are bad things. I'm a MS fan and think these services on SQL Server provide value. But they do increase the complexity BI reporting when compared to Tableau.
Aside from the complexity; the Report Builder user interface feels more like forms and listings. In other words more traditional reporting. In Report Builder you can't define measures and dimensions that behave as they do in Tableau. That's done in the back end. And this isn't a good thing for dynamic BI environments. (i.e. I need this yesterday) . In report Builder you deal with Data Sets as you would in Access or Business Objects. Tableau does require data sets but it jumps the user way past the data set mentality into a more aware "thinking" environment. And thinking is key to BI.
These tools are apples and oranges. Thinking you're moving from one to the other is a questionable mental model. Embracing both is not a bad idea.
It has been a while since I did stuff in Report Builder. But why do you want to go away from using Tableau just because the Reporting solution moves to MS BI solutions? I would suggest keep using Tableau on top of the MS SQL database. In my view Tableau is still the most intuitive visualization tool out there for the employee building the reports.
Does the fact that MS wanted to buy Tableau Software tell us anything years ago? Respectfully, the move away from Tableau tells me more about the culture of the company. As for time to benefit, the success stories with business users are legion.
You can't really compare Tableau and Report Builder. They're both BI front ends but do quite different things (at quite different cost!). There's nothing to prevent a Tableau user learning Report Builder - it is a user-oriented tool after all but the nearest Microsoft technology to Tableau is Power View. A Tableau power user is likely to be disappointed with Power View but for fairly light, visual reporting requirements it is a reasonable, cheaper alternative. Version 2 is built into Office 2013 Pro Plus SKU's and there are also versions delivered through SharePoint 2010 (v1) and SharePoint 2013 (v2) as long as you have SQL Server 2012 SP1.
I am still early in my Tableau experience. I do know that MS has a thing called PowerPivot which is part of the MS answer to Tableau, interesting that so many other BI providers are having to adapt to the competition provided by Tableau, but that also requires enterprise Sharepoint. Where I work they are just coming out of what we might call BI 1.0 and trying to get to BI 2.0, which is why I am there.
What might be “easy” for some is often “difficult” for others. Some users might find their experience with Tableau can be applied to quickly getting up to speed with Report Builder; others might find their mastery of Tableau gets in the way of learning the new software. I’m sure if asked, some colleague’s would say they find Tableau hard to use. Even so, I think what you really need to know is how much training would be needed after converting over to MS BI. I would suggest that to find the answer, you should ask the organization’s best Tableau users to try out a few typical daily tasks in Report Builder and let them evaluate how difficult or easy they are to complete. Their responses can be used to develop a training program for the other users.
I would also suggest this link technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239338.aspx. It provides tutorials for various tasks in Report Builder, which may be able to give you a feel for how simple or complex it is to build a dashboard, chart or report in Report Builder.
Tableau Enterprise and Microsoft Power BI compete in the visual data analysis category. Based on comparison, Tableau appears to have an upper hand due to its advanced graphical representation capabilities and broader data source integration, while Power BI benefits from better integration within the Microsoft ecosystem.Features: Tableau Enterprise is recognized for its robust graphical representation, extensive data source integration, and ease in creating flexible, interactive dashboards....
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when?
How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? You get the picture.
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
I wish you the best.
Sorry to hear you have to move to Report Builder. Tableau is superior by a long shot! Find another gig. Don't go backwards. Move forward with Tableau !
Tableau is more suitable for somebody that is not developer and it's very easy to use and to create great visual presentation. For developers Report Builder would be more domestic.
It is really the outcome and target goals that are achieved with the right set of BI solutions,people using it to add more efficiency and productivity at all fronts is the kind of result you want to see. Tools include human and technology bonded together to produce results, After all it is the function of both parties to work together, collaborate and share resources together. In the human perspective we look at the training and how best we can create solutions . With the BI solution it is the way we distinguish between the existing solutions that will to the best of its capability serve our business interests and requirements.
Current business leadership include the VP of Finance, so determining a business case was and is a problem for him and those directly under him. So is a no my problem.
Thanks,
Rich
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
I wish you the best.
Reading through the responses from all you knowledgeable persons out there is so very enlightening. It's like sitting in a room and getting your experiences on these tools first hand. Thanks a lot for your inputs, which will help in putting pros and cons for the company to make a trade off and choose over the two.
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit?
Cost reduction?
Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash?
Reduced collections?
Better on time shipping?
Faster production?
Increased gross margin?
Reduced inventory?
You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
To answer the initial question: Every change is difficult without buy-in from the stakeholders.
People love change. What they don't like is change without benefit. Perceived or real.
I hope this helps you a little to better meet the challenges you're facing.
I wish you the best.
I wouldn't feel too sorry, it is a very good group to work with. After a lot of years working in IT both in the US and Europe one of the things I find interesting is that Americans in business, especially with regard to software, feel they must have the latest, greatest and most feature rich everything when very often being a little behind the bleeding edge gets the job done and costs less. The real issue is to look at the problem being solved and find good enough while keeping an eye on where you are going.
Having said that took a brief look at the link you indicated and I like the fact that it runs on Linux. Thumbs up on that aspect.
Thanks,
Rich
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when?
How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
I wish you the best.
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
I wish you the best.
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set?
Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities?
Can the products features and capabilities be exploited?
By who and when?
How does that make money for the company?
Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization?
Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? etc...
It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool!
What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously?
All that other stuff is exactly as you stated. Hype!
Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff".
But what "stuff" does your company need?
I wish you the best.
Rich - I feel for you. The supposed benefits of standardisation of end-user tools that do not have to be supported by a central IT groups are way over-estimated. Closest possible process and skills fit for each reporting chain is probably much more important. In your case, one problem with trying to do 'everything' in Tableau is that Tableau does not have much in the way of a data transformation workspace, where data extracted from reference repositories can be further transformed by end users who know the data intimately, can spot and standardise errors etc. With Tableau you cannot even enter corrections manually. Consider Omniscope. It has all the same advantages of Tableau, plus an end-user drag-and-drop no scripting/no coding data transformation workspace where final tweaks can be put on structured and unstructured data sets to really make the data ready to tell highly-visual interactive story. Omniscope ntegrates with any existing MS 'stack', but adds essential elements of completeness, end-user sufficiency and repeated, automated refreshable data wrangling/munging that Tableau (and certainly MS tools) do not. The way to educate in this case is to add a broader next-gen tool to the shortlist. It will set those trying to dictate to you right back on their heels...they do not know near as much as they think they do, trust me. Omniscope is free to try:
www.visokio.com/downloads
Hi,
What you have indicated is pretty much what I see and have been quietly trying to push. If anything the two are complementary, but I have management above me who see it more as one or the other. So what I am doing is slowly grinding my way through Tableau, have a learning curve to conquer after all, and it is as you indicated a much different tool than the SSRS/SSAS set. So I have been proving that what we have now can be done quite neatly in Tableau, and hopefully what is planned for in the future.
So, two prototypes based upon our current reports have been built by myself in Tableau which has shown a small bit of the capability of that tool. But I am still being directed to try to find a single tool that solves all. A mistake in this case based upon what I am seeing. But as we both know often organizational politics is a far greater factor than actual technical capabilities of any software.
Today I was told to also scope out the IBM and Qliktech tools. Mind you I am supposed to wrap up making any choices by the end of this month. I have been told to put some of our requirements out to the sales groups of some of these outfits with the idea that they should indicate what they can handle, to which I replied that in my experience with sales people almost none of them will ever indicate that the product they are selling cannot but do all that is asked and at least 50% more. The real warts are only discovered after the PO has been put through.
Thanks for the email, it is nice to know one is not going the wrong direction in the wilderness.
Cheers,
Rich Mycroft
I can't see one replacing the other. They are two distinctively different tools.
We use Report Builder for creating SO, AR, PO, and WO forms.
We do not use Report Builder for BI. We use Tableau for that.
Using Report Builder requires using other MS technologies such as reporting services. If you want to use Report Builder for BI you will need MS analysis services too.
I'm not saying these are bad things. I'm a MS fan and think these services on SQL Server provide value. But they do increase the complexity BI reporting when compared to Tableau.
Aside from the complexity; the Report Builder user interface feels more like forms and listings. In other words more traditional reporting. In Report Builder you can't define measures and dimensions that behave as they do in Tableau. That's done in the back end. And this isn't a good thing for dynamic BI environments. (i.e. I need this yesterday) . In report Builder you deal with Data Sets as you would in Access or Business Objects. Tableau does require data sets but it jumps the user way past the data set mentality into a more aware "thinking" environment. And thinking is key to BI.
These tools are apples and oranges. Thinking you're moving from one to the other is a questionable mental model. Embracing both is not a bad idea.
It has been a while since I did stuff in Report Builder. But why do you want to go away from using Tableau just because the Reporting solution moves to MS BI solutions? I would suggest keep using Tableau on top of the MS SQL database. In my view Tableau is still the most intuitive visualization tool out there for the employee building the reports.
Does the fact that MS wanted to buy Tableau Software tell us anything years ago? Respectfully, the move away from Tableau tells me more about the culture of the company. As for time to benefit, the success stories with business users are legion.
You can't really compare Tableau and Report Builder. They're both BI front ends but do quite different things (at quite different cost!). There's nothing to prevent a Tableau user learning Report Builder - it is a user-oriented tool after all but the nearest Microsoft technology to Tableau is Power View. A Tableau power user is likely to be disappointed with Power View but for fairly light, visual reporting requirements it is a reasonable, cheaper alternative. Version 2 is built into Office 2013 Pro Plus SKU's and there are also versions delivered through SharePoint 2010 (v1) and SharePoint 2013 (v2) as long as you have SQL Server 2012 SP1.
Thank you Mary Ann and Rich. Thanks for link too Mary. I will explore further and see if we can get answers from the end users. Will post it here too.
I am still early in my Tableau experience. I do know that MS has a thing called PowerPivot which is part of the MS answer to Tableau, interesting that so many other BI providers are having to adapt to the competition provided by Tableau, but that also requires enterprise Sharepoint. Where I work they are just coming out of what we might call BI 1.0 and trying to get to BI 2.0, which is why I am there.
What might be “easy” for some is often “difficult” for others. Some users might find their experience with Tableau can be applied to quickly getting up to speed with Report Builder; others might find their mastery of Tableau gets in the way of learning the new software. I’m sure if asked, some colleague’s would say they find Tableau hard to use. Even so, I think what you really need to know is how much training would be needed after converting over to MS BI. I would suggest that to find the answer, you should ask the organization’s best Tableau users to try out a few typical daily tasks in Report Builder and let them evaluate how difficult or easy they are to complete. Their responses can be used to develop a training program for the other users.
I would also suggest this link technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239338.aspx. It provides tutorials for various tasks in Report Builder, which may be able to give you a feel for how simple or complex it is to build a dashboard, chart or report in Report Builder.