Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

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 constantly very recently. Tableau is the best tool available in the market for data discovery and analysis. Creation of dashboards, and stories is as sample as it gets with Tableau. SAP has SAP Lumira that tries to rival Tableau but, in my opinion, its not there yet, assuming it will be at that level at some point in the future.

SAP BI has a number of tools that do very specific tasks and sometimes people new to SAP BI feel overwhelmed by them. A tool commonly used in SAP BI suite is Web Intelligence which is very powerful, sometimes for its own disadvantage. Also, if you have SAP BW, SAP HANA, or SAP ERP in your organization, the go to BI tool will be SAP BI. SAP BI doesn't have any dashboarding tools that are easy to use as Tableau. I worked with Xcelsius for 6 years and I can do a lot of things with it but never created a dashboard I like with in 20 minutes like I can with Tableau. Now SAP brought in something called Design Studio to replace Xcelsius and I think it is a new bad idea from SAP.

Rather than trying to replace BO with Tableau, I would suggest using Tableau in conjunction with BO and select a tool based on the usecase (structured reports vs dashboards)

Regards : Tableau training in pune

In my opinion, Tableau is "best of bread" answering "one type of question" perfectly, while BO is a suite of tools answering "many types of questions" well. If you're looking for SQL based pixel perfect reports go for BO. If you're look for reports, dashboards, analysis in one suite go for BO. If you have a lot of analytic questions and like to visualize them, go for Tableau. If you want to compare them directly, then compare Tableau with Web Intelligence (Component of BO) or compare Tableau to SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud). 

Since at least 45% of BusinessObjects customers in North America also use Tableau, you would be a good company using both tools. BusinessObjects is used primarily for BI reporting and Tableau for power users wanting to do data discovery and visualization. Tableau is superior for visualization but really has no built-in BI reporting capability.

You should always choose the best tool for the job which is why so many BusinessObjects customers exist in a state of happy co-existence. There are also third party tools that allow you to integrate BusinessObjects and Tableau so you can leverage your BO investment in Tableau.

I would not advise even looking at Lumira since SAP announced its end of life a while back in preference to their new cloud based analytics platform SAC.

Full disclosure : I work for a BI solutions company that has partnered with BusinessObjects and SAP for 23 years and is also been a Tableau partner for 3 years.

If doing a technical comparison, Lumira (SAP's visual tool) isn't bad but the market share in this space is going to Tableau and Qlik both of which are strong in the visual side of BI.

Most Business Objects sites do the bulk of their reporting using Web Intelligence, which is stronger at the more traditional reporting side with the ability to create interactive dashboards and the like but it tends to be harder to do this well than in Tableau. So, to answer the headline question, Tableau is better at visualization.

You imply that a key driver to considering change is to provide the users with greater autonomy and to support increased self service and the failure of the current approach. The majority of BI initiatives fail because of issues having nothing to do with the products but these are convenient scapegoats when there is failure thus the idea that changing products will fix everything. If one doesn't change what caused the existing implementation to fail then there is high probability of repeating the exercise. I challenge the assumption that better visualization is the solution to the current issues. It might be the trigger for change to be fair.

The Nirvana of self service for users is one of the most areas of failure in BI and will rarely work without a supporting environment of product training, training in the data, user understandable data, serious commitment of time from the key users (or specialist report/dashboard writers embedded in user departments) and ongoing support from IT.

The concept of using Business Objects in combination with a Tableau or Qlik is a reasonable one and I have seen these work and I personally like it when done properly. It is unlikely to free up IT resources, however. It typically changes how and what is delivered not how much effort will be required.

I agree with Larry Keller's first comment that you should not be comparing Tableau with BusinessObjects - it is like comparing apples and oranges. BusinessObjects is a fully mature Business Intelligence suite which includes powerful analysis and data visualization tools.
You could certainly compare Tableau to Lumira but Tableau would probably come out ahead since Lumira is still new and catching up.

I think you all need to understand that Business Objects has several different end user experiences including visualization. The traditional query and reporting supported by IT and the end user tools that require no IT involvement. You get both with one integrated platform (server) if you want or stand along if you want a desktop tool. You have already made the investment, you just need to let the users have the right tool. You already have what you need without going to another server or desktop tool.

Disclosure: I work for SAP

I think you have quite convincingly answered your question. IT made an
investment in Business Objects but has seen limited use/acceptance. Your
department went with an agile solution that meets your needs for quick
turnaround and excellent visualization and you want to expand that solution
much to the chagrin of IT. How dare you business users go around IT or even
think about not using the
corporate-back-office-IT-blessed-probably-more-expensive-we-know-all-your-reporting-needs
solution?

Make friends with IT and have them buy and host/administer the Tableau
server; and if they don't agree use the hosted version in the cloud!

I would agree. However, the new tool Lumira is developed and designed for the end user. You have it right on the use, except Lumira is new just to combat Tableau, but with the power of integration to BOE is desired.

Disclosure: I work for SAP

I'm reiterating what has been said in one way or another but: We currently use BO for end user generated ad hoc reporting, which it works well for, but I wouldn't even consider it for use in the way one would utilize Tableau or other similar data visualization/exploration/dashboarding tools (though admittedly I've never looked into Lumira). Likewise, I wouldn't use Tableau as a primary canned and/or ad hoc reporting tool as this is not where it shines.

Sure, if you have the desktop, you need the server product to publish your results. Then considering Tableau server is absolutely legitimate.
Using Tableau desktop should be able to free up IT-resources already. You can ask the BO fans in the company, - in the case of choosing BO as the only platform- if they are ready to adopt the work on Tableau-desktop, and are they going to be able to provide on the fly reports/analysis as your team does with Tableau at the moment.

If your HR team feels happy with Tableau and at the same time you can get their active involvement and their promise to develop and support it today
and future managers of information systems, go for the Tableau server solution. My past experience is that using Tableau at the users side, we as an IT team had no change request, users were self-serviced and happy. This was not the case at the same time with some other user communities at the same company using Business Objects. The second community never managed to be self-serviced. Engage IT Team in the areas of Tableau server to all
other Applications servers you need to get your data automatically (eg
HRIS , ERP) and leave your "specialists" and experienced HR users in the
areas of reporting. They know, they "feel" the data better

Given familiarity with the Tableau toolset, and assuming that it meets your current and projected needs the choice is clear indeed... e.g. if your needs are met by MS Access - why use full-fledged RDBMS such as Oracle? :)

Switching to BusinessObjects at this point would bring little to your specific environment (scalability, for one), and would gobble up your IT resources - not free them up.

Having a background in stats, I do appreciate the fact that Tableau now connects directly to R and has forecasting models in version 8.1

Disclosure - I have been training/consulting Tableau for 7 years

Tableau has very nice visualization tools and if that is the extent of your needs and you don't see a significant growth in users it may be your best value.

If, on the other hand you anticipate the number of users or report consumers to increase or you want to perform analytical analysis, you may want to consider SAS Visual Analytics, as it can provide state of the art data visualization, BI reporting, and statistical analysis at a very competitive price.

Disclosure: I work for SAS

I don’t think it’s one versus the other … but both depending on the use case. Managed, governed, validated, role-base secured, company standard reports and dashboards with guaranteed SLAs in terms of availability and performance should come from the enterprise BI platform. Prototyping, departmental, self-service, explorative/discovery reporting can come from Tableau. If/when a report from Tableau gains acceptance and needs included in the managed BO platform, the working Tableau prototype will serve as a tremendous accelerator for developing the managed report in BO. The need for one-off, departmental reporting and exploration will always exist and is being done in sub-optimal ways using Access, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. – so implementing Tableau puts this onto a common platform that won’t slow that progress or stifle speed/creativity, but gives IT visibility/displays/prototypes from which to engineer managed reports when needed.

Constraints with Tableau trying to be an enterprise/managed platform include:

- Lack of robust metadata layer required for governance/validation and effectively rationalizing data from multiple sources

- Inability to scale across the enterprise – good at GB level, not TB+ level

- Inability to create new relationships or dimensions within the data at the BI layer

- Lack of robust security amidst its method of bringing data down to the client machine’s memory when processing – doesn’t encrypt data and not compliant with industry security standards

- Limited scheduling/notification/alerting capabilities

- Simply put – Tableau is an awesome data visualization/exploration tool, not an enterprise class BI platform

Thanks,
Steve

Business Objects now SAP and Tableau should not be in the same room together or compared to one annother.

Hi, sorry I can not help you with the case.
I am not oriented in such a detail.

____________________
S pozdravem / Regards
Milan Škerko

You should download Lumira from Business Objects/SAP website. It is included with the Business Object – BI Suite edition or cost competitive with Tableau. The features are the same and you can please your IT department by leveraging the investment in BOBJ. You can use your existing hardware too, that BOBJ is deployed on.

Disclosure: I work for SAP