Tableau Reviews

• Easy interaction with data
• Variety of visualizations possible
• Integration with R and Alteryx

We do a lot of work for our clients helping them understand the impact of marketing campaigns on their business results. Tableau helps us tell stories with data.

It helps us shorten the interval between raw data and actionable insight. We used it to standardize basic tracking and optimization functions for our digital media campaigns. We’re also developing a broader analytics practice, diving into the impact of on-line and off-line media combined.

There is a pretty steep learning curve, the product would be better if it were somehow more intuitive to use.

I’ve been using Tableau for about three years.

We have a small number of licenses with one Tableau server; we haven’t had any deployment, stability or scalability issues yet.

Generally, technical support is very good; responsive with generally effective solutions.

We primarily used Excel prior to Tableau. We are aware of some of the others, but for us, it is not worth investing the time re-inventing our process.

Initial setup went well; straightforward to install and get started. Takes a while to master the basics.

Implemented in-house. It would be helpful to have someone with a year of Tableau experience on staff to speed ramp up.

ROI is difficult to estimate as a lot of our use case revolves around streamlining internal processes / analysis. We are now providing analytic solutions to clients where we price on our hours, plus pass through costs for seats on the Tableau Server and a monthly maintenance fee. As we scale this up, we expect to drive profitable revenue through our analytics products.

It makes sense to implement it in tandem with Alteryx. Use Alteryx to clean / prep data, and then visualize in Tableau. Tableau is not the place to try to clean / join data.

• Visualization
• Data capacity

Where I'm working, we have many reports developed in Microsoft Excel to present results about the business. However, when we need to work a large volume of data, they are developed in Tableau because access to data from Oracle and managing large data volumes is easier than Excel. All the reports that we develop using Tableau are complimented by our directors, as the information is visualized well.

When we need to work with a large volume of data, we can create an extraction, validate data easily, and then present it to our users using Tableau Server or Tableau Reader.

I have difficulty working with many filters on the dashboards, and I'd like to see more options in the "Histories" section. QlikView makes better use of the dashboard filters.

We've used it for two years.

In some departments we chose to install Tableau Reader, but it's necessary to create a ticket to update the software for each new version. This process is not good as it disrupts our day-to-day functions.

I work with 4GB RAM and rarely I have a problem with it. My OS is 32 bits.

We've had no issues with scalability.

I always take support from Tableau's forums and communities.

We also looked at QlikView.

It's a great solution to present data, and our directors love to work with it.

Included data engine, work interface.

Include new graph views in Tableau, increase dual axis - sync of only two axis isn't enough.

1 year

No, but I have no experience in Tableau Server deployment

Yes, in v8.1 there was a problem with changing bg color of sheets and dashboards (TD shutdown)

In v8.1 there was a problem with big Excel files - for ex: if you have an Excel spreadsheet with three sheets and more then 300,000 rows in each one and you want to add it as one datasource linked by one key field - your Tableau Desktop will be very slowly.

Customer Service: 3 out of 5Technical Support: 4 out of 5

QlikView and Microsoft. Switched because there aren't any cubs, user friendly interface and lower cost.

Initial setup very easy but I did not setup Tableau Server

It was in-house

Only license fee and electricity:)

It's a nice solution, the vendor should listen to users and customers.

The solution is primarily used for analysis purposes. I use it quite a lot. 

Overall, the solution is pretty good.

You can do a lot of filtering from the dashboard. 

You are able to see and follow trends.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

There is a lot more that can be done with Tableau than what is actually happening within Juniper. The company is not getting the answers to the questions directly from the Tableau database, for example. Of course, Tableau can be extended to answer those questions. 

What is happening, with so many tools coming up in the market, is that people have to continuously get educated in order to use some of the more advanced features. What's happening with Tableau is that, except for the dashboard view and all the filtering and that's happening from a dashboard perspective, it doesn't seem to be very good in making me understand the trend insights. For example, if I saw that the average sales price for Product A was lower than the average sales price for Product B, I'm not saying that B is inferior to A or anything. I'm just noting what I found and I cannot give more details. It doesn't go deeper into the analysis. I'd like more analysis to better understand what a trend might mean, and not just a report that a trend is happening. Right now, Tableau is not so good at providing that extra bit of insight.

What happens is Tableau data is used very often. From the quarterly business reviews, et cetera, the executives have direct access to the Tableau dashboard. More than anything else, they're able to do all this filtering. They could probably improve the user interface response times. When it comes to slicing and dicing of data viewing the results, it needs to be just easier in general as executives are using it and looking at it, and they are not very technical. 

When executives look at the Tableau dashboard, they want to know why, for example, Product A bringing in less than Product B. Those kinds of key questions, which come from executives for reviewing the Tableau data need to be addressed and in a simple to understand way. I think Tableau has to work a little more in terms of the business insights aspect of it, where it communicates to the user and answers their questions. That intelligence part needs to be developed in Tableau. 

Something great would be, if, for example, like in Google, if you asked a question, it could feed you back potential information. I don't want to compare everything to Google, however, it's so easy to find the answers you need in the way Google is set up. If Tableau could do something similar to showcase answers to questions, that would be ideal. It needs some sort of smart dashboard. 

I've found the scalability to be quite good. If a user needs to expand it, they can do so. 

I also have used Teradata previously. 

The front-end of Teradata is not so well used and therefore I cannot talk about it much, however, the dashboard is pretty good. Much like Google, which uses ML and AI to help answer questions, both solutions could benefit from extracting intelligence to answer questions. 

I'm simply an end-user of the product. I don't have a business relationship with Tableau.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. I'd like to talk to a Tableau product manager about the solution and describe how I would like the solution to work, especially around deeper analysis.

We use the solution for multiple functions internally, mainly for finance, accounting, and the operations team.

I have found many of the self-service features valuable. One tool allows anyone within the business to create their own dashboards. However, their data has to be prepared properly. Everything is user-friendly, and the visualizations are high quality and esthetically pleasing. Additionally, there is a tool that enables not just the developers, but even the end business users to create jobs for them.

The process of embedding the dashboards on external portals and websites could be improved. We also experienced challenges with integration with analytics.

In an upcoming release, if the capabilities of Tableau Prep are improvised and expanded, that would be an added advantage.

I have been using the solution for one year.

We have found the solution to be stable and reliable.

We have increased the number of users when we develop more dashboards for the new departments. We did not face challenges when we increased the number of users. We have approximately 50 users using the solution in my organization.

We are planning to increase the usage of the solution. We are doing internal training to help our employees because a lot of people do not know how to use it properly. This has caused a bit of an expansion problem.

The technical support is good.

The initial installation was straightforward. The deployment took approximately three months, this included the development of dashboards and customizations.

There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis.

We did evaluate other options before we choose this solution.

My advice to those wanting to implement the solution would be, if you are looking for ETL heavy tools, this may not be the right choice. However, if you want beautiful visualizations and getting insights from data at high speed. This would be a good solution for that focus.

I rate Tableau an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We use it for our customers in retail, healthcare, and manufacturing who need analytics. I'm doing use-cases like this a lot.

We have a customer who is an automation company, and we use Tableau for optimizing the inventory in the warehouses.

Tableau's easy to use, and easy to deploy. It has a good user interface. The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics. The maps and geographical analytics are important for implementation. It's also easy to develop and work with historical data. It also makes it easy to create a culture within the organization.

The price could be better. The overall scalability can also be improved. I would like to see more machine learning components to do predictive analytics. It should be simple for our customers to use. Tableau should include an automated machine learning feature in the next release.

I've been using Tableau for about nine years.

The stability is good.

Tableau is scalable, but the overall scalability can be improved to accommodate large volumes of data.

The initial setup was easy. The time it takes to deploy depends on the company size. For example, one day, four days, or maybe even two weeks. It depends on the company and the data they have. It takes about three people to implement and maintain this product.

Pricing could be better. I believe they should offer better pricing for deployment in small to mid-sized companies. Tableau needs to change the pricing model and offer a monthly option. This is the principal benefit their competitors offer. If companies can pay month-to-month, it would provide more opportunities for them.

Our customers often evaluate competitors like Microsoft BI and Qlik Sense. These products are deployed everywhere, in the cloud and on-premise. Tableau loses to the competition because of price.

I would recommend Tableau to new users. This is a great tool.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Tableau a ten.

Public Cloud

• Create dashboards for different functions in the organization.
• Used to report out information from the corporate data repository.

It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT.

• Visual analytical reporting
• Ad hoc reporting
• Self-service; users can build their own reports based on their needs.
• Drag and drop to create analytical dashboards.
• Multiple data sources connectors

Needs bursting email and export to Excel. Many users still need to download the information (to Excel) and export to an Excel macro to merge the info with some other info. 

Bursting email is also needed to deliver the reports to many people in their inboxes and this functionality is not provided by Tableau.

One to three years.

Analysis is now more visual than in the past, which was only long operational support reports with bunches of info.