Business

Analytics
Report on
(Tableau: The global leader in rapid-fire
business intelligence software)

Submitted by:- Group 4

Swasti Bagri 14609091
Sweta Gupta 14609092
Tanushree Aggarwal 14609094
Tarun Sharma 14609095
Trapti Garg 14609096
Utkarsh Shukla 14609097
Contents

1 Introduction Page 2

2 What is Tableau? Page3

3 Who is it for? Page4

4 Why Tableau? Page7

5 What does Tableau Comprise of? Page7

6 Tableau Desktop Page7

7 Tableau Server Page9

8 Tableau Online Page11

9 Tableau Public Page12

10 Tableau Distribution Options Page13

11 Evaluation of Tableau Page14

12 Tableau Software Vs Microsoft Power IB Page16

13 Comparing Tableau with other Data Visualization Softwares Page 17

14 Job Trend in Tableau Page18

15 Case Study Page 20

16 References Page 21

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Introduction

Today's organizations need efficient, scalable and easily deployable business intelligence
tools in order to accomplish their goals. All too often, on boarding a new BI tool is an effort
of weeks, months or even years - and maintenance is punctuated by a never-ending stream of
user requests and expensive consulting bills.

In 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011. And 75 times the
number of information sources (IDC, 2011). Within these data are huge, unparalleled
opportunities for human advancement. But to turn opportunities into reality, people need the
power of data at their fingertips. Tableau is building software to deliver exactly that.

Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA,

USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business
intelligence.

The company was founded at Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science

between 1997 and 2002. Professor Pat Hanrahan and Ph.D. student Chris Stolte who
specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and
data cubes led research in the use of table-based displays to browse multidimensional
relational databases. Together, they combined a structured query language for databases with
a descriptive language for rendering graphics and invented a database visualization language
called VizQL (Visual Query Language). VizQL formed the core of the Polaris system, an
interface for exploring large multi-dimensional databases. In 2003, after Stolte recruited his
former business partner and friend, Christian Chabot, to serve as CEO Tableau was spun out
of Stanford with an eponymous software application. The product queries relational
databases, cubes, cloud database, and spreadsheets and then generates a number of graph
types that can be combined into dashboards and shared over a computer network or the
internet.

In 2010, Tableau reported revenue of $34.2 million dollars. That figure grew to $62.4
million in 2011 and $127.7 million in 2012. Profit during the same periods came to $2.7
million, $3.4 million, and $1.6 million, respectively. Shares of Tableau Software started
trading on the New York Stock Exchange after an initial public offering on May 17, 2013

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What is Tableau?
Tableau is groundbreaking data visualization software created by Tableau Software. Tableau
connects easily to nearly any data source, be it corporate Data Warehouse, Microsoft Excel or
web-based data. Tableau allows for instantaneous insight by transforming data into visually
appealing, interactive visualizations called dashboards. This process takes only seconds or
minutes rather than months or years, and is achieved through the use of an easy to use drag-
and-drop interface.

Tableau Software enables businesses to keep pace with the evolving technology landscape
and outperform competitors through an adaptive and intuitive means of visualizing their data.

One of its main advantages over other BI applications is its ability to simultaneously analyse
and blend data from different systems without the need for a data warehouse or additional
hardware.

Who is it for?
 IT
 Human Resources
 Business Development
 CIO
 Product Development
 Sales Management
 Product Management
 Database Architects
 Finance
 Marketing
 Manufacturing Plants
 Anyone who needs to see and understand data

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Why Tableau?
 Speed to Market
Tableau was designed to process and analyze data in a logical, easy to follow manner.
This results in far less development time, making your data actionable faster. The
ability to adapt to a market quickly is an enormous competitive advantage. Tableau
enables you to make rapid business decisions based off your data, giving you that
advantage.

 Tableau is Easy to Use

Data analytics does not have to be hard, but many data visualization platforms make it
that way. Tableau eliminates unnecessary complications, placing the focus on what
matters most – finding value in your data. Tableau’s simple drag and drop interface is
easy to learn, meaning you don’t need to be a data genius to operate it.

 Tableau Does Big Data

Hailed for Big Data analysis capabilities, Tableau makes processing gratuitous
amounts of data look effortless. Tableau can analyze and visualize your data better
than any data visualization software on the market, no matter how large your data is.

 Tableau Does Any Data

All data is created equal in Tableau. The user-friendly interface is supported by a
lighting fast data engine that processes data from various sources with unprecedented
intuition. You no longer need to worry about which data visualization software to use
based on your data, because Tableau does it all.

 Stunning, Interactive Visualizations

Perhaps the most recognizable advantage Tableau has over competitors is its ability to
produce beautiful data visualizations. Hands down, Tableau offers the most attractive
yet functional data visualizations of any data visualization software.

 Compatibility across Multiple Platforms

Tableau has revolutionized the business analytics industry by making insight
immediately accessible to anyone – whether it’s through a desktop tool, web browser,
iPad or mobile phone

 Tableau is an Industry Leader

Tableau has won countless awards throughout the business intelligence industry and
is quickly becoming the standard for quality data visualization.

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  Advanced In-Memory Technology- The Data Engine
Most of the data analytic software have a lot of fancy features but almost all of them
fail when it comes to operating with large amounts of data, this is where the advanced
in memory technology of tableau is a savior to all of those who need to get reports
from ever increasing data.
The tableau data engine is a breakthrough in-memory analytics database designed to
overcome the limitations of existing databases and data silos. Capable of being run on
ordinary computers, it leverages the complete memory hierarchy from disk to L1
cache. It shifts the 5 curve between big data and fast analysis. And it puts that power
into the hands of everyone. Ad-hoc analysis of massive data takes place in seconds.
No fixed data model is required.

TABLEAU

Source:- http://www.gartner.com/

From the above graph you could see that Tableau is considered to be easiest to use &
have most capabilities or features that a BI tool must have.

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 Source:- http://www.gartner.com/

Customers not only rated Tableau high on ―Overall BI Success‖ but also gave it strongest
ratings on ―View of Vendor Future‖

―Overall BI Success‖ represents an aggregate rating across all dimensions — the higher the
composite score, the more positive the overall experience with the vendor.

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What does Tableau comprises of?

1. Tableau Desktop (Business analytics anyone can use)

Tableau Desktop lets you drag & drop to analyse data. In just a few clicks you can
connect to data, visualise that data and then create rich, beautiful, interactive dashboards.
Tableau Desktop Professional is for fast analytics and can connect to almost any data
source. Tableau Software’s years of research have produced Tableau Desktop – software
that supports people’s natural ability to think visually.

Characterisitcs

 10 – 100x Faster:- Tableau leverages your natural ability to process data visually,
giving you a huge advantage: speed. Drag and drop to change your analysis. Turn
on one-click highlighting to identify trends. Add a filter with another click. You
can shift perspectives over and over again until you find that nugget of insight into
your data. It’s real-life business analytics for real-life business data.

 Ease of use that gives you chills:- Tableau Desktop is an intuitive, drag-and-drop
tool that lets you see every change as you make it. Anyone comfortable with
Excel can get up to speed on Tableau quickly.

 Smart, fit and beautiful dashboards:-Tableau lets you create rich visualizations
and dashboards. Combine multiple views into a dashboard. Insert web pages and
documents. Dashboards can be connected to live data or can use the Data Engine
to speed up your analysis.

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  Direct connect & go:- In Tableau you can connect directly to databases, cubes,
data warehouses, files and spreadsheets. Your connection is live so you see up-to-
the-minute data.Old school business intelligence platforms require users to build
elaborate ―universes‖ and ―cubes‖ and ―temporary tables‖ before any real work
could be done. Tableau eliminates those steps completely. There’s no requirement
to pull data into a silo – work directly from your database. And you can still
manage your data connection and metadata.

 Perfect mashups:- Connect to data in one click and layer in a second data source
with another. You can even filter from one data source to another and highlight
across data sources.

Salient Features

 Visual analysis in a click: - Powerful analytical tools—at your fingertips. Filter

data dynamically, split trends across different categories or run an in-depth cohort
analysis. Double-click geographic fields to put data on a map. All without writing
a single line of code.

 Deep statistics:- Go deeper into your data with new calculations on existing data.
Make one-click forecasts, build box plots and see statistical summaries of your
data. Run trend analyses, regressions, correlations, and much more. PhD not
required.

 Metadata management:- Make better sense of your available data—quickly and

easily. Rename fields and modify number formats. Combine fields into groups.
Create subsets of your data by simply selecting groups of points. Use those sets to
filter other views. Build new hierarchies. Now it’s easy for you to make your data
understandable to everyone.

 Best practices built in:- You get the benefit of years of research on the best ways
to represent data, built right into your workflow. Optimized color schemes,
automatic chart types and elegant design. Communicate insight in the most
effective way, automatically.

 Data engine:- When you want to take data offline or bring it in-memory,
Tableau’s Data Engine lets you extract data for ad hoc analysis of massive data in
seconds. It combines advances in database and computer graphics technology to
make even huge datasets possible to analyze on a laptop or mobile device.

 VizQL technology:- VizQL is a patented technology based on years of research

at Stanford University. It translates mouse clicks into database queries and

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 displays the response graphically. Data visualization becomes the process for
discovering insights and sharing them with others.

2. Tableau Server (The future of enterprise business intelligence)

Tableau Server is an enterprise-level workhorse. It allows you to take those
breakthrough data visualizations you’ve created in Tableau Desktop and share them
across your entire organization. It’s browser-based & mobile based, fast and easy to use.

Tableau Software – This is a consultant’s candid review of Tableau Software in regards

to other BI Tools. This tool needed to be able to integrate into 3rd party applications such
as Salesforce.com’s CRM platform. The tool needed to provide predictive analytics to
help users discover hidden patterns and emerging trends so business users could spot
near-term as well as future opportunities. And, the last major criteria this tool needed to
have was good post-sale support, including technical troubleshooting and a robust
training offering.

Characteristics

 Share, collaborate and make data-driven decisions:- Turn everyone into your best
analyst with interactive dashboards in a web browser or mobile device. Embed
dashboards in company portals across your business.

 Answers, whenever you need them:- Filter data, drill down or add entirely new data
to answer to your analysis. Edit any existing view, on the web. And do it all with
Tableau’s blazing fast data engine so you get your answer when you ask it.

 Provide responsible access to your data:- Tableau Server is a data governance

platform for today. Publish shared data connections from Tableau Desktop. Define
data sources, add metadata, and author entirely new calculations and data fields for
everyone to use. Do it all—securely—and with permission settings to manage access
to which data connections.

 After you create your visualizations, you can create live, interactive dashboards
to be published to the web via Tableau Server.

Salient features.

 Flexible data architecture:- Tableau Server leverages fast databases through live
data connections, or can extract and refresh your data in–memory with its blazing fast
data engine. Your choice, and you can change your mind any time.

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  Automatic updates:- Refresh local data on schedules, at set intervals, or incremental
levels. Or just refresh it all. Get alerts when data connections fail. Set up subscriptions
so you get your data when you want it, as often as you want it.

 Embedded analytics:- Tableau Server makes it easy to integrate data into your
business. Embed dashboards within your organization’s existing workflow. Whether
you need native database connectors, APIs or a suite of authentication methods, it’s in
the bag.

 Scalable:- Whether you’re building a platform for a team or an entire organization,

Tableau Server is ready to grow with you. It scales with both hardware and memory,
and comes with many features to ensure it is a reliable backbone of your enterprise.
We use it ourselves to run two of the largest data platforms in the world, Tableau
Online and Tableau Public.

 Secure:- Tableau Server gives you security permissions at any level you need. Multi-
tenancy provides sites to separate both users and content. Individual permissions can
be set for projects, dashboards, or even users. Even ensure that your data is secure
with data connection permissions and row-level filtering.

 Mobile:- Author a dashboard once; view it anywhere, on any device. All dashboards
are automatically optimized for mobile tablets without any programming. Use
familiar tablet gestures to view and interact with dashboards in mobile web browsers
or using native iPad and Android apps.

Characteristics of Tableau Software

 Tableau Software is easy to use for Business Users.

 Tableau Software is not a true enterprise analytics platform; it is more like a Business
Intelligence Application.

 Tableau Software’s ―In-Memory‖ engine isn’t the rapid fire fast analytics tool they
claim in our opinion; since it continually queries the database, which frequently
results in slow system performance and latency. While Spotfire® provides fast
analytics and faster data analysis through their architecture.

 Tableau Software can connect to cube-based data sources such as Microsoft Analysis
Services and other OLAP data sources.

 Tableau Software cannot be customized or integrated with other applications (such as

Salesforce.com®). Basically what comes in the box is what you get. No way to
extend it.

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  Tableau Software lacks robust enterprise-class security (only supports Microsoft
Active Directory).

 Tableau Software has no predictive or event-enabled capabilities, and its statistical

capabilities are extremely limited and are less than what you get from Microsoft
Excel.

 Tableau Software does not support expanded analytics such as Box plots, network
graphs, tree-maps, heat-maps, 3D-scatter plots, Profile Charts or data relationships
tool which allow users to mine data for relationships like another data visualization
software does (such as Spotfire).

 Tableau Software does not integrate collaborative capabilities into social platforms
(like Twitter, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.) like Spotfire does. A very hot trend. It is
for Business users to share their findings and progress. Think of it like – email meets
Twitter meets Facebook.

 Tableau Software is not organizationally equipped to serve enterprise customers;

therefore post-sale customer support and training are quite limited.

3. Tableau Online
Tableau Online is a hosted, SaaS version of Tableau Server. It makes business intelligence
faster and easier than ever before. With cloud BI you can find answers in minutes—
whenever, wherever you are.

Characteristics

 Skip the hardware and setup time with Tableau Online

Turn everyone into your best analyst with interactive dashboards in a web browser or
mobile device. And do all this in a secure software as a service web platform.

 Discover data insights from anywhere in the world with Cloud BI

View dashboards from the office, at home or on the road. Filter data, drill down or
add entirely new data to your analysis. Edit any existing view, on the web.

 Stay secure, by design and by default.

Data is one of your most strategic assets. Keeping it secure is our priority one. Only
your authorized users will be able to interact with your data and dashboards using
Tableau Online security.

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Features
 Data management
Centralize your data, right in the cloud. Publish data sources from Tableau Desktop.
Define data connections, add metadata and author entirely new calculations and data
field for everyone to use.

 Cloud data connections

Refresh Salesforce and Google Analytics data on set schedules at incremental levels.
Maintain live, direct connections with Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift. Get
alerts when data connections fail. Or push data from inside your company to Tableau
Online.

 Mobile
Author a dashboard once, view it anywhere, on any device. All dashboards are
automatically optimized for mobile tablets without any programming. Use familiar
tablet gestures to view and interact with dashboards in mobile web browsers or using
native iPad and Android apps.

 Subscriptions
Get critical information right in your email inbox by subscribing to a workbook.
Simply click into the email to interact with the data live in your web browser.

 Reliable service
Tableau Online is a SaaS application built on the same enterprise-class architecture of
Tableau Server. We also serve tens of thousands of views everyday with Tableau
Public. Your content is ready, on-demand, on a reliable service used by millions
around the world.

 Always up-to-date
We run Tableau Online, so it will always have the latest technology built in, as soon
as it’s ready. You just sit back and enjoy all the latest features.

4. Tableau Public
Tableau Public is for anyone who wants to tell stories with interactive data on the web.
It's delivered as a service that allows you to be up and running overnight. With Tableau
Public you can create amazing interactive visuals and publish them quickly, without the
help of programmers or IT.

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 The Premium version of Tableau Public is for organizations that want to enhance their
websites with interactive data visualizations. There are higher limits on the size of data
you can work with. And among other premium features, you can keep your underlying
data hidden.

Why tell stories with data? Because interactive content drives more page views and
longer dwell time. Industry experts have cited figures showing that the average reading
time of a web page with an interactive visual is 4, 5 or 6 times that of a static web page.

CHARACTERISTICS

 Usability: - Many users consider it to be very easy to use & has an user friendly
interface.

 Tool Orientation:- This tool is designed for general purpose analysis.

 Data mining type:- This tool is made for structured data mining.

 Manipulation type:- This tool is designed for Data extraction, Data visualization.

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Evaluation of Tableau
Strengths
 Speed
The greatest strength of Tableau is its speed with which it analyzes hundreds of
millions of rows and gives the required answers in seconds. This quality comes in
very handy when fast business decisions need to be taken.

 Ease of use
Another strength of Tableau is that it is very easy to use. It’s just basic drag and drop.
One can start using Tableau even with no prior programming experience. With just
basic MS Excel skills one can easily learn Tableau.

 Beautiful and interactive dashboard

The Dashboard of Tableau is very interactive and gives dynamic results. Rich
visualizations can be created very easily. The graphics and charts are smart and
beautiful. Images, web pages and documents can be added into the dashboard for easy
story telling. All this leads to a much insight into the data.

 Direct connection
Tableau allows the users to directly connect to databases, cubes, and data warehouses
etc. The data access is so easy without any advanced setup and the data is live that
keeps getting updated on its own. One can pick tables from spreadsheets to data from
Hadoop to create a perfect mash-up and get desired results in no time. This is simple
ad hoc business analytics.

 Easy publishing and sharing

After analyzing the data, the results can be shared live with just a few clicks. The
dashboard can be published to share it live on web and mobile devices.

 Growing Market
Tableau is relatively new in the Business Intelligence market but its market share is
growing on a daily basis. It is being nearly all industries, from transportation to
healthcare. It has big client base, which consists of big companies like Microsoft,
Nokia, PwC and Deloitte. They use Tableau on a daily basis to meet their business
Intelligence requirements.

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Weakness
 Not comprehensive solution, specialize in BI
Tableau Software is an easy to use BI application, but still not a platform for
developing analytic applications that can be broadly shared. It is not designed for
enterprise wide deployments that have broad business and technical user populations.

 No predictive analytical capabilities

Tableau Software allows users to only analyze what has happened. And, Tableau
Software does not have any statistical or predictive capabilities (they do not support
SAS, S+, R, ect. like Spotfire does). Therefore users cannot model or project the best
cross-selling or upselling opportunities. In fact Tableau Software is statistically
―challenged‖ and is extremely limited; providing users with less statistic functions
than Microsoft Excel.

 Customization and Integration with other apps

Due to its not open-source based nature and market commodity, Tableau Software
cannot be customized or integrated with other applications (such as
Salesforce.com®). Basically what comes in the box is what you get. No way to extend
it. However, their official website has Forum section, users could vote for their ideas,
whenever reaching the threshold, the company would response and probably add such
features in the following version and update for purchased packages.

 Expandability for analytics

Tableau Software does not support expanded analytics such as Box plots, network
graphs, tree-maps, heat-maps, 3D-scatter plots, Profile Charts or data relationships
tool which allow users to mine data for relationships like another data visualization
software does.

 Social media integration

Tableau Software does not integrate collaborative capabilities into social platforms
(like Twitter, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.). A very hot trend. It is for Business users to
share their findings and progress. Think of it like – email meets Twitter meets
Facebook. Due the current trend and users’ need, Tableau has integrated Google
Analytics into its platform. 7

 Robust enterprise-class security

Tableau Software is not organizationally equipped to serve enterprise customers.
Tableau Software lacks robust enterprise-class security (only supports Microsoft
Active Directory). Therefore post-sale customer support and training are quite limited.

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Tableau Software vs. Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft BI
Best Fit For  Large enterprise-wide deployments
with IT oversight and governance.
 Microsoft shops with pre-existing
investments in SQL Server and
Office.
 Organizations using a different
RDBMS will have a steeper
learning curve.
Value  Highly scalable, enterprise-level BI
Proposition platform with very broad set of
integrated capabilities.
 Platform is mature and highly
stable - capable of handling many
different scenarios and customer
needs, although Power BI for
Office 365 is still new and
untested.
Usability  IT-authored reports using SQL
Server Reporting Services are
inflexible, but easy to consume by end
users. More ad-hoc user analysis
requires Excel and PowerPivot
expertise which can be challenging for
some users.
Integration In addition to Microsoft data sources
like SQL Server, Windows Azure SQL
Database, and Access, Microsoft BI,
integrates with Oracle, IBM DB2,
MySql, PostgreSQL and Teradata.
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Tableau Sofware
 Those who want to build real time
visualizations on the fly, with little
technical expertise required.
 Companies of all sizes use Desktop
edition to build visualizations very
rapidly.
 Server and Online editions allow
visualizations to be shared.
 Dashboards simple to build, even for
a novice.
 Best for visualizing a single data set.
 Very active user community
Extensive technology partner
network .
 Simple, clean, drag and drop interface.
 Extremely easy to use without any
dependence on IT.
Integrates with a broad range of data
sources including spreadsheets, CSV,
SQL databases, Salesforce, Cloudera
Hadoop, Firebird, Google Analytics,
Google BigQuery, Hortonworks
Hadoop, HP Vertica, MS SQL Server,
MySQL, OData, Oracle, Pivotal
Greenplum, PostgreSQL, Salesforce,
Teradata, and Windows Azure
Marketplace
Off course, the best BI work will be done by professionals who utilize Power BI and Tableau
in conjunction with one another, allowing each to lend its particular strengths to the specific
needs of each challenge.

Comparing Tableau with other Data Visualization products

MS BI
Criteria Spotfire Qlikview Tableau Comment
Stack
Business
======= ======= ======= ======= Speed, Scalability, Price
Criteria
Implementation Qlikview is fastest to
Good High Good Average
Speed implement
Limited Very Need the expert in scalable
Scalability Unlimited Good
by RAM Good SaaS
Above Microsoft is the price
Pricing High High Average
Average leader
Licensing/support Smart Client is the best
High High High Average
cost way to save
Enterprise Good for Good for Partners are the key to
Excellent Excellent
Readiness SMB SMB SMB market
Long-term Microsoft are 35+ years in
Good 1 product Average Excellent
viability business
3rd
Analytics Growing Growing Qlikview is a DV
Mindshare attempt
Market fast fast Leader, Successful IPO
to win BI
Technical
======= ======= ======= ======= Drilldown, Analytics, UI
Criteria
ZFC,
Clients for End RIA, ZFC, Windows, Excel, Free Qlikview Personal
Spotfire
Users Mobile ZFC .NET Edition is a big plus
Silver
Most users value
Interactive Very Very As good
Excellent Visualization over
Visualization Good Good as Excel
Modeling
Need for Data Integration
Data Integration Good Good Excellent Good
expert
Visual Drill- Very Qlikview is fastest thanks
Excellent Good Average
Down Good to in-memory database
Dashboard Very Below Spotfire and Qlikview are
Excellent Good
Support Good Average best for Dashboards
Integration with Spotfire has the best GIS
Excellent Good Good Average
GIS integration
Good
Modeling and Excellent Spotfire is the best, Excel is
Excellent Weak with
Analytics OLAP the most popular
SSAS
UI & set of Very Very Need for UI expert to
Best Good
Visual Controls Good Good integrate DV components

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 Tableau requires less
Development Rich API, Scripting,
Average Excellent consulting than
Environment S+ Rich API
competitors
In-
64-bit In-
Very memory Very 64-bit RAM allows huge
Memory Excellent
Good Data Good datasets in memory
Columnar DB
Engine
Summary – Best Visual DV, Visual Backend Good Visualization
for: Analytics Drilldown OLAP for DV requires a customization!

Job Trend in Tableau

There is an emerging genre of BI tools built specifically for business users to perform visual
data discovery. The user interfaces are designed to be intuitive and the features simple. These
software products are meant to require little if any training. Architecturally, many provide in-
memory analysis for high performance.

Of course, these "exploration" tools are also not intended to be full enterprise BI platforms.
Instead, they are complementary to more robust products. You will not replace your existing
BI products (SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, IBI WebFOCUS, MicroStrategy, etc.)
with the limited scope of visualization software but you might consider supplementing them.

Competitive Vendors
The main data exploration products on the market today include:
 QlikView
 Spotfire
 Tableau
 ADVIZOR Solutions which is also sold as WebFOCUS Visual Discovery

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Tibco's Spotfire is the old grand-daddy in this list and was quickly overtaken by the new kids
on the block: QlikView from Sweden and Tableau from the Silicon Valley of the United
States.

While QlikTech's revenue reporting for QlikView appears much higher than that of
Tableau's, the job statistics imply that Tableau is in much higher demand.

Tableau to be the Winner?

Tableau arose out of a Stanford University research project from 1997 to 2002, and was spun
off as a company in 2003. (Keep in mind that Jim Goodnight started SAS as a small college
project which he later grew into a multi-billion dollar mega-software vendor.)

As part of a Department of Defense initiative, PhD candidate Chris Stolte created a "Visual
Query Language" to explore large multi-dimensional databases. As luck would have it,
Stolte's university mentor was Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee of Pixar.

Together, they created what has been called ―a kind of high powered, highly visual Excel,‖
which is a really good way of explaining the innovative software product. One of their first
interested partners was Essbase, which makes sense. A common user interface for the
Essbase cube was Excel, and Tableau was a nice next-generation version of that.

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CASE STUDY:

Saving Time and Money with Simplified Information

Sharing
Customer Profile
Blastrac Manufacturing is a mid-sized worldwide manufacturer that operates in the Americas,
Europe and Asia.

Customer Case Description

Blastrac depended on the creation and distribution of reports across the organization to make
business decisions. However, the company did not have a consistent reporting method in
place and, consequently, preparation of reports for the company’s various needs (sales data,
working capital, inventory, purchase analysis, etc.) was tedious. Blastrac’s analysts each
spent nearly one whole day per week (a total of 20-30 hours) extracting data from the
multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, loading it into several Excel
spreadsheets, creating filtering capabilities and establishing pre-defined pivot tables.

Not only were these massive spreadsheets often inaccurate and consistently hard to
understand, but also they were virtually useless for the sales team, which couldn’t work with
the complex format. In addition, each consumer of the reports had different needs—while
some thought the reports were lacking detail, others thought there was far too much detail to
wade through.

Blastrac Vice President and CIO Dan Murray began looking for a solution to the company’s
reporting troubles. He quickly ruled out the rollout of a single ERP system, a multi-million
dollar proposition. He also eliminated the possibility of an enterprise-wide business
intelligence (BI) platform deployment because of cost—quotes from five different vendors
ranged from $130,000 to over $500,000. What Murray needed was a solution that was
affordable, could deploy quickly without disrupting current systems and was able to represent
data consistently regardless of the multiple currencies Blastrac operates in.

The Solution
Working with IT services consultant Interworks, Inc. out of Oklahoma, Murray and team
finessed the data sources. Murray then deployed two data visualization tools from Tableau
Software: Tableau Desktop, a visual data analysis solution that allowed Blastrac analysts to
quickly and easily create intuitive and visually compelling reports, and Tableau Reader, a
free application that enabled everyone across the company to directly interact with the
reports, filtering, sorting, extracting and printing data as it fit their needs. And at a total cost
of less than one third the lowest competing BI quote, Tableau fit Blastrac’s budget too.

With only one hour per week now required to create reports—a 95-percent increase in
productivity—and updates to these reports happening automatically though Tableau, Murray
and his team are able to proactively identify major business events reflected in company
data—such as an exceptionally large sale—instead of reacting to incoming questions from
employees as they had been forced to do previously.

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―Prior to deploying Tableau, I spent countless hours customizing and creating new reports
based on individual requests, which was not efficient or productive for me,‖ said Murray.
―With Tableau, we create one report for each business area, and, with very little
training, they can explore the data themselves. By deploying Tableau, I not only saved
thousands of dollars and endless months of deployment, but I’m also now able to create
a product that is infinitely more valuable for people across the organization.‖

References
http://www.interworks.com/services/business-intelligence/why-tableau)
http://bi-software.blogspot.in/2012/12/pretty-pictures-of-bi-tableau.html
http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/business-intelligence-
visualization.aspx)
http://origin-www.tableau.com/learn/stories/spotlight-blastric

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