Analytics

Over the past month I have been introduced to a new analytics powerhouse called Tableau. This is a product developed by Tableau Analytics. I decided to use this product for one week on for every reporting need that I would typically use Microsoft Excel or Access for. This weekly trial has showed me that MS excel and Access are relatively elementary compared to Tableau.

On Tableau's website, they state that the product is "Fast Analytics for everyone." After one weeks use, I can validate this statement. The software makes it extremely easy to start driving any sort of charting in order to see trends. Often times, I was thinking that this software could be closely compared to Google Analytics, only for non internet business data. It offers many of the same type of reporting Google does and also many more reporting options.

The software also takes a cool approach to publishing reports. After a report is created, it can be published to a Tableau server. Once on the server, anyone with an internet browser is able to view the report and its underlying data. Publishing a report in this fashion makes it much easier for managers to view the report. Instead of relying on sending around excel files, it just takes one link. The software also has much cleaner lines and is much more visually pleasing for the viewer.

Overall Tableau is proving to be a great product for business analytics and I would recommend it to anyone!!

SMF