Shady Mogawer - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Arabian Cement Company
Real User
Top 5
Great perforamacne with good dashboard options and a simple initial implementation process
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is simple."
  • "In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."

What is our primary use case?

I'm collecting some information and some reports from SAP and sending them to users as a graphical report. That's basically how I use the product.

What is most valuable?

The new pre-built application of Tableau is amazing.

The initial setup is simple.

It's a very stable, reliable solution.

You can scale the solution.

The dashboard has a lot of great options. 

What needs improvement?

I'd like it to work without the workflow or pushing options from the build, every time you need to do a refresh. We need a workflow for pushing the data to the cloud or to the server when you are using the pre-built application, the new application.

In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for two and a half years.

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Tableau
April 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been good. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have found the solution to be scalable.

At my organization, we have about ten to 15 regular users. 

We use it pretty extensively - at least once a week.

I'm not sure if we actually have plans to increase usage at this time. 

How are customer service and support?

So far, I haven't needed any help from them. It's a good application in and of itself. I haven't needed technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used a little bit of Power BI. I know Tableau better, so I moved to Tableau Arabic.

How was the initial setup?

The initial implementation process was straightforward. We did it without any problems.

Since the solution is on the cloud, you don't need a lot of staff for maintenance tasks.

What about the implementation team?

You do not need an integrator or consultant to assist you in the implementation process. We were able to do it ourselves. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have a standard license that we renew yearly.

What other advice do I have?

I'm an end-user.

I'm using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend Tableau to others. It offers good performance and the dashboard options are solid. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director Consultoria at tecnoscala consulting
Real User
Easy to set up and simple to use with good dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there."
  • "The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

SAP BW , TABLEAU Server an TABLEAU desktop, the Info from SAP were downloaded using SAP Data services and ABAPin a very large Steel Makin company in Latin America

How has it helped my organization?

Better an accuracy info every morning for decision takers regarding sales production and Customers Financial situation 

What is most valuable?

They were considered the gold standard for dashboard development. However, many people also have SAP.

The initial setup is very easy.

It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there. 

What needs improvement?

There were a lot of dashboards everywhere in the organization, however, when the company wanted to get the operational databases they were not connected.

The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities.

The performance and security could be better.

Many people saw Tableau as a silver bullet and it isn't. It's good for small things, however, not for an institutional way of doing things.

I'd like to see better integration with SAP.

I'd like an integrated ETL or some sort of data preparation capabilities. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used the solution since 2013.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

In the past, you couldn't do a full query. You could do the right query or the left query but not the full query. They fixed that n 2016. 

Also, there was another problem in that their selling approach was very aggressive and they were selling to sales directors. However, the problem is that after that you need the Tableau server. You need the deployment of the Tableau server and you have your dashboard. You needed IT buy-in. In order that them to be able to be seen in all the organizations, or even outside your organization, you need to get the Tableau server. With that in mind, companies must have IT people or training in the Tableau server, and then the dashboard is just developed in the desktop so you can upload them to the server. With all of that comes a lot of issues around security, modelization, and performance theses issues were not approached or considered in any by the users 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalable in the sense of a very good performance in te Tableau Server , nevertheless the info must be prepared or downloaded in a very well defined DataWarehouse

How are customer service and support?

We had a lot of trouble with Tableau at the beginning. There were issues that nobody had dealt with in the past.

There was an issue that was open for about two months. They couldn't reach a resolution. We started the Tableau server in an English version server, however, it was decided to install the Spanish version instead. We defined success criteria for our developments, our systems. In the analysis and the scope of work, we decided that every Tableau dashboard or whatever was going to have an acceptable loading time of six to a maximum of eight seconds. The problem was that it took 30 to 60 seconds. Technicians from Tableau, from Brazil, from the USA, came and looked at it. In the end, it was the Spanish version that was causing performance issues, and therefore we had to install the English version again.

They had the Portuguese, French, or Spanish versions behind in terms of updating all their software. That was the problem. There was a bug in the Spanish version that in the  English version didn't exist.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I'm also familiar with Power BI, SAP, and QlikView as well as Snowflake

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. You can install it on your computer and you can start to do a lot of dashboards. They have a gateway for many databases and you can get to the information in a very easy way. 

The thing is if you don't provide it with a very good ETL design you have the problem that all the fields are going to be dashboards. That's pretty common. Many organizations have a kind of operational database. With specialized databases. It's updated daily. The information is validated and confirmed and authorized. Whatever you do with Tableau is your problem. They install Tableau in that new server and the users go to that information. 

They make a copy of the transactional databases. They put it there and the users start to work. It's very easy.

In terms of deployment, for the desktop, you can have a visualization of information and you can get copies of the data on your personal computer. That can happen in minutes. It takes minutes or maybe half an hour to get going.

The problem is that you have to have some training. The training is going to take one week or so. In another week or two weeks, although you are not an expert yet, you start to understand Tableau. You don't have to be technical. If you understand Excel well, you will find Tableau pretty straightforward. 

You only need one or maybe two people to deploy the solution. You need a technician mostly for security.

What about the implementation team?

The vendor team were sales especialist, not consultants 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated in 2013 QLICKVIEW . 

What other advice do I have?

We're consultants. 

We're using the most recent version of the product. What we do is download the on-premises for testing in order to see the new capabilities.

It's a very mature tool with a lot of enhancements in the last two or three years. Our advice is that, if you are going to use it as an end-user, it's a very beautiful tool. If you are going to use it in an institutional way, you have to take good care of your ETLs and you have to design a very good data warehouse. That's what they don't do. That's what many, many, many organizations don't do. I don't know if that's the case with Snowflake or Microsoft Power BI.

You must take care of your warehouse information if you are going to have a very good design, granularity, and time framing after three months to one year of information.

The dashboards and the ETLs must do more work than Tableau. If not, you're going to crash. One of the problems that we had was due to the fact that Tableau said that you could reach the SAP information and that was not true. You need a third-party developer. That's an additional cost and additional training. However, with a solution like QlikView, they have a very beautiful integration with SAP.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a solution consultant and regarding BI we mainly work with Tableau
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Tableau
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Tableau. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Director of Product Management at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Scalable and offers good filtering but lacks deeper trend analysis capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "You are able to see and follow trends."
  • "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 is our primary use case?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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. 

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Owner at Richard Duggan Pty Ltd
Real User
Top 20
Powerful visualizations, easy to use, and stable.
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
  • "I am not a frequent user of this solution, so I am not sure what they've been doing recently. The last time when I used it, I had to use other tools with it for data extraction and cleansing. Its price should also be improved. It is more expensive than Power BI. In terms of training, there is generally better online training for Power BI, but I am not sure of that. It would be helpful to know from where to access its training."

What is our primary use case?

I am using it for personal and organizational purposes. Most recently, we used it to collect and analyze the personal and geographic data input by people over the web.

How has it helped my organization?

Makes analysis fast and easy, providing insights that could be missed otherwise.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to use with very powerful data visualizations.

What needs improvement?

I am not a frequent user of this solution, so I am not sure what they've been doing recently. The last time when I used it, I had to use other tools with it for data extraction and cleansing.

Its price should also be improved. It is more expensive than Power BI. In terms of training, there is generally better online training for Power BI, but I am not sure of that. It would be helpful to know from where to access its training.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution off and on for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable if you use it with other tools. I have used it with other tools.

I am a freelance consultant. I use it myself. My clients have hundreds or thousands of users.

How are customer service and technical support?

I don't have any experience with their support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I also use Power BI. Tableau is very comparable to Power BI.

How was the initial setup?

If I remember it correctly, it was easy.

What about the implementation team?

I can do it on my own.

What was our ROI?

My clients don't measure an ROI, they are interested in getting insights faster and when the get past the basics right then modelling scenarios. If you invest in BI tools it is part of a journey requiring investment. Analysis often helps to increase revenues and reduce costs. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is expensive when you compare it with Power BI. It should be cheaper.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have looking at SAP SAC and Oracle / Essbase for a client.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Tableau a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager Analytic & Insights at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
A powerful, secure, and flexible end-to-end analytics platform
Pros and Cons
  • "Tableau is easy to use and it has great predictive features."
  • "It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution to process and create reports for management. 

Within our organization, 10 people in marketing use this solution.

How has it helped my organization?

With Tableau, we can create our own reports which in turn, saves us tons of time as we don't have to wait for IT to do it.

What is most valuable?

Tableau is easy to use and it has great predictive features. 

What needs improvement?

It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Tableau for roughly three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Tableau is very stable.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is pretty good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It's not too complex.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed this solution on our own.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of this solution could definitely be lower. It's quite expensive. We're on a monthly subscription — I am not sure exactly how much we pay.

What other advice do I have?

Tableau allows us to go deep inside the data — other solutions, like Excel, don't allow you to do that.

As a BI tool, I would give Tableau a rating of eight out of ten — it's one of the easiest BI tools available; however, it's not that easy to manage orders. It's really user-friendly for individual users, but it may not be suitable for large organizations.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Data Warehouse Manager at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We use it to illustrate trends in cash balances, research grant expenditure trends, and student metrics and performance.

Valuable Features

Valuable features include the various “Show Me” graph options; the ability to do forecasting (which is an area that Tableau needs to continue growing its modeling capabilities); and the immediate responsiveness to adding dimensions/measures and their effect on the visualization.

Improvements to My Organization

We have used Tableau to develop institutional dashboards for the university. We’ve used it to illustrate trends in cash balances, research grant expenditure trends, and student metrics and performance.

Room for Improvement

I’d like to see the forecasting capabilities expanded from an algorithm standpoint to offer different options for multi-variate forecasting. I think they can improve the ability to integrate with web pages. I’d like to see a more secure option for data regarding HIPAA regulations.

Use of Solution

We’ve been using the Tableau solution for over three years. We started out with about 30 users and have grown to over 350 interactors and 50 authors.

Scalability Issues

A strong guide to help determine the scaling up options does not exist; it is still new to third-party support consultants which performance options are the best. I do like the fact that AWS has a one-click solution, but it needs more of a config wizard to better outline what storage/memory impacts choices will produce.

Customer Service and Technical Support

We have experienced less-than-preferable service with the technical support. For a while, it felt like they were experimenting for answers, even with complete log and infrastructure details. Their response time to issues is not acceptable for customers who are paying for core licenses, and they acknowledge that.

Initial Setup

Initial setup was straightforward; the upgrade path is also straightforward.

Implementation Team

We implemented from within our team. We did engage with a consultant about two years later to see how we were doing and discuss the next steps with server admin training. The results were acceptable.

Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing

Pricing continues to be a sore spot. Desktop licensing discounts in bulk do not exist, which is challenging for a non-profit. Server core licensing is also prohibitive from an expansion standpoint.

Other Solutions Considered

We only went with Tableau based on the feature set and the user base reviews.

Other Advice

There is a lot of competition brewing with other visualization providers that may be at better cost points. Definitely go in and deep dive/experience the other solutions. Though Tableau has a great reputation for ease of use, there definitely is a learning curve to optimize it, and other solutions like Microsoft Power BI and Qlik are making progress.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
MBA, MS Business Analytics at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Complex, with long load time, but is good in terms of resources
Pros and Cons
  • "When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources."
  • "People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."

What is our primary use case?

It's similar to what we do with Power BI. It is used for dashboarding as well as a few analyses.

What is most valuable?

When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources. In any kind of material, learning material, or if I find a new chart and decide I want to do it, Tableau is more easily available than Power BI.

What needs improvement?

It's a little more complicated than Power BI.

More visualization options, but not the same as in Power BI, where there are simply more options. I see very few options here. Many of these must be customized and custom-built, which is a lengthy process.

I would like to see more options in visualization customization.

People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options. There are a few default options in Power BI that Tableau does not have.

I would like to see the added visualizations and possibly an easier way to process data, which are useful now that we all have Power BI, there is a whole power query interface that directly links to Microsoft BI, whereas with Tableau, I would have to go through an entirely different process for it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Tableau for one year.

We use the latest version.

It can be deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Tableau is very stable, but it takes too long to load.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability has been fine. So far, I believe it has served our purpose.

We have more than a hundred users in our organization.

It is being extensively used, but it is getting to be lesser now.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have also used Power BI.

We found Power BI to be more useful than Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

Tableau was already set up when I arrived.

What other advice do I have?

It is purely a visualization tool, as opposed to Power BI, which has connectivity to the entire Microsoft product suite, including your Excels and other tools, which Tableau does not.

I would rate Tableau, a five out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good visualizations and good dashboards with a nice look and feel
Pros and Cons
  • "It's easy to use."
  • "If I have to develop any, for example, pie charts, I can develop them just fine. However, if I have to develop a donut chart, that I cannot do it in a simple way. There are tricks that I need to use if I have to design a donut chart. It should be more flexible and provide more visualization options."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for internal monitoring purposes.

What is most valuable?

I like Tableau a lot as its visualizations are great; there's no doubt about it. It's easy to use. 

The look and feel and features are very good. Dashboarding is very good.

The product has been stable. 

What needs improvement?

While my experience has been mostly positive, there are certain limitations, as every tool has.

If I have to develop any, for example, pie charts, I can develop them just fine. However, if I have to develop a donut chart, that I cannot do it in a simple way. There are tricks that I need to use if I have to design a donut chart. It should be more flexible and provide more visualization options.

It does not provide detailed reporting like other reporting tools such as Microstrategy or Cognos, or other enterprise reporting solutions.

If they could provide better reporting as well as visualization, it would be a perfect product.

Pricing is a major thing. If someone has to use it within an organization, it is not that cost-effective, especially when a competitor like Power BI or some other reporting tool comes almost free along with their cloud solution. If someone is opting for any cloud solution, any cloud platform, especially if I talk about Microsoft, they will give you Power BI almost free of cost, or at a minimal cost. In such scenarios, people would prefer using Power BI or a similar kind of tool rather than using Tableau. That is a major concern which Tableau should look into.

For how long have I used the solution?

I haven't been using it continuously, however, I started using Tableau around six years back. Since then, there have been two projects in which I worked on Tableau. I did work with it in 2021.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been good. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'm not managing any scaling aspects. I'm basically from the development team. Every company has its own scaling goals. In my company, I don't really follow that aspect.

I can't say how widely used it is in my organization. When we deploy a tool, there are different teams. There are different stakeholders who are actually using it. I manage my team. I know about only my team, not other teams.

How was the initial setup?

I'm not part of that team that manages the setup. I cannot comment on that.

What was our ROI?

As far as ROI goes, I'm not directly aware of it, however, likely you can Google statistics. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing can't compete with Microsoft, for example, which basically gives their BI product away for free to those that purchase cloud products.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I'm also aware of solutions such as Microsoft BI, which is bundled into Microsoft Cloud products. It makes it less expensive for users if they are already heavily using Microsoft.

What other advice do I have?

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Tableau Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Tableau Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.