SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau
As of February 2019, SAS Visual Analytics is ranked 17th in Business Intelligence (BI) Tools with 3 reviews vs Tableau which is ranked 1st in Business Intelligence (BI) Tools with 54 reviews. The top reviewer of SAS Visual Analytics writes "the best tool for insightful and analytical dashboard development and reporting". The top reviewer of Tableau writes "The visualizations bring out patterns buried under a mountain of data. The tool offers unparalleled flexibility in terms of the types of visualisation that one can create". SAS Visual Analytics is most compared with Tableau, Microsoft BI and QlikView. Tableau is most compared with Oracle OBIEE, Microsoft BI and SAS Visual Analytics. See our SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau report.
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 Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2019. 317,758 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
Quick deployment to dashboards and analytics features (using SAS Visual Statistics and Enterprise Guide). Easy to create a simple forecast and discover business insights using segmentation tools. Simplifies report designs and quickly displays tables and graphs. The speed to display charts and react to users' choices is great. The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed. | Data is easily understood at all levels of the company. Business insights are shared across various departments. Its ease of use and ability to convert drag and drop gestures into queries. The ability to create complex calculations. Its ease of use and ability to convert drag and drop gestures into queries. Tableau's support could improve. Partner support is very good. It allows us to basically understand and evaluate our numbers in an expedient manner. |
Cons | |
Better connectivity with other data origins, better visualization, and the ability to create KPIs directly would all help. There are scalability issues. It depends on the data volume and number of end-users. VA requires a lot of hardware resources to move volumes of data. The charts and tables could use better sorting, primarily using other variables than the ones on the figure. If they could implement views like in the older version (previous to Viya), it would be very nice. Colours used on report objects | Conditional formatting could be an interesting feature to provide to final users. The data preparation/blending options are very basic. They could be improved. Tableau is a company that does not respect partners. I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner. Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge. Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made. We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool. I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
Licensing is simple. | Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple. ROI is very high, but it requires a data preparation/blending tool. We always consider pricing when considering a new solution. We are a non-profit and price is a huge concern. Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages. The price could be higher for the quality of software, so they revised the pricing in this version, and I agree with the price for top version. The top version costs about $70 per month, and the price is cheap for the quality. I like the payment model. For the people who need to create, they buy their licenses. Everyone else can use the free Tableau Viewer. This is much better than some of the competitor products, which require full licences for everything. The cost is high. Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive. |
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Answers from the Community | |||
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Ranking  | |||
Views 31,976 Comparisons 13,749 Reviews 2 Followers 1,067 Avg. Rating 8.0 | Views 149,250 Comparisons 68,320 Reviews 52 Followers 2,394 Avg. Rating 8.3 | ||
Top Comparisons | |||
 Compared 37% of the time.  Compared 12% of the time.  Compared 8% of the time. |  Compared 8% of the time. Compared 7% of the time.  Compared 7% of the time. | ||
Also Known As | |||
| SAS BI | Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online | ||
Learn | |||
| SAS | Tableau | ||
Overview | |||
SAS Business Intelligence package offers business owners an all-in-one tool for data analysis. It is mainly comprised of analytics software that can handle all of the statistical analysis that a company requires. Functions include mining and managing to fetching important information from a variety of sources and even adapting that information, all for the purpose of analyzing the data for future use. The SAS Business Intelligence software allows users to handle, understand, and analyze their data in both past and present fields, as well as influence vital factors for future changes. Users can also create and publish reports based on their findings so that others in their field can share the information and input suggestions. The graphic presentation is another benefit that many businesses find useful when presenting their findings to others. | Tableau is an enterprise analytics platform that enables your organization to explore trusted data in a secure and scalable environment. It gives people access to intuitive visual analytics, interactive dashboards, and limitless ad-hoc analyses that reveal hidden opportunities and eureka moments alike. Get the security, governance, and management you require to confidently integrate Tableau into your business—on-premises or in the cloud—and deliver the power of true self-service analytics at scale. Evaluation Guide: How to choose the right BI & analytics platform Redefining the role of IT in modern BI world | ||
Offer | |||
Learn more about SAS Visual Analytics | Learn more about Tableau | ||
Sample Customers | |||
| Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions. | Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart. | ||
Top Industries | |||
Financial Services Firm20% Comms Service Provider10% Retailer10% Renewables & Environment Company10% Financial Services Firm30% University18% Engineering Company10% Government6% | Financial Services Firm15% Healthcare Company9% University9% Manufacturing Company7% Financial Services Firm22% Healthcare Company11% Software R&D Company6% Comms Service Provider5% | ||
Company Size | |||
Small Business25% Midsize Enterprise13% Large Enterprise63% | Small Business25% Midsize Enterprise19% Large Enterprise56% Small Business25% Midsize Enterprise12% Large Enterprise63% | ||
Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Visual Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2019.
317,758 professionals have used our research since 2012.
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From my perspective, SAS is very rich but its origin lies in the programming. Therefore, knowledge in setting up programming use and direction is somewhat implied. Targeted to a more technical data science audience.
Tableau, on the other hand, is focused on a visual end-user perspective. Therefore, the target is a business analyst who focuses on what the data implies - somewhat agnostic to the statistical techniques focus.
I have more experience with SAS VA not with Tableau. Weak points and strengths
Tableau
- Probably one of the best visualization analytic tools for final users
- Cloud or on Premise
- Quickly to deploy
- Some specific functions to predictive analytics out of the box (linear regression, etc.)
- Connectors to Big Data, etc.
SAS Visual Analytics
- See new features with Cloud SAS Viya (new architecture and integration with other SAS Solutions)
- Powerful vision of analytics and statistics with SAS Visual Statistics in the same framework
- You don’t need a Data Scientist people to develop predictive or advanced analytics models
- Deploy a powerful analytics model in few moments
- It supports a Big Data and a lot of connectors. Some payments
- No needs code as easy to use
- You can use and specific and free App for mobile users
- Price: Pay for cores, not users.
Weak points
It needs a lot of machine resources (RAM and CPU)
Very complex to install. You need specific SAS partner support
Poor graphics vs Tableau or Qlik Sense
Normally you need the Enterprise Guide or other ETL solution to data prepare
Selection of a tool depends on your tech environment and the intended use of the tool. If you have a strong staff with a data mart, data warehouse or data lake in place then a number of tools would work. Tableau is the 500 lb gorilla, but it isn't as nimble as Qlik, Yellow Fin, Looker or Sisense. If you don't have a large team and want an automated data mart then look at Birst. It isn't as "beautiful" as others, but does a good job of delivering what the customer requires with less work on the back end. Good luck!
Tableau over SAS.
Flexibility, speed in execution.
Shallower learning curve.
Talks to a very large set of databases and file types.
I am not the expert in SAS and Tableau.
SAS being the market leader may have better standing over Tableau.
Tableau being one of the most popular Visual analytics software might not be too far from SAS.