Professionals from many departments work with a variety of data types on a daily basis in business. This data can occasionally be complicated with numbers, statistics, and figures. In other words, it’s not always easy for everyone, especially non-technical people.
It is a well-established scientific fact that visuals are processed by the human brain much more quickly and effectively than numbers and text. Data presented in a more approachable and straightforward format, such as a pie chart or color-coded bar graph, is more likely to be understood and remembered by the audience.
Tableau is widely used in the business intelligence and data science fields as a data visualization tool. It seeks to make complex data easier to perceive and comprehend.
Today, data is one of a company’s most valuable resources. Big data analytics are used by almost all firms and industries to make wise business decisions. After being processed, big data from many sources is frequently presented as statistics and numbers. This information needs to be presented to CEOs and stakeholders in an easy-to-understand visually appealing, and understandable manner.
Tableau simplifies complex data and shows it in an interactive, user-friendly style. Users may simply learn to utilize Tableau and create customized dashboards even if they lack technical knowledge or coding skills. Tableau can create dashboards and worksheets with eye-catching visualizations from data of all kinds, sizes, ranges, and formats.
Why tableau?
When there are so many tools accessible to accomplish data visualization, why pick Tableau software?
Due to its ability to examine data very fast, Tableau is frequently used. Visualizations can also be used to build worksheets and dashboards. With the use of Tableau, dashboards that provide insightful data and promote business processes may be created. Tableau solutions always run successfully in virtualized settings when equipped with the proper underlying hardware and operating system. Data scientists use Tableau to investigate data through a variety of visual analyses.
Top Tableau Features
- Users of Tableau may quickly find answers to crucial queries thanks to the platform’s robust data search and exploration capabilities.
- Users without relevant experience need not have any prior programming knowledge in order to begin building visualizations with Tableau.
- It can connect to a variety of data sources that other BI packages do not support. Tableau users can integrate and generate reports from a variety of datasets.
- All published data sources inside an organization may be managed in one place with Tableau Server.
Read on to find out how Richard went from Industrial Engineer to Assistant Manager for Data Analysis with the goal of expanding his knowledge of data beyond Excel. He found our Tableau Certification Training Course through his search.
Tableau: how does it work?
- Using platforms or databases like Excel, PDF, Oracle, etc., Tableau connects to and extracts data from these sources.
- It is then launched to begin the procedure. Through Tableau’s data connectors, you can now set up a connection to any database.
- The Tableau data engine, Tableau Desktop, receives the extracted data in real time via live connections to the underlying databases. A data analyst or data engineer would create this visual representation of the statistics. The final deliverable features user-accessible dashboards presented in Tableau Reader.
Also Read: Top Tableau Certification Training Providers: Your Path to Data Mastery
Top Utilizations of Tableau
1. Provides and meets organizational demands.
Tableau can satisfy various needs and expectations of enterprises by carefully examining its data. The needs of an organization may be based on the needs of the customer and the uses of the product, program, or application.
2. Data can be well-understood and properly evaluated.
Tableau makes it easier to analyze data from various sources and produce reports that are simple to understand. To examine the data, a variety of approaches, including extraction, loading, and transformation, can be used. The data can be processed and analyzed using a variety of procedures, approaches, and techniques.
3. Tableau provides great visual dashboards with little effort.
This is an additional method that makes use of Tableau to perform data analysis by condensing or summarizing the content or primary and crucial aspects of the data sets into non-redundant data. Different types of representations can be provided by Tableau’s visual dashboards, including pictorial representations, bar graphs, pie charts, and tabular or graphical representations.
4. Supports a variety of data sources
There are various types of data sources, including those that use unstructured, structured, and semi-structured types of data. The various data sources can come from a variety of databases, including virtual databases, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, IBM DB2, MongoDB, and Cassandra.
5. Contains a variety of features for databases
Tableau’s flexibility means that it can be used with a wide variety of databases, including Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), No-SQL databases (NoSQL), and Object-oriented databases (ODBs), among others. While an RDBMS stores data in a structured format, No-SQL and ODBs store data in semi-structured and unstructured formats like JSON, text, and document files, respectively.
6. It is simpler to manage.
It is simpler to manage the many data types, and it is simpler to customize that data to meet the needs. There is no coding, designing, or programming involved in the process of using the Tableau application. It simply requires some drag-and-drop functionality or tool capabilities, which are simpler to use and have a lower learning curve.
7. Has more community support
Many excellent experts that are passionate about learning, working together, and supporting complicated issues in data processing and management make up the Tableau team. Different user groups, forums, communities, and user bases with various cross-functional and technical knowledge can be found in its community forums to assist other users.
8. Excellent visual analysis
The visual analysis may take the form of a graph or another representation that is simpler to comprehend or that is obvious at first glance. This is how the use of visual data representation influences visual analysis.
9. Adaptable data extraction and analysis
By connecting to many data sources and dragging or crawling that data into Tableau to begin processing or analyzing the data, the process of gathering and analyzing data from several types of data sources can be flexible.
10. Generating customized data reports
By modifying the data representation in accordance with customer or client requirements, the report-generating process may be tailored, making life for the customer easier and helping them with their business applications.
Tableau Product Suite
There are several different products in the Tableau Product Suite. Explaining these terms in the next sections:
- What is Tableau Desktop?
- What is Tableau Server?
- What is Tableau Reader?
- Tableau Public
- Tableau Online
Tableau Desktop
With this software, you can customize reports and code. Tableau Desktop is used for everything, including but not limited to, report and chart creation and dashboard integration.
The following categories apply to Tableau Desktop based on connectivity and data sources:
Tableau Desktop Professional
Similar to Tableau Desktop in many ways, the main difference is that the output from Tableau Desktop is now published to Tableau Server. All data types might theoretically be accessed in this updated version. It is recommended for everyone who plans to share their work on Tableau Server.
Tableau Desktop Personal
Tableau Desktop Personal’s development tools are sufficient for most users’ needs. There is restricted access to this particular spreadsheet. This means that these workbooks are only intended for individual use and cannot be shared online. They need to be separated in the right way, whether on Tableau Public or not.
Tableau Server
The primary purpose of this is to share worksheets and visualizations created using the Tableau Desktop software around the organization. Once the file is sent to the appropriate servers, it will be available for viewing.
Publishing your work in Tableau Desktop in advance will allow for more seamless dashboard sharing on Tableau Server. Licensed users do not necessarily need to install a Tableau Server, though. Their login information is all that is required to validate these reports.
The high level of security provided by Tableau Server facilitates speedy and effective data interchange within the organization. Get your questions or worries about Tableau answered by BI Experts in the BI Community.
Tableau Reader
This software allows users to access Tableau Public and Tableau Desktop workbooks and visualizations. Although there haven’t been many modifications to this data, filters can be applied easily. Since anyone using Tableau Reader may view the worksheet, there is no security.
Tableau Public
Specially designed for users who want to save money is Tableau Public. The produced workbooks are uploaded to Tableau’s publicly accessible cloud and cannot be saved locally, as the word “public” suggests. For those looking to study and teach others about their data, this version is quite affordable.
Tableau Online
Tableau Online is a sharing tool, just as the word “online” suggests. The information is kept on servers provided by the cloud and managed by the Tableau group, although it is utilized similarly to Tableau Server.
The volume of data that can be made available on Tableau Online is not restricted by a storage limit. Workbooks produced by Tableau Desktop are required for both Tableau Online and Server in order to distribute the data. Both Tableau Server and Tableau Online can stream data from web apps like Salesforce or Google Analytics.
Also Read: Tableau Developer vs Tableau Server Administrator
Tableau vs Excel
| Parameters | Excel | Tableau |
| Purpose | Used to manipulate data in spreadsheet applications | A program for analysis and visualization |
| Performance | Has a standard speed and no way to speed up the procedure | Has the potential to speed up the progress of an operation |
| Usage | Is appropriate for structured data statistical analysis | Is appropriate for a more rapid and user-friendly display of huge data. |
| Products | Has Microsoft Office features built-in. | Has various variations, including Tableau Server, Desktop, and Cloud |
Tableau’s Advantages
1. Variety of incredible visualizations: Tableau offers a number of built-in capabilities that can assist you in creating wonderful and distinctive visualizations. It will assist you in producing a variety of visualizations for a sizable amount of chaotic data. While analyzing the data in-depth, Tableau can also flip between various visuals to provide a more relevant and detailed context for the data.
2. In-depth insights: One of Tableau’s main benefits is that you can explore visuals and consider the same data from many perspectives. By posing “what if” questions, it aids businesses in the analysis of speculative future situations. According to these inquiries, the data is shown differently.
3. User-friendly approach: Tableau’s user-friendliness is one of the factors contributing to its popularity. Even without prior experience with computers or coding skills, you should be able to utilize Tableau effectively. Most operations can be performed with a single mouse click.
4. compatible with multiple data formats: We live in a data-driven era. Companies employ big data analysis to learn what factors affect their bottom line. This data could come from a wide variety of unconnected sources. As it links to all the various forms of data, including numerous Tableau data sources, data warehouses, and files in the cloud, big data in spreadsheets, non-relational data, etc., Tableau is unique and more advantageous than other BI applications. Tableau aggregates and connects all the data from these various sources to produce eye-catching representations.
5. Easy to add datasets: Tableau makes it simple to add new datasets, whether they are databases or Excel workbooks.
How can Tableau help your company?
There has been a dramatic growth of data due to the rise in internet usage. Think of a scenario where each time a potential customer goes online, their data is added to big data. This article contains details that could be very useful for your company. You need business intelligence—meaningful insights into the behavior and preferences of your potential customers—to stay one step ahead of the competition. This will enable you to target them more effectively. From large data, this intelligence is derived.
However, because this data is unstructured and raw, it is largely wasted. Making sense of this data and thoroughly analyzing it so that every stakeholder in the organization can understand it might be difficult. Additionally, you must display your data in a way that even a non-technical layperson can grasp because not everyone has the technical know-how of data analytics. Tableau help you in accomplishing this.