Data Analysis Software
One of the most frequent questions I get is what would I recommend for analytical software. Many times the answer I give is, it depends. The answer depends on what type of data, how much data, what the end goal is, etc. In the end, I often recommend Tableau software that claims to be, “leaders in fast analytics + visualization.” The exact product depends on how many users and what type of platform is needed. They have both a desktop version and web based application.
In my opinion, Tableau is unbeatable at cross tabular analysis. Many times, I can recreate what Tableau does using a more common product like Excel. However, there is no way for me to slice and dice an Excel file at the speed and ease that Tableau can.
Below is a recent example from Tableau’s blog where a reader submitted a dashboard that was created using Tableau. Check it out.
[via Tableau]
What do you think, overrated or world-class?
Most Commented Posts
November 19th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Overrated. I have used Tableau v4 for about 6 months and I am back to Excel. The user interface is confusing. I have had numerous problems with the software to the extent that the software does not even run sometimes. You can get only so far with Tableau. I recommend Excel.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Tony,
The premise of this post is something being said more and more these days — the appropriate tools depend on the inputs and desired outcomes. and less importantly, scale. In the past, they also seemed to depend on turf battles on the inside and the glitz of the demos from vendors, etc.
But now, the reality is that visual analytics are becoming pervasive, are ubiquitously appropriate, and allow analytics in the flow.
Among tools in this space, I wholly agree that “Tableau is unbeatable at cross tabular analysis. Many times, I can recreate what Tableau does using a more common product like Excel. However, there is no way for me to slice and dice an Excel file at the speed and ease that Tableau can.”
To be complete, you might want to add that in many ways Tableau redefines for traditional business analysts (read Excel aficionados, of which I am one) what analysis is and can be (its not your father’s/bosses crosstabs anymore)! One just needs to spend a few minutes on their web site reviewing the real world examples to get sense of this (http://www.tableausoftware.com/learning/examples).
In the interest of full disclosure, as you know, we are evangelical in our support for Tableau Software, its mission, its tools, its respect for both the discipline of BI and visual analytics, and the needs of its customers. That said, we are also finding decision makers need actionable information faster, and tools that allow them the freedom to ask questions without getting on line for outside (IT) help, or doing VBA coding outside the analytical flow. There is probably unlimited demand for elegantly architected analytics tools that anyone can use for any purpose against any data store.
Here’s a real world example:
At noon an internal client asks for some new predictive sales/margin charts and graphs based on the current state of the RFM scoring of customers from last night’s up-to-date historical POS feed. This will inform some merchandising decisions for the coming weekend’s big sale. Numbers (sales and margin) would be good, too. Gotta be able to drill down by region and product category, and retail outlet. Can we have that by 10:00PM, ’cause after that the opportunity to influence results is gone? You’re going to use Excel? How big will that Excel file be? What if your code doesn’t work, or we need to ask another question? Can we relabel those products or create some new categories on the fly, assuming we’ll be able to get to the FTP site where the file is stored? Oh, its an embedded Excel file in a web site? Did you run that past security? And on and on.
So, we use Excel all the time when it is appropriate. We use Tableau more and more.
MANY BLESSINGS!
Peace and All Good!
Michael W Cristiani
Market Intelligence Group, LLC
November 19th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Hmmm… I have to say I’m the opposite of “FormerTableauUser”. I was an Excel junkie until Tableau. Everyone at my company used to come to me for Excel tips, tricks and advice. Now I can hardly emember everything I used to know how to do in Excel. Tableau means I don’t have to remember arcane formulas and functions. It means I can analyze data, not remember formulas, formatting, etc.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Thanks for the comments, formerTableauUser, Michael Cristiani and Virginia S.
formerTableauUser, we usually hear comments that are more similar to Michael’s and Virginia S’s so I’m sorry to hear you were having a hard time with Tableau. If you’d like to touch bases offline about your Tableau experiences, I would love to hear about them. Please just email me at efink@tableausoftware.com.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Dear formerTableauUser,
as an employee of Tableau, you may find bias in my remarks, but please understand that what I have to say here is not opinion or embellishment. Tableau is extremely light in it’s operation (ok, that’s opinion-ish, but read on), borrowing all necessary horsepower from the database it sends it’s queries to (note: Tableau is not crunching the query). You are limited only by your database. The same desktop application you buy from us to analyze your MySQL database is used against SQL and OLAP sources with billions of rows with others of our clientele.
Why was your Excel experience not optimal? Excel is your repository, but your db engine for Office products is a product of Microsoft called Jet. Whether or not you saw error messages referencing Jet, you are saddled with Jet limits which follow the stated limits for Access and Excel, pre-2007. To say this another way, MS may have lifted your row limit from 65K to a million-billion, but Jet still only effectively crunches data that resides within pre office 2007 limits. This is true for all limitations that changed with office 2007.