Tableau

⏱️ 8 sec read 📊 Data Visualization

What it is: Industry-standard BI and visualization platform. Drag-and-drop interface, no coding required.

What It Does Best

Visualization excellence. Best-in-class drag-and-drop interface. Beautiful, interactive dashboards without coding.

Data exploration. Drill-downs, filters, parameters. Powerful calculations and table calcs for complex analysis.

Enterprise scale. Permissions, governance, server deployment. Proven to scale to thousands of users.

VizQL: Proprietary query language for visual analytics

Data connectors: Connect to 100+ data sources natively

Calculations: Powerful calculated fields and table calculations

Tableau Server: On-premises or cloud deployment

Data blending: Combine multiple data sources without joins

Tableau Creator: $75/user/month (full authoring)

Tableau Explorer: $42/user/month (edit existing dashboards)

Tableau Viewer: $15/user/month (view only)

✅ Need beautiful business dashboards

✅ Multiple data sources to connect

✅ Non-technical users need to build reports

✅ Budget for enterprise software

✅ Visualization quality is critical

❌ Small budget (Power BI or open-source better)

❌ Need version control and code review (Looker better)

❌ Custom web visualizations (D3.js better)

❌ Want code-first analytics approach

❌ Primarily SQL-based workflows

Executive dashboards: High-level KPIs for leadership teams

Sales analytics: Pipeline, forecasting, territory performance

Financial reporting: Budget vs actual, variance analysis

Marketing analytics: Campaign performance, attribution, ROI

Operational dashboards: Real-time monitoring across departments

vs Power BI: Tableau better visualization, easier; Power BI 7x cheaper

vs Looker: Tableau better for visual exploration; Looker better metric governance

vs Qlik: Tableau easier to learn; Qlik better associative engine

Visualization leader: Best-in-class interactive dashboards

Ease of use: Most intuitive drag-and-drop interface

Market leader: Industry standard for business intelligence

Community: Huge ecosystem of resources and experts

Bottom line: Gold standard for business intelligence. Expensive but powerful. If you have budget and need enterprise BI, it's the safe choice.