Enterprise data sets are large, detailed, and often complex. For the spreadsheet or typical report recipient looking for the underlying patterns, this is a worst-case combination. Reports are often designed to serve as detailed lookups so they have rows and rows of summarized data, making it difficult to see overall patterns and trends.
Traditional business intelligence applications help by providing graphs, dashboards, and text-based reports. Just as users must be able to ask ad-hoc questions, they also need effective ways of slicing, dicing and interrogating the data. The graph or dashboard that led to yesterday’s insight may not work for today’s problem.
What is needed is an approach that closes the gap. Enterprise data management demands a visual BI solution that leverages the work of the data steward in the Enterprise Data Warehouse, while solving the business intelligence needs of the business user. Tableau answers this call by providing visual BI software, while leveraging best-practice applications for data visualization and business intelligence. It gives users flexible, easy ways to display data in whatever format makes the patterns most visible – resulting in the fastest possible insight.
