All Analyst Stories

Over the past month, we've had the time of our lives interviewing Santa about how he uses Tableau. Last week, he shared his naughty-or-nice dashboard. And the week before, he told us how he monitors toy quality around the world. Now, as he enters crunch time for big day, Santa is prepared to share his third and final dashboard. And this one could be the most important of all. After all, what's the single most important part of his global operation? Being able to travel the world in a single night.

"We have more time to do what IT does best," says Rob Villareal, Business Intelligence Competency Lead at World Wide Technology (WWT). WWT is a global provider of systems integration technology and services and supply chain solutions—and they've implemented Tableau across multiple departments. We spoke with Rob, as well as with Operations Manager Lance Leonard, about the impact they've seen across the organization. As Rob puts it, "Every department is interacting with Tableau. We've been rolling it out to one vertical at a time, but at this point everybody is involved in some form or another.” And he's seen "a huge appetite for data." Perhaps most surprising, however, is the effect this has had on IT. In the interview, Rob shares how IT gained greater insight into the way people are accessing data across the organization. Rather than fostering an environment of “shadow systems,” their Server implementation has empowered greater alignment and visibility. And IT and business both love that.

In case you missed it, last week Santa revealed that he uses Tableau to manage his global operations. And for every week in December, he'll share a new dashboard that looks at one area of his business. In response to Santa's statements, we received a number of questions—including how Santa uses Tableau to determine who gets a lump of coal. This week, we're excited to share one of Santa's most important dashboards: His naughty-and-nice list.

Customers often tell us that Tableau is fun—like a game—with a significant business value reward. That’s been the experience for executives at two gaming companies who we recently had the chance to interview. "Deep down inside, everybody is an analyst," says Kirill Andriychuk, Business Intelligence Manager at Aeria Games. "With Tableau, they can go on this discovery path and find out new opportunities and better ways to deliver their products they're delivering, and better ways to monetize the customer, and also give the customer a better experience within our games."

What are we grateful for this month? A bountiful harvest of incredible blog posts! It was a bumper crop of Tableau tips and hints for everyone from the beginner on up to Jedi-level. So go ahead—tuck into this delightful spread of Tableau tips, tutorials, and clever hacks!

“Time is essential." These are the words of Adriana Nunes, a technical coordinator at Disque Denúncia, one of the most respected public safety services in Rio de Janeiro. In this day and age, Adriana’s words are sure to ring true for all of us. But they probably echo a bit longer—and more loudly—if you work in the field of public safety. When it comes to public safety services, resource allocation can be a matter of life and death. By getting the right information at the right time, organizations can dramatically improve their impact.

Over the last few years we've seen a huge shift in mobile analytical apps. Mobile analytics is transitioning from limited, standalone apps to analytics that work tightly with other systems.

In this video we take a look at how salespeople would use mobile analytics in the field to be more productive. The solution combines SalesforceOne, the mobile app for Salesforce, together with Salesforce Canvas and embedded dashboards from Tableau. We use Heroku Connect to enable real-time updates from Salesforce to the embedded dashboards.

We use data visualizations to tell compelling stories, explain trends, and make persuasive arguments. Communication of data insights is becoming a critical skill for college graduates entering the workforce. We provide free Tableau licenses to teachers and students through our academic programs in the hope of students developing skills working with visualizations. Some colleges and universities are seeing this need and creating specific ways for students to explore data, regardless of their academic background. One of these programs is the Temple Analytics Challenge, hosted by Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology.

We received an email from Louis Booth, a 16yr old, looking for advice on how to prepare for a career in data analysis and visualization. We gave him some advice and also sought yours. What should students do today to prepare for a great job in the future?

Why do Tableau and Salesforce go so well together? Salesforce is a great system for managing sales, marketing and service. At Tableau, we’re big Salesforce users. And all that sales, marketing and service activity in Salesforce generates a lot of data. That’s where Tableau comes in. Tableau can connect directly to Salesforce data and update it automatically on a schedule. Tableau Desktop lets you create sophisticated, interactive analyses with drag-and-drop ease. And you can embed those dashboards right back in Salesforce, to get data to people where they are doing their work.

Healthcare leaders today know that data is vital to their daily operations. Learn how six organizations are innovating with numbers—and how they always keep sights on patient care.

See how various army organizations are using Tableau to see the big picture and how their efforts are contributing to mission readiness.