ILIAS Solutions gives defence organisations full command of their critical data with Tableau embedded analytics

ILIAS uses Tableau embedded analytics to put critical insights directly at its customers’ fingertips, providing an end-to-end data ‘cockpit’ that can be used to optimise every aspect of operations. Tableau’s extensive functionality, rich visuals and ease-of-use all serve as key differentiators for ILIAS, allowing it to support organisations with a consistent and long-term data approach. As part of its own data journey, ILIAS has also utilised Tableau Blueprint to validate key learnings along the way, help customers embrace self-service analytics, and expand its platform with a range of new data-driven services and offerings.

ILIAS first approached Tableau in 2019, during a challenging moment in the company’s history.

“The original data platform that ILIAS built its solution on went in another strategic direction and we were unable to continue with them,” explains Niek Freriks, Product Owner at ILIAS. “In short, we had just months to complete a full migration to an entirely new data platform, or risk major interruption to our services.”

With no time to waste, ILIAS consulted the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms and began contacting all organisations in the ‘leaders’ quadrant.

“We spoke with a wide range of vendors,” continues Niek. “However, the one that truly stood out was Tableau. Not only was the analytics platform incredibly visual and easy to use, but everyone we spoke to from Tableau was enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and importantly, sympathetic to our situation. After our experiences, we felt very strongly that we wanted to have a great relationship with our new provider and to be treated well. With Tableau, it just felt right from very beginning.”

Tableau’s partners were also extremely helpful to ILIAS throughout the migration period, assisting with training and education sessions to get the team quickly up to speed, something that became particularly difficult once the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020.

“Tableau and its partners really rallied round us, making sure we had all the tools and knowledge we needed to successfully complete the migration, despite such a tight timeline,” says Niek. “Prior to the pandemic, Tableau reseller Biztory delivered an intensive training session at our offices. Then, when face-to-face sessions became impossible, everyone worked really hard, up to 60 hours a week, to finish the migration remotely. It was intense, but it was also incredibly rewarding when we achieved it.

With Tableau in place, ILIAS can now deliver powerful, customised data analytics to every customer as part of its Defence Platform.

“All of our customers have their own data preferences and needs, meaning their analytics has to be fully customisable,” explains Niek. “This ranges from the visual appearance of each organisation’s platform view to the range of dashboards they see upon logging in.”

“Using Tableau embedded analytics, we can provide each customer with a tailored view that enables them to quickly see what the next best action is for them,” continues Niek. “That level of scalability and capability was something that couldn’t be done with our previous analytics platform, but Tableau makes it incredibly easy to achieve. What’s more, because Tableau is embedded, they don’t even realise they’re using it. It’s simply part of the ILIAS Defence platform.”

As part of its ongoing data journey, ILIAS recently used Tableau Blueprint to assess both its own data usage, and that of its customers, yielding a wide range of positive outcomes.

“Tableau Blueprint is a step-by-step guide to becoming more data-driven and its really helped us to validate a lot of our key learnings over the last two years,” says Niek. “It’s also taught us to embrace self-service analytics much more, which is something we’re now actively working with our customers on as well.”

The result is much greater democratisation of data, which is not only driving better adoption amongst customers but also helping to foster powerful data cultures from within, where data is accessible to all.

“While our customers get a lot of insight analysing their data through our standard embedded dashboards, there’s so much more they can learn from their data when they have the right tools and knowledge in place,” says Niek. “Realising this, we recently began to offer an open data source to our customers that they can use in conjunction with tools like Tableau’s Ask Data to answer their own questions, whenever they need to. This greater accessibility is really helping to maximise Tableau’s potential within their organisations, leading to a wealth of valuable new data insights being uncovered.”

In addition to these powerful business benefits, Tableau visualisation is a real eye catcher and differentiator in the defence market.

“Data was, is, and always will be, at the very core of our business. Tableau brings raw data to life in such a visual way that it really sells our solution to new customers and prospects,” concludes Niek. “Tableau also helps us to show the value of the underlying Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in our Defence Platform, which is incredibly powerful. Simply put, visual is best!”