Podcast Series: Getting Started with Tableau, Allstate

Tableau: I’m Elissa Fink of Tableau Software and I’m here with Marta Magnuszewska. Marta is an Intelligence Data Analyst at Allstate Insurance Company. Marta, that title sounds really interesting. Can you tell me what you do, uh, in your job at Allstate?

Marta: Sure. In my role as an Intelligence Data Analyst in the Special Investigation Unit at Allstate Company, my major responsibilities are to translate large sets of claims medical records into meaningful financial stories. I analyze data, compare trends and pinpoint opportunity areas where action can be taken to combat insurance fraud and abuse.

Tableau: Terrific. And tell us, you use Tableau in a lot of the analysis you’re doing, I understand.

Marta: We use Tableau as a visualization tool. Tableau has many great visualization and mapping capabilities. It has been helping us to tell the story with all the visuals and it’s great.

Tableau: Cool. How long have you been using Tableau?

Marta: I have been using Tableau for about three years, although my teammates are relatively new to Tableau. They have about a year or less of experience.

Tableau: Then you must be a little bit of an expert about how to help people get started and getting running with Tableau. Can you share with us a couple of ideas or things that you’ve done to help people get started with Tableau, someone who’s just getting going? What would you recommend that they should do?

Marta: The first thing I want to say is that Tableau has many great things. The first one that I would tell any new user is that Tableau is extremely easy to use and extremely fast in comparison to any other tools that I have been using. The second thing is we always say that we have an ability with Tableau to translate millions of records very easy and quickly into innovatively creative visuals, tell stories with those visuals which are easy for eyes to see and comprehend because of the mapping and all the other visuals’ capabilities.

And we always say that Tableau, if you point and click, there is nothing that you can miss or break with it because that’s how easy it is to use. But, if you ever run into problems, we say that Tableau has different venues for users to seek help and the staff, the support staff at Tableau is awesome and great.

Tableau: Oh, cool. So, you’ve had some good luck over in your three years and your team’s success with Tableau. And I know too that you’re going to be speaking at our upcoming Tableau Customer Conference in Las Vegas. We’re very excited about that. Your topic is Helping in the Fight to Combat Insurance Abuse and Fraud. Can you give me a quick preview about what you’ll be talking about?

Marta: Yes. In this year’s conference I will present my innovatively creative visuals which translate into very impactful stories. They significantly benefited my team and Allstate as a company. At my session you’ll learn more about the powerful weapon that Tableau has proven to be in our fight to combat insurance fraud.

Tableau: That sounds great. I know that you do a lot of really interesting mapping things with Allstate. Can you tell us a little story or an example of maps that you’ve put together with Tableau and Allstate data?

Marta: Yes. We actually use a lot of mapping, not only to show the location of the geographical location, but we also do a lot of geo coding and we map relationships with geo coding the distances. So, that all will be included in my presentation at the conference.

Tableau: Thank you, Marta. We really appreciate you being here today, and we’ll see you in Las Vegas.

Marta: Yes. I’m excited. See you in Las Vegas.