Everyone knows that Google Sheets and Excel are not the best tools for data visualization. Despite having insert functions and a wide variety of charts, building dashboards in these tools is time-consuming because their primary purpose is to preprocess data, not present it. You can create more tables and charts, but in the end, they’re just references to raw data, which need to be stored physically. One day, you may even see the message that your workbook has exceeded 10 million cells!
Tableau offers a different approach. Instead of working with the entire workspace, it lets you access only the specific fragment of data you need. This makes dashboards faster, more optimized, and the visualization process more flexible and intuitive. While you’re still working with raw data, Tableau creates virtual references instead of new physical tables, processed on demand and filtered by your chosen parameters—so you only work with the data you need.
Tableau provides a wide variety of charts and visualizations suitable for different types of data and analysis. You can create:
Interactive dashboards allow multiple charts to be linked together, dynamically filtering and highlighting data. This flexibility enables users to explore data visually, uncovering patterns, trends, and insights that are difficult to spot in raw tables.
Since Tableau is a data visualization tool, it’s not a full data wrangling or database solution. It offers functions like SPLIT, CONCAT, DATE functions, and basic aggregations. For more complex transformations, it’s recommended to prepare your data using tools like Python, R, or ETL platforms. Proper data storage also enables efficient SQL queries instead of full file reads, improving the performance of your reports.
Tableau’s pricing depends on user roles and deployment:
Enterprise plans increase costs and add governance features. Deployment choice—cloud or on-premises—also affects the total price.
Tableau is a powerful tool for visualizing data efficiently, providing interactive and intuitive dashboards, and allowing users to gain insights quickly. While it doesn’t replace full data preprocessing tools, its combination of speed, flexibility, and visualization options makes it a go-to solution for businesses and analysts alike.