More than 50% of businesses now say that business intelligence (BI) tools are very important for both current and future initiatives. Data-driven CEO decisions are 77% more likely to achieve business objectives, so there’s a positive connection between BI and better bottom lines.

To make best use of BI, however, companies need to select and implement tools that make the most sense for current use cases and long-term strategies. One of the most popular options is Tableau; here’s a look at how this solution can help drive business success.

What Is Tableau?

Tableau is a visualization tool that lets businesses convert text and numerical data into visual dashboards that help provide context to disparate data sources. The solution is a subset of the larger world of BI tools — in practice, business intelligence frameworks are designed to help companies understand current and future market trends as they relate to existing business operations, in turn driving decisions based on hard data rather than gut instinct.

Tableau helps companies achieve this goal by providing an easy-to-use visualization platform that doesn’t require any technical knowledge or programming skills to use. Key features of Tableau include:

• Real-time data analysis: Information can be analyzed in real-time to help companies make the most of emerging trends.
• Data collaboration: Data can be gleaned from multiple sources to deliver big-picture insights.
• Data blending: Data from disparate sources can be combined to provide easy-to-understand visualizations.

Benefits of Tableau for Businesses

When it comes to implementing Tableau for businesses, several benefits stand out:

• What you see is what you get: With Tableau, you can leverage multiple data sources to produce custom visualizations that clearly communicate key metrics, in turn making it possible to see how trends are impacting current business practices and define a plan of action.
• Easily create interactive visualizations: Tableau also supports the creation of interactive visualizations using simple drag-and-drop functionality. This allows businesses to deliver visualizations that are as simple or complex as required for the current projects.
• Use multiple scripting languages: For the more technically minded, it’s also possible to do complex calculations in Tableau using languages such as Python or R. While this requires more expertise, it can help improve the efficiency of your Tableau deployment and reduce the risk of performance issues.
• Handle large data volumes: Tableau is capable of handling large data volumes from multiple sources without impacting dashboard performance. The BI tool also offers the ability to go “live” and connect with real-time data sources to deliver time-sensitive results.
• Mobile functionality: BI is no longer confined to the office. With Tableau, users can access data visualizations anytime, anywhere using the iOS or Android application.

Data alone isn’t enough to deliver actionable insight — businesses need the ability to collect, combine and visualize disparate data sets in a way that’s easy to understand and easy to use. Not sure where to get started? Take advantage of live tableau training courses to see what you’ve been missing.