6 Ways Tableau Offers a Low Barrier to Entry for Your Analytics Needs

Business intelligence adoption has grown over the past few years and the BI software market is saturated with tools striving to deliver on their promise of improved decision-making. If your organization is looking to do a greenfield BI platform implementation, it may be difficult to know where to start and which platform would be ideal.

What you don’t want is to invest in a BI platform that can’t deliver on your needs or to start an implementation project that is doomed to fail. Some platforms come with all the bells and whistles, but do you have the right skillset in-house to start there? Does the platform you are considering offer easy enablement? Do you have the right team in place to build and maintain insightful dashboards?

Tableau not only offers impressive data visualization capabilities, but it also offers a low barrier to entry for an organization just starting off with business intelligence.

What is Tableau and What Capabilities Does It Offer?

Tableau—a powerful data visualization and analytics platform—allows business users across an organization to explore, analyze, and democratize their data easily and quickly.

The BI platform is both intuitive and approachable, regardless of a user’s level of experience. It offers various solutions—everything from data prep and data cleaning to quick and interactive visualizations, as well as data sharing and collaboration—all while being easy to use.

Tableau is the ideal BI platform for any organization considering a greenfield implementation because it offers a low barrier to entry for various analytics needs as well as user skillsets.

Six Ways Tableau Offers a Low Barrier to Entry

Tableau offers a low barrier to entry for any organization—with varying analytics needs.

1. Tableau offers free trials and easy setup.

Access to data exploration and discovery have never been simpler when getting started with Tableau, especially because the platform offers free trails as well as guided set up options.

• Free trials of Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop are available on the Tableau website—providing the opportunity to test the platform and its functionality. The free trial lasts 14 days, at which point you can purchase an individual Creator license to continue your analysis or make the decision to go all in with Tableau and start building the best analytics environment for your business.
• Set up is made easy with the Tableau Desktop easy wizard installation. You can download the installation package to your local computer, and just a few clicks and you’ll be ready to connect to your data and start your analytics journey.

2. Tableau offers easy enablement via YouTube, Udemy, and proprietary courses.

Learning Tableau is as easy as jumping in and playing around, however structured learning experiences are available from a variety of sources. Tailor your training to your needs with the abundance of learning paths provided by Tableau and the community.

• YouTube is a free and accessible resource with enough Tableau content for all user levels. Channels like Tableau Tim and Alex the Analyst provide in-depth explanations of new features, solutions to common problems, and high-quality tutorials.
• Udemy is another platform that offers Tableau enablement content with various pricing/subscription plans. Individuals can find great courses for the same price as a takeout lunch, or businesses can choose to pay for a team/enterprise plan which gives employees access to thousands of skill-enhancing learning paths. With instructors like Kirill Eremenko and Maven Analytics, the Tableau Udemy courses take users on an end-to-end learning experience from beginner to advanced analytics.
• For the most up-to-date enablement content, Tableau also offers free training videos that are curated by role type and give users a clear track to proficiency for their needs. These courses can be completed in an hour or less. Additional self-paced training courses can be purchased through Tableau eLearning for a nominal annual fee for those that have a Creators license.

3. Tableau offers easy connection to file types common in immature data setups.

Organizations that have immature data setups usually use tools that do not allow for easy data prep or lack interactive functionality, limiting what users can do with their data and how easily they can view data at different levels of detail.

• Tableau natively supports connection to a wide variety of data types, including Excel, Salesforce, Statistical Files, and Google Analytics. This allows Tableau users to build views and analyze their data quickly and easily. With less time spent configuring connections—Tableau users can dive right in to uncovering the value in their data.

Read: “How to Get the Most Out of Your Tableau Environment—It Starts with Data Management”

4. Easily develop in Tableau with little to no experience.

Data analytics should be centered around asking questions, not about learning the software to help answer those questions. Users should be able to get answers to their initial questions and effortlessly dig deeper with the help of their BI platform. Tableau designed its products to put the end user first and has created the most intuitive user experience.

• For new analysts, Tableau’s Show Me feature is a great assistive tool which creates a visual based on the fields already used in the view. Show Me has visual design best practices built in so creating intricate visualizations is less time-consuming and labor-intensive.
• Users who are new to Tableau will also have the option to use Tableau Accelerators—expert-built dashboards to jump-start your data analysis. These dashboards offer pre-built solutions that users can customize to fit their specific needs with their data to reach data-driven insights even faster.

This project management accelerator provides your business a high-level view of project diversity and identifies key metrics of successful and at-risk projects.

• Another resource that makes developing data skills easy is Tableau Public. This free platform allows users to explore, create, and publicly share visualizations to the world with public data. Not only can you learn from the best Tableau users in the world by viewing their content, but you can also get feedback on content you’ve posted and apply those learnings in your next project. Tableau Public is the largest repository of data visualizations, so you’ll never run out of inspiration for your next creation.

5. Tableau makes it easy to share data.

Few BI tools have as many options for sharing data as Tableau. When sharing files, users need to be conscious of security, functionality, and ease of use. Tableau users can feel confident knowing they are choosing a solution that balances all their needs.

• Tableau has many ways to share visualizations that are easy to set up as well as intuitive for end users. If interactive functionality needs to be preserved and data is sensitive, Tableau Reader is a free software that is easily set up through a wizard installation. This allows packaged workbooks to be opened at a “read-only” level.
• If an organization wishes to share their data and visualizations publicly (or simply explore already public dashboards for inspiration), they can use Tableau Public. Development collaboration can be achieved through passing packaged workbooks back and forth, keeping versions hosted on a sharing platform such as SharePoint.
• There are also many native export functions within Tableau Desktop. This makes it easy to share static visuals in PDF form or a PowerPoint presentation, as well as export the underlying data into an Excel workbook if needed.

6. Tableau offers easy to access support.

Help doesn’t stop with aides like Show Me, Accelerators, or Tableau Public.

• The Tableau Community is one of the most invaluable resources there is. Whether you are stuck on a calculation or are curious if there’s a better solution than the one you’ve already built, the two million members (and counting) are there to support you and make sure you get the most out of Tableau.
• If you can’t find a solution to your problem, starting a support case is a simple process. Tableau will assign a dedicated technician to work with over email, phone, or video chat.

Join an active, supportive community to help you ramp up your data skills and guide you through your data journey.

A greenfield BI implementation should not be a difficult project. Tableau offers that low barrier to entry and will easily and quickly provide the insights your organization needs.