8 things Tableau & Power BI don’t want you to know
What to think about when buying (or building) dashboards.
Scenario: “I want a dashboard”
Sounds simple. And the use-case for a dashboard is simple — the ability to monitor high level KPIs. But although dashboards are widespread, it doesn’t mean that they are actually used by business teams to get insight. In fact, the reality is bleak: the utilisation of traditional BI tools is incredibly low, between 17–30% (Source: BARC, Gartner).
Case in point — look at the sales dashboard below. Other than reporting on a few metrics, does this help answer burning questions? Shift the needle to get you close to closing a deal? Spark ideas or next steps?
8 things that Power BI and Tableau don’t want you to know
If you want a sales dashboard, here is what you’re really, implicitly, asking for:
- I’M PAYING FOR PEOPLE, NOT TECHNOLOGY— I want a data analyst to build me a dashboard. As this relies on a specialist developer, I don’t mind waiting weeks or months for it to be built.
- TIME ISN’T IMPORTANT TO ME — I understand that I am not only paying for the software, but for the developer’s time to build the report. If this report isn’t a priority for the broader organisation, I understand that my request for insight will stay in a backlog, waiting to be prioritised.
- IT WILL ONLY BE AS SMART AS WHAT I ASK FOR TODAY — I know upfront what I want to see. The depth and breadth of insights that I’ll be able to see are completely predetermined, and I’m ok with this. My use-case is simply monitoring high-level KPIs, that’s it.
- WILL NEED MORE MONEY— I recognise that if I want to ask questions outside the scope of the dashboard’s filters, that I won’t be able to do this. I’ll need to rely on others to answer questions as they arise. Which means I’ll need more time and money.
- NO INSIGHTS HERE — I recognise that the dashboard merely reports on some key numbers. But it’s not a tool that generates insight.
- IT WON’T HELP MY TEAM — As a leader, I recognise that if people in my team want to dig deeper for insights, they’ll fall into one of two buckets: 1) export data extracts into Excel and attempt to do the analysis themselves, or 2) they’ll make decisions blind, without insight addressing critical questions. In the latter case, I recognise that the team is likely overwhelmed: analysis is complex, time consuming, prone to errors, requires expertise, and requires training to know the right questions to ask of data — analytical skills and experience they lack, impacting their confidence or desire to get insights from scratch. They also recognise that asking data teams for insights is most often fruitless — get a ticket and wait to be prioritised in the backlog of data requests.
- DASHBOARD DESIGN IS SUBJECTIVE — I recognise that the quality, design and how long it takes for my dashboard to be built depends on the developer building it. But that fancy bells and whistles may also not be necessary, as my use-case of tracking high-level numbers is completely pre-determined.
- IT WILL FEEL LIKE WE’VE DELIVERED SOMETHING — I recognise that rolling out a dashboard is a ‘safe choice’ as almost every company, every department, every manager has a use-case to monitor high-level KPIs, and access to Power BI via their Microsoft suite. But I’m aware that my team, account managers, are not going to get much from the report. Yes, it might serve as talking points during our team meeting, but because it lacks insight, it’s not going to help us think differently, speed up decision making or spark collaboration that will help us close deals faster.
Is there a better way to get insights?
Yes! With the introduction of augmented analytics and self-service business intelligence, people can now easily self-service insights about which teams, regions or industries outperform others — information they would have struggled to get without leaning on a data analyst.
Traditional BI tools, Tableau and Power BI, are synonymous for enabling data specialists to build dashboards: helping businesses track high-level KPIs and get a feel of their data through charts and visualisations. As these tools have been around 18 years (Tableau) and 7 years (Power BI), there’s a quite community of dashboard developers happy to build bespoke solutions. But, the solutions — the end deliverables — are predefined, not personalised, and require specialists to build and maintain (which comes with a high price). So while traditional BI tools are used as a source of top line numbers, they aren’t suited to a manager or salesperson needing insight, answers to their questions today. In fact, there’s a question of whether the future of dashboards is dashboardless…
In contrast, tools like ThoughtSpot and Hyper Anna are part of a new generation of BI tools, designed to augment the business intelligence function.
- ThoughtSpot was built to solve a Google Search-like use case: “I want to ask my data questions & get answers.”
- Hyper Anna was built to solve the problem: “I need insights. So if there’s insight in my data, I want to know about it ASAP. Without waiting. Without relying on specialists. Without asking a question.”
We’ve summarised key differences in the table below.
LOOKING TO READ MORE?
Today’s post forms part of a longer white paper, reviewing both old and new generation business intelligence tools. If you’re looking to go deeper, check out the article where we compare four BI tools in more detail: Power BI vs Tableau vs ThoughtSpot vs Hyper Anna.
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ABOUT HYPER ANNA — The World’s #1 Automated Analytics platform used by companies like Microsoft, IAG, Singtel and Westpac worldwide. https://www.hyperanna.com/
