Total Economic Impact of Tableau Software

In a comprehensive study conducted by Forrester, it was determined that Tableau’s Business Intelligence (BI) solution delivers substantial benefits and cost savings for organizations. The study, titled “The Total Economic Impact of Tableau Business Intelligence Solution” (November, 2010), revealed compelling findings based on in-depth interviews with three customers: a national financial-services firm, a major teaching hospital, and an online media firm. The research showcases a return on investment (ROI) of 127% and a payback period of 13 months.

Forrester identified several key benefits resulting from the adoption of Tableau:

1. Increased user adoption of business intelligence: Tableau’s user-friendly interface and intuitive features led to a significant increase in the adoption and utilization of BI capabilities within organizations.
2. Substantial increase in standardized reports: Customers experienced a remarkable 400% increase in the generation of standardized reports, enabling consistent and reliable insights across the organization.
3. Drastic reduction in report creation times: By leveraging Tableau’s powerful analytics capabilities, customers achieved an impressive 87.5% reduction in the time required to create reports, resulting in improved operational efficiency.
4. Cost savings from simplified report distribution and storage: Tableau eliminated the need for costly and complex report distribution, storage, and duplication processes, leading to reduced expenses and streamlined operations.
5. Seamless adoption with no training costs: Customers found that adopting Tableau required minimal training, saving additional costs associated with extensive training programs.
6. Enhanced productivity of BI analysts: Tableau freed up BI analysts to focus on higher-value tasks by automating routine reporting processes and providing self-service analytics capabilities to end-users.
7. Process improvements through visualization: The use of visualizations in root-cause analysis resulted in tangible process improvements, enabling organizations to identify and address issues more effectively.

For the other two customers interviewed, Forrester discovered additional benefits, including:

• Over 500% reduction in report creation time.
• Elimination of report maintenance efforts.
• Avoidance of $40,000 annual costs by leveraging Tableau’s geospatial capabilities instead of purchasing separate data feeds.
• Greater user involvement without incremental effort in report distribution.
• Enhanced creativity in designing new reports using Tableau’s features.
• Improved alignment between data preparers and consumers, fostering better collaboration and understanding.

The Forrester study demonstrates the immense value that Tableau’s BI solution brings to organizations, including cost savings, increased productivity, improved decision-making, and enhanced data visualization capabilities.