My first Tableau Conference on Tour 2015 was a stimulating week loaded with learning opportunities, encouraging speakers and networking coffee breaks. This brought back fond memories from biology symposia I attended during my masters. Being immersed in the data world for the first time, I already felt a part of the community.

I was astounded at the high levels of Tableau implementation in the private sector. Tableau does not stop at BI or insight, it can effectively derive business actions and evaluation as told by Global Radio. Developing a discount guidance dashboard, this company used Tableau to create a business action reducing the chances of revenue loss. Appropriate prices are calculated based on both client and budget data, and cleverly adding a human touch by expressing recommendations in words (rather than graphs). Furthermore, business evaluation was performed by measuring the impact of this action on a leaderboard that takes into account 1) the amount of spending 2) discounts given and 3)  a score based on how close recommendation was followed. This effectively creates a “data loop” as insight can be drawn from data collected to produce the leaderboard. No problem is too big or small to solve using this tool!

I was impressed by the applications of Tableau also in the public sector, which I must point out that UNOCHA demonstrates great leadership.  This body focuses on gap analysis of the Gaza to coordinate humanitarian aid. By visualizing the constantly changing geopolitical data, and showing vulnerability profiles (see below) is certainly not an easy task.  However, the reward is identification of marginalized people which can be located to drive negotiations forward. This is the point in which I was enlightened by the true power of self-service analytics. Have you discovered the beauty of BI? Please share your experiences with us via social media or email.

Vulnerability profile for Gaza by UNOCHA