Why Tableau can’t see beyond static dashboards

When a large competitor starts sending panicked emails to your prospective customers, attempting to discredit your vision, you know you're onto something special.?

Just last month, that’s exactly what we saw Tableau do.

At ThoughtSpot, we believe dashboards are dead. It’s a new reality that has clearly spooked our friends at Tableau. Yet, instead of sharing their own vision for the future of data, they’ve resorted to using FUD tactics as the primary response.?

You can draw your own conclusions about why they haven't attacked us publicly. But in the interest of transparency, I thought I would shed some light on their arguments.?

Here are three ways Tableau is trying to sow doubt in the minds of our visionary customers:

1. The dashboard has served you so well for so many years. Why change now?
2. Analysts, ThoughtSpot is going to steal your job! You are becoming less relevant.?
3. The need for operational analytics will never go away, and dashboards are an integral part of that process.

Let's go through each one quickly:

Why change now?

Tableau should understand more than anyone else that the cycle of creative destruction is simply the industry's way of creating something better by deconstructing something that’s no longer as useful. It’s exactly what Tableau did to Microsoft Excel and pivot tables for advanced analytics. Their beautiful visualizations made complex data easier to understand.?

Dashboards in your email inbox on Mondays were perfectly acceptable during an era when data was dripping into databases once a day or several times per week. But we no longer live in that world.?

Users today demand a specific service when they want it, how they want it, and wherever they want it. In order to achieve this, continuous, interactive data analytics is necessary. Data has gone from a drip to a flood. The only way to turn the data deluge into valuable actions is if data is continuously updated and analyzed in real-time.?

However, even that is not enough. As a huge amount of data is created and captured, we need an AI system to analyze this data automatically, identify key insights, and make them available for analysts and businesspeople to further dig into.?

With the growing volume, variety, and velocity of data, and ever-increasing demands from users, static dashboards simply can’t keep up. If your business relies on them, neither can you.?

Is ThoughtSpot coming for analysts jobs?

As the saying goes, if a business is not in the software business, just wait for a few and you will see a software business all over your business.

United Airlines has a market capitalization of $15B, but some analysts value their loyalty program at $22B. Therefore, United Airlines stands to gain a lot more from rebuilding their business using data.?

What role is more important than a data analyst for a company looking to build its business on data??

That role has to evolve, though. Data experts can do so much more for their organizations than simply tweak charts or dashboards–if only they had the time. Our goal at ThoughtSpot is to free data analysts from this routine work to embrace their role as strategic partners to the broader team. By working hand in hand with business users to determine and launch use cases, understanding the past, present, and future of the data artifacts, and advising peers on how to use data to shape the future of the business.?

This can only be accomplished by unshackling analysts from the daily grind of mind-numbing report factories. Data professionals need to be able to deliver exponential impact, not incremental changes. We help make that possible.?

What about operational analytics?

No one says it's a bad idea to have a dashboard during a board meeting or a weekly executive meeting where important decisions are made. We are arguing that the relics of the past, static dashboards, might answer the question you asked, but it wasn't designed to answer the inevitable follow-up questions prompted by the first answer.?

The true value of data is often unlocked when the next ten questions can be asked without any curiosity tax attached to them. Could a PDF or static dashboard curated from a summary table accomplish that? Definitely not!

We believe that operational dashboards need to be replaced with interactive pinboards that reflect high-definition, granular data, enable instant AI-driven insights and answers, all with zero tax on curiosity.?

We're not saying maps are useless. You can still use the AAA maps in your car's glove compartment. We are just saying that they are a poor replacement for Google Maps.?

Summary

Those who know me well know that I am not bothered by FUD from competitors. In fact, I enjoy it when a big company throws mud. It means what we do is enough to challenge them.?

But the issue is far more important than a bare-knuckle fight between two vendors.?

Business data is destined to be transformed into value-creating actions. Customers and users expect two things from a business when they provide them with their personal information.?

1. Use it safely and keep it secure
2. Deliver bespoke services to them using the data

In other words, users don't want business-related assumptions and generalizations based on coarse-grained analytics. These users do not want to be lumped into a bucket of averages created by legacy BI dashboards.?

Regardless of their socioeconomic status, color, gender, or sexual orientation, everyone wants to be seen as an individual. To be heard, seen, and understood without data-driven biases. Until we let go of the old way of decoupling data and decision-making, our lives will remain the same.?

In this sense, static dashboards should be killed and unceremoniously buried.?