Visual Analytics vs Tableau – Know the Important Differences (Infographics)

Visual Analytics vs Tableau- Today’s business needs more efficient and easily used business intelligence tools in order to achieve their goals and gain more profit. Installing a new business intelligence tool takes several weeks, months or even years and the maintenance of the tool is also expensive. Here comes two most popular BI tools Visual Analytics vs Tableau, its features and comparison.

In this article, we discuss the following:-

• Visual Analytics vs Tableau Infographics
• What is Visual Analytics ?
• SAS Visual Analytics
• What is Tableau ?
• SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau Comparisons
• Conclusion – Visual Analytics vs Tableau

Visual Analytics vs Tableau Infographics

What is Visual Analytics ?

Visual Analytics is a form of inquiry in which the data is displayed in a graphical manner. Visual Analytics is a combination of automated analysis techniques with interactive visualizations for the purpose of effective understanding, reasoning and decision making. This is mostly used in very large and complex data sets. Visual Analytics is an in memory visualization and reporting tool.

Goals of Visual Analytics

The goals of visual analytics are as follows

• Provide an transparent way of processing data and information for an analytic discourse
• Integrate scientific disciplines to improve the division of work between human and machine
• Gain in-depth knowledge from large, dynamic and complex data
• Helps to provide more understandable ,timely and defensible reports
• Communicate the report effectively so that proper decisions are taken

Visual analytics does more than just visualization. The main task in visual analytics is to identify the best algorithm for the task at hand and develop a best solution with proper visualization and interaction techniques.

Areas related to Visual Analytics

Visual Analytics Process

SAS Visual Analytics

SAS Visual Analytics is a deep analytics portfolio which was launched by SAS in the year 2012. It is the most sophisticated visual analytics platform and is best suited for larger companies with complex needs. SAS VA is a complete platform for analytics visualization which will help you to find patterns and relationships in data. It has a powerful in-memory technology for quicker analytic computations. It is more easy to use and has a self service environment that can deal with large amount of data.

SAS VA helps you to unlock insights and improve the efficiency throughout the organization. It reduces the work of the IT department and lets them concentrate on the goals of the business.Visual Analytics in SAS is the best way to tell your Business Intelligence story. It is priced little high than other visual analytic software comparison, but has a lot of good features and functionalities. It has a traditional Business Intelligence platform and it requires skilled persons to use.

SAS Visual Analytics is compared with products such as Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire and others.

Features of SAS VA

• Innovative visualization techniques
• Visual data exploration
• Self service, easy analytics
• Robust report design
• Mobile Business Intelligence
• Collaboration
• Easy data administration
• Deployment flexibility
• Auto charting
• More interactive dashboards and reports
• Mapping technologies
• Text sentiment analysis

Benefits of SAS VA

• You can implement visual analytics dashboards, reporting and analytics all from a single interface
• Through Mobile BI apps you can view and interact with the reports and dashboards from your smart phone or any such device
• Visual Analytics in SAS allows you to share the visualizations through MS office applications like Excel and PowerPoint
• Visual Analytics in SAS uses a variety of visual analytics techniques which will help you to present the data in a more attractive way
• You can choose a Business Intelligence implementation that fits your business need. You can also expand it as your business grows. You also have an option to use BI in a private cloud or a public cloud.

What is Tableau ?

Tableau is a business intelligence software that lets anyone to connect to the data, visualize and create graphs, charts and dashboards in the way they like. It is an exploration software. Tableau software’s desktop can perform its own analysis. It helps the business to analyze large amount of data in a quick and user friendly way.

This is a more popular software that is most preferred by the business people for data visualization.

Features of Tableau

This has five important features

• Tableau Desktop – This has an attractive drag and drop desktop which lets the users to quickly analyze, sort and visualize data.
• Tableau Server – This server communicates the visualizations to any device like a desktop or mobile that supports a web browser. The architecture of Tableau server is measurable.
• Tableau Online – Tableau online features lets users to share the dashboards with the partners as well as the customers
• Tableau Reader – This feature lets the user to share the data visualization created using this software
• Tableau Public – It is the website enhancement feature which lets the visualization to narrate the story.

Features of new version Tableau

• Statistical data files – This already supports more data sources and the new version of it supports statistical files
• Data preparation – The new version of this has more data preparation features which helps the users to clean the data and spend more time on analysis.
• Ad Hoc Calculations – The new version of this allows the users to perform lot of calculations on an Ad Hoc basis. Tableau gives you answers on the flow which will let you experiment new things
• Query Performance Improvement – In the new version of Tableau the in memory analytic database is made to work even more faster than before. It is designed to make the most use of the user’s hardware.

A new technology called Query Fusion is added which will search for all the queries and look out for ways to simplify them

• Smart Maps – Selection controls, Location search capability are all the new features introduced in the new version
• Admin Views – Admin views is one more special feature added to the new version which lets the administrators to monitor and analyze data easily. It also lets them to detect bugs, plan upgrades and track the activities.

There are also several other features of Tableau which is mainly divided under three categories

Analytics Features

• Ad Hoc Analysis
• OLAP
• Predictive Analysis
• Trend Indicators

Reporting Features

• Ad Hoc Reporting
• Automatic Scheduled Reporting
• Customizable dashboard
• Dashboard
• Financial Forecast
• Graphic Benchmark tools
• Multiple Languages

Support Features

• Email
• In Person Training
• Online Chat
• Phone
• Visual Analytics Tutorials

Some features are provided at a cost while other features comes for free.

This has all the necessary features that you need for your business today and the capabilities that you want for tomorrow.

Installation of Tableau is very easy and simple.

SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau Comparisons

Here in this article we are going to compare SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau

Below is the picture that compares the Tableau with SAS VA for the year 2014

Conclusion – Visual Analytics vs Tableau

I hope that this article would have helped you to learn the differences between Visual Analytics vs Tableau. On the whole Tableau has lot of good features when compared with Visual Analytics. Tableau gives answers to all your business needs and lets you focus on the other task in the organization.