Success with Tableau

Implementations By Ashley Ohmann

Data Visualization Practice Principal

Kforce Advisory and Solutions Practice

May 7, 2015

Success with Tableau Implementations May 7, 2015 ∙ Page 2

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 2

Fostering a Data-Driven Culture ............................................................................................... 3

The Critical Role of the IT Group in Self-Service Analytics .......................................................... 3

The Road Forward. A Practical Roadmap for Scaling Your Analytics Culture. .............................. 4

The Tableau Drive Manual ....................................................................................................... 4

Tableau Implementation Maturity Model................................................................................. 4

Data Governance with Tableau (from the 2014 Tableau Conference) ........................................ 4

Data Governance for Self-Service Analytics .............................................................................. 5

Building Evangelism with Tableau ............................................................................................ 5

Success with Tableau Communities of Practice ......................................................................... 5

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 5

Introduction Tableau Software is the fastest-growing software manufacturer in the world, with a market

capitalization projected to exceed $10bn in 2015, and with 20,000 distinctive organizations

using the tool, it’s likely that organizations not using it already are considering it to meet their

data visualization and data insight needs. Most new enterprise deployments of Tableau have

several characteristics in common:

1. Tableau is not the first business intelligence or visualization tool to be acquired

2. Existing tools are not meeting the needs of the business 3. Tableau was brought into the organization by the business team, rather than an IT team

The primary users of Tableau are business users, from financial analysts to sales and marketing

managers, who depend on their organizations’ IT teams to provide data and network

infrastructure for self-service BI—and have consistently established their own workflows,

collaborative models, and operational best practice.

More traditional infrastructure and support teams in enterprise IT organizations have adapted

quickly to the engagement paradigm-shift, often creating new shared services practice models,

or else evolving those that have worked well with other BI tools. The high level of engagement

Success with Tableau Implementations May 7, 2015 ∙ Page 3

of business users of Tableau has contributed to the acceleration of data-driven cultural shifts,

though, and in this document, we present several whitepapers and studies that offer insight

into how usage of Tableau and other self-service tools is necessitating the establishment of new

communities and processes.

The whitepapers and studies that we have selected address the non-technical aspects of

evolving organizations through the strategic development of forward-thinking, collaborative

analytics cultures that promote cross-functional engagement and the careful and consistent use

of data-driven insights. It has been our experience that the deliberate creation of analytics

shared services teams is critical to successful enterprise-wide implementations of Tableau and

other self-service tools, so our focus is on the thought leadership and practices that contribute

to success by incorporating the people, processes, and tools of a business into their charters.

The title of each whitepaper is hyperlinked to its address on the internet, and we have included

both the origin of each document and a synopsis of its application to the discussion of building

new analytics cultures.

Fostering a Data-Driven Culture

A Report from the Economist Intelligence Unit

New tools are of little use without an evolved understanding of the strategic value of them to

an organization. This whitepaper, which was sponsored by Tableau, discusses the practical

implications of building analytics-driven cultures with the premise that the most forward-

looking companies center their decisions on data and encourage data-centric questioning and

dissent. The Economist Intelligence Unit developed it by surveying 530 senior executives.

The Critical Role of the IT Group in Self-Service Analytics

IDC Group

Effective collaboration between line-of-business and IT groups within the self-service BI domain

depends largely on IT groups taking leadership roles to develop robust infrastructure and to

ensure “adherence to corporate data governance and security policies while providing end

users with the flexibility to tackle real business issues with real benefits.” This whitepaper

discusses on the challenges of building new shared-services and self-service partnership

models, and it includes real examples and solutions from large enterprises in the quick service

restaurant, financial services, and technology industries, as well as the strategies that any IT

team should focus on to enable self-service analytics for its business partners.

Success with Tableau Implementations May 7, 2015 ∙ Page 4

The Road Forward. A Practical Roadmap for Scaling Your Analytics Culture.

Tableau Software

As business users adopt self-service tools for the massive volumes of data that accumulate each

day and need direct access to their data, the value that IT organizations deliver within their

enterprise also must change: rather than being threatened by this sea change, IT organizations

can focus on strategic issues, like data security and information management strategy, rather

than the creation of the stale, static reports and dashboards that have defined BI 1.0 and

vilified old-fashioned, tabular tools in business communities.

Tableau developed the Drive methodology, which “…draws from agile methods and is informed

by the most analytically-minded companies in the world,” to develop a new approach to help IT

organizations empower business users in their analytics strategies. This introduction to the

Drive methodology focuses on the change management practices and inflection points that are

fundamental to the successful evolution of IT and line-of-business partnerships within BI.

The Tableau Drive Manual

Tableau Software

The Drive Manual follows “The Road Forward” with in-depth discussions of the techniques that

were key to successful enterprise implementations, with special focus on the composition of

effective teams and the four phases of an implementation.

Tableau Implementation Maturity Model

Kforce Advisory and Solutions Practice

“This document presents a four-phased approach in which initiatives focused on the people, processes,

and technology of an organization progress together to minimize risk, increase efficiency of

implementation, and drive maximum value for new tools in an organization through the development of

new and better data governance, change management, educational, leadership, architectural, and

development strategies.”

Data Governance with Tableau (from the 2014 Tableau Conference)

Ashley Ohmann, Kforce Advisory and Solutions Practice

This presentation discusses what data governance is and the dramatic effects of its failures—

and how to incorporate data governance principles into new Tableau deployments to ensure

long-term success with business customers and corporate compliance regulations.

Success with Tableau Implementations May 7, 2015 ∙ Page 5

Data Governance for Self-Service Analytics

Tableau Software

This whitepaper from Tableau highlights the four critical elements of data governance with self-

service analytics: the team, data quality, data security and compliance, and report and

dashboard governance.

Building Evangelism with Tableau

Kforce Advisory and Solutions Practice

Evangelists are the faces and names of success with Tableau in an organization. This

presentation, from the 2015 Tableau Partner Conference, presents four Kforce clients and the

discussions that helped them realize how Tableau could add real value for their organization—

and change their analytics culture.

Success with Tableau Communities of Practice

Kforce Advisory and Solutions Practice

Most large organizations have created Centers of Excellence for some or all of their shared

tools, with varying degrees of success. The Community of Practice is an adaptation of the

Center of Excellence, and it centers on high levels of interactivity and collaboration between

Tableau users, shared services teams, and the external community of users. This whitepaper

presents the specific types of documentation that enterprise shared services teams should

curate within the Community of Practice to ensure efficient, productive, and effective

interactions with their business customers.

Conclusion The implementation of Tableau within an enterprise—from the first thrilled business user to

the successful configuration of high-availability servers and access for hundreds of consumers—

depends much less on the technical features of the application suite than it does the

collaboration of business users with their IT partners and the creation of analytics communities

in which each contributor knows and experiences the real value of data and analytics intimacy

to the long-term success of their business. Consistently employed perspective on cultural

change, data governance, adaptability of traditionally structured teams, and effectively scaled

change management strategies are the workhorses of successful implementations.

For more industry and business-specific customer success stories with Tableau, check out

Tableau’s repository at http://www.tableau.com/learn/stories.

With questions, please contact Ashley Ohmann or your local Kforce Business Intelligence SME.