Tableau packages tools in Analytics Performance Bundle
The combination of four tools comes at a cost savings for customers and is designed to better enable users to derive value from data by providing all needed capabilities in one.
Salesforce on Tuesday unveiled the Analytics Performance Bundle, a grouping of four Tableau tools designed to make it easier for customers to glean insights that lead to decisions.
The Analytics Performance Bundle includes either Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server in concert with Tableau Data Management, Tableau Advanced Management and Tableau eLearning.
Tableau Cloud is the vendor's fully hosted self-service analytics platform, while Tableau Server is the vendor's online platform hosted by customers themselves. Data Management, meanwhile, enables customers to prepare and connect their data, Advanced Management is a tool for creating security and governance measures, and eLearning provides users with training to use Tableau.
Bundle advantages
In essence, the Analytics Performance Bundle is the packaging of existing tools rather than the introduction of new capabilities. Nevertheless, it has the potential to significantly benefit customers, according to Wayne Eckerson, founder and principal consultant at Eckerson Group.
He noted that by purchasing the previously disparate tools in one package, organizations will be protected from making potentially costly mistakes at the time they first elect to deploy Tableau. Often, organizations don't fully understand which tools they'll need to develop a successful analytics program and only discover they've missed something when it's too late to easily add what's been omitted.
"Many customers don't buy all the tools, even when they might benefit," Eckerson said. "Once a sale is made, it's hard for most companies to go back and say, 'Oh yeah, I probably should have gotten that too.' They may have to wait an uncomfortably long time to get permission to add to the license cost. And these tools individually are not cheap."
By packaging multiple tools and services into one bundle, they can streamline sales, offer discounts and generate more revenue without nearly as much work as selling the products individually.
Wayne EckersonFounder and principal consultant, Eckerson Group
Beyond Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server -- which are each available in three tiers ranging from $12 per user, per month for the most basic version of Tableau Cloud to $70 per user, per month for the most full-featured versions of both -- the vendor does not make public the costs of its individual tools. But according to Tableau, the initial price for the Analytics Performance Bundle represents a 45% savings over separately buying the tools that make up the bundle. That price, however, is only available through Dec. 31, 2022.
In addition to protecting organizations from potential omissions, the launch of the Analytics Performance Bundle has the potential to simplify the sales -- and revenue generation -- process from Tableau's perspective, Eckerson noted.
"Tableau ... is no longer a one-trick pony," he said. "The challenge with having multiple products is that you have to sell multiple products -- separate sales, marketing, packaging. By packaging multiple tools and services into one bundle, they can streamline sales, offer discounts and generate more revenue without nearly as much work as selling the products individually."
The bundle also has the potential to simplify purchasing from a customer's perspective, Eckerson continued.
"It streamlines and accelerates the whole process for Tableau and its customers, while reducing costs for customers and increasing revenues for Tableau," he said. "So it's a proverbial win-win."
While the Analytics Performance Bundle stands to benefit customers by protecting them from omitting needed capabilities and simplifying purchasing, it is designed to better enable organizations to derive value from their analytics tools, Tableau said.
According to a 2020 study of more than 600 senior executives conducted by Harvard Business Review and sponsored by data management vendor Alteryx, organizations recognize the value of analytics, but are struggling to turn their data into meaningful insights that can inform business decisions.
At the time of the survey, more than half of respondents said analytics was an extremely important part of the decision-making process, and nearly all said analytics would be even more important now in 2022.
However, only about half responded that they were satisfied with their data visualization tools such as Tableau and Qlik.
The Analytics Performance Bundle, therefore, aims to improve organizations' ability to derive meaningful insights from their data by joining previously disparate tools within the Tableau platform, according to Tableau spokesperson Tom Kim.
"We created this bundle to make it easier for our customers to purchase and use our entire platform to help drive a digital and data transformation across their organization," he said. "Our enterprise customers have told us they want the most modern analytics products that scale with their business, while ensuring their data is safe and in the right hands at all times."
The vendor's third-quarter update included Data Guide, a new augmented analytics tool aimed at helping customers automatically surface insights they might have otherwise overlooked and explain changes.
Earlier this year, Tableau added Data Stories, an automated data storytelling tool that resulted from the vendor's 2021 acquisition of Narrative Science. And in September, Salesforce and Tableau unveiled an integration between Tableau and Genie, which is Salesforce's new customer data platform.
Future plans include more automation tools along the lines of Data Guide and Data Stories, and adding more embedded analytics capabilities.
