Compare Tableau and Microsoft Excel - Apr 2022

Shlomi LaviShlomi Lavi / Apr 21, 2022

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Bottom Line: Which is Better - Tableau or Microsoft Excel?

Tableau Vs. Excel

About the providers

Tableau is a company providing interactional data visualisation commodities, which is focused on absolute business intelligence which is also called BI tools. The founding fathers are Pat Hanrahan, Christian Chabot and Chris Stolte. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States and came into existence in January 2003.

Excel as we know is a crucial offering of Microsoft office and is basically a spreadsheet. Its operating system is mac OS x. The founders are bill gates and Paul Allen. The company is headquartered in Washington, United States. In 2015, company revenue was a whopping 93.58 billion USD.

Ease of use

What makes Tableau stand out from its peers is simplicity. It facilitates easy analysis of data and the products are formed in a way to solve the problems of users. The tone of data visualisations is incredible. Dashboards can be created in just a couple of minutes. Moreover, the data can be easily wangled.

A spreadsheet or an excel worksheet is highly utilised and admired worldwide. This software application is exceptionally easy and helps to maintain daily finances. This has taken management and organisation to a whole new level. With multitude of courses available online, one can master it. Not to forget that it is extremely user-friendly.

Reliability

USP of Tableau is its reliability, and the downtime is negligible. The customer support services are commendable. One can get help with tips, account management, FAQ’s, technical problems, updates etc. as fast as possible. To get more out of tableau there are many courses and services.

Excel has 99.9% uptime and hardly any downtime ever in the history is recorded. There is an astounding support out there for anyone who has no idea about excel. Not only does Microsoft itself provide support but also there are number of other sites to learn in the form of step by step tutorial. Professionals worldwide use Excel for various biomedical, scientific, historical researches, but it is less likely to be used for statistical analysis.

Speed

With moderate speed, problems do persist in tableau in terms of performance. However, there are ways to optimize the speed and increase the pace of operation. With a better-formatted data one can go to dashboard as quick as possible. However, the performance is not so decent at the industry level.

Again excel has a moderate speed but with various tips and tricks available one can easily step-up the speed. It is important to have in-depth knowledge about its working. There is no magical button to quicken the speed.

Features

Tableau is an elegant and powerful tool. With high functionality and mapping data skills, it helps the user to encounter any complexity. It caters to basic needs of users. There are incredible visualisations and developing in tableau is a plus point. External data can be converted into an interactional one. Now, let us have a look at some of the features offered by Tableau.

  • User can ask geographic questions and get feedbacks within the blink of an eye.
  • No training is required to build a dashboard. It is comfortable for new users
  • Connecting, getting set-up and importing data is fast.
  • Users can take a quick glance at popular workbooks and views and could also gain an insight on the number of views received
  • Project leaders can now alter owners, schedules etc. at the drop of a hat
  • User could specify disk-space thresholds in advance and the server will notify when you have reached the threshold
  • User could create groups and bins

With each update, the performance gets better, so that is good news for new users. Coming to mobile usability, it is seamless for the users. The customer base is large and there are forums where people meet and discuss tableau. The cost seems to be less impressive though. The company itself handles the defects. Tableau gets a high rating in the feature arena. It is helpful for professionals.

With the vast data and a lot of information, it is important for enterprises to manage all of it in a proper way. Creating a spreadsheet is the only effective way. Tools which are used often are easily approachable therefore saves a lot of time.

Features of excel:

  • Massive tables can be easily formatted
  • Automated traces for beginners
  • Files and docs can be compiled together to avoid any fuss
  • Data formatting is highly appreciable
  • Numeric and text data could be organized efficiently
  • Excel absorbs and perceives your pattern and auto-completes the residual data for end-users
  • Tell Me search feature leads user to the feature commands and helps to perform complex operations
  • Trends and patterns could be highlighted effortlessly

In the recent version, one can chose a coloured header too. Sharing information is much better now. What increases its productivity is that one can assess it anywhere. With a thorough understanding of the start-up instructions, you are ready for it. In 2014 excel was released for mac.


Security

Tableau takes security seriously and there are different ways where the user can secure data. Options like ‘who can see the data’ are also available via various filters. No scripting is required for the security purposes. For these forward looking enterprises there is a row level security which is well-to-do.

With a strong password, excel documents tend to be out of threats and malicious software. Moreover, Microsoft provides free virus shelter. One can even encrypt the full file to realize enhanced security. System scanning and cleaning is also available. One needs to keep up with security updates to be on the safer side. Excel’s inbuilt security is weak and it demands additional security. It is not exposed to the internet but still hackers can get the user to open the file.

Summary

Both Tableau and Excel are excellent options to take your business to an all-new level. Where one transforms the data into a more organised manner, the other focuses more on visualisations, managing the data etc. Excel is overall used for simplifying the data and the other is focused on providing interactive data. One major drawback of tableau is performance and then comes the pre-judgement (which can be wrong) by the software. User should do a thorough study and then choose between the two.



Tableau

ITQlick rating
(4.5/5)

starts at $15 per user/month

Tableau is a family of data visualization software designed for business intelligence that includes Tableau Desktop, Tableau Online, Tableau Server, Tableau Public and Tableau Reader. The Tableau suite is inten...

Categories: Budgeting & CPM, BI & Analytics, Dashboards & KPIs, Data analysis.

Microsoft Excel

ITQlick rating
(3.8/5)

starts at $140 per license

Microsoft Excel makes it possible to analyze, manage, and share information in more ways than ever before, helping you make better, smarter decisions. New analysis and visualization tools help you track and hig...

Categories: Spreadsheet.

Compare specifications

Compare features

Tableau: 14 Features

Ad-Hoc Analysis
Ad-Hoc Reporting
Automatic Scheduled Reporting
Customizable Dashboard
Customizable Features
Dashboarding
Forecasting & Budgeting
Graphic Benchmark
Issue Indicators
Multy Languages
OLAP
Performance Measurements
Predictive-Analysis
Trend Indicators

Microsoft Excel: 3 Features

Data Import/Export
Basic Reports
Online Customer Support
ITQlick rating ITQlick Rating is based on the software score (below) and aggregated online reviews
ITQlick score ITQlick Score is a 1 to 100, the calculation is based on pricing, and functionality Vs. alternative solutions
Pricing score pricing Score is a 1 to 10 (10 is high cost), based on the TCO (cost of licences, customizations, training, hardware when relevant) Vs. alternative solutions
License pricing license pricing (if provided by the software vendor)
Functionality score
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Auditor - Shlomi Lavi

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Shlomi Lavi is an entrepreneur and founder of ITQlick.com. He holds a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Information Systems Engineering from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Shlomi brings 17 years of global IT and IS management experience as a consultant and implementation expert for small, medium and large-sized (global) companies. Shlomi’s goal is to share the best knowledge and news about information systems so you can make smarter buying decisions for your business.