The current dashboaring- and reporting market is rapidly growing as more and more companies collect data about their customers, online- and offline visitors, performances, etc. Therefore, the current tools for data visualization often focus on a specific type of business. Depending on the size, market or targets, certain tools will be more or less suitable. Therefore, it is important to have an insight into the differences between tools and identify where one tool is more suitable than the other.
Two interesting tools to compare here are Tableau and Klipfolio. While the first is about the biggest fish in the analysis market, smaller tools as Klipfolio are growing. What are the most important differences between Tableau and Klipfolio? Are there specific criteria that need to be taken into account when deciding? A couple of questions to ask before deciding…
Analyses or Dashboarding?
What is the purpose of the tool? Many companies prefer to build a dashboard or data visualization with all relevant KPI’s once and maintain it regularly. In this utilization, Klipfolio is a rather flexible tool through its many functions. This functions allow the user to create a dashboard in which multiple data sources are combined. These combinations often provide deeper insights compared with other visualization tools.
When the tool is purchased with the objective of doing ad hoc analyses, Klipfolio is not recommended. In this case, Tableau is a tool that allows users to easily combine multiple metrics and dimensions and use it in a user-selected visualization. In addition, with the intuitive user interface a graph is made within seconds.
Which data sources are being used?
Where is your data stored? This is an important question that you should ask yourself. Both tools include connectors with different types of databases. Herein, Klipfolio is a very powerful tool because it has a wide range of connectors with marketing platforms as well as data storage platforms.
Here, Tableau is mainly focussing on the data storage platforms and has the powerful ability to easily link different data sources when they are neatly configured. In addition, Tableau will perform better when dealing with larger datasets.
Are the dashboards projected on television screens?
Klipfolio is a thoroughbred dashboarding tool and thus has the ability to refresh dashboards automatically, use television mode, automatically rotate between screens, etc. In this aspect, when using Tableau, more problems will be encountered because the tool focusses on analysis. At tableau, they think a dashboard should be shared at a presentation. However, there are third-party tools that give you the possibility to create a dashboard that automatically refreshes.
Conclusion
Both tools have advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the company type different tools should be considered to reach a suitable solution.
There are no perfect tools, just good tools for people with certain goals. – Lisa Charlotte Rost
