Synopsis
I came across groundbreaking visualization tools at work because it was important to set realistic expectations for what Excel can and cannot do in terms of visualization. I used to create dashboards in MS Excel and that entails much complex formula creation, Power Query, Power Pivot, DAX and VBA behind the scenes at times. Powerful, but at present, in new technologies such as Tableau and Power BI, such can be accomplished much easily via simply using the interface.
In one job...
I saw it where Tableau and Power BI would be best to drive much business and data analysis and draw actionable insights from. The way I saw it was that these tools in many more ways now drive the initiation of business and data analysis rather than the traditional way to mostly use tools after the fact.
But for those who have actually gone through and done visualization tools such as Tableau and Power BI, there are boundaries. For instance I saw it as where MS Access and SQL can help greatly not just for data preparation but streamlining the processes to enable use of Tableau and Power BI to the greatest extent possible or people would be doing them in MS Excel.
But to get to an integrated, consistent, standardized data and information, especially across not only one source but several sources, MS Access or SQL based relational databases can be a piece that can tie everything together to the fullest, especially if there would be a complete database application. MS Access and in many ways SQL Server can feed Tableau, for example, it’s one of the data sources supported, and would be best than connecting to disparate Excel files every time. Which then facilitated more visualization that would have been done in MS Excel.
To create dashboards as well is not a one size fits all. Sometimes one needs to create an exploratory dashboard, which means enabling the users plenty of interaction to drill down and see different scenarios. Sometimes one needs to create a dashboard where one has to focus on answering a specific question so that there is less user interaction but highlighted information. Sometimes one has to create a story, moving from one visualization to the next in a series to drive a point home or a conclusion already determined and how one got there.
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