Alteryx vs Tableau: Comparing Two Data Analytics Tools

Data is revolutionizing the way business is done and interpreted. Data visualization is a key ingredient in extracting the most valuable information from heaps of data. With the help of ETL tools, data visualization helps business stakeholders take appropriate decisions and insight into data. Alteryx and Tableau are two globally popular and industry-standard software tools for data analytics, data consumption, and data visualization.

Many organizations are leveraging their potential to garner optimum knowledge from their bulk of data. Be it Tableau or Alteryx, both tools have been dominating the software industry for a few years now and have stiff competition. Organizations have been analyzing them based on costs, skills, simplicity of use, brand recognition, etc.

Before we go into the details of Tableau vs Alteryx, let us have an individual peep at the two technologies.

What Is Alteryx?

Alteryx is an American computer software company based in Irvine, California, with a development center in Broomfield, Colorado. The company’s products are used for data science and analytics. The software is designed to make advanced analytics accessible to any data worker. – Wikipedia

Alteryx is a known data analytics platform that assists organizations in accelerating data-based business decisions around a variety of industry segments. It is competent to create faster outcomes, deep and insightful information, better decisions based on the self-service analytics and data science capability of oneself. Its data exploration and profiling capabilities turn data into insight.

Data scientists and analysts can easily prepare, blend, and analyze data with multiple low codes, no code building blocks with reusable workflows. Deployable predictive models can be created with enhanced and expert ML algorithms. A convergence of multiple tools into a single platform can be done for insightful data analytics. Outputs could be in various formats like documents, dashboards, enterprise apps, intelligence systems, etc.

Prior to the pandemic, Alteryx was considered to be a high-growth company, with five-year revenue growth of 56% per annum. In 2020, Alteryx achieved much more modest revenue growth of 19%, reporting shorter contract durations and above normal churn in mid-sized enterprises.

Source: nasdaq.com

Key Alteryx Features:

• Data analytics to help in business problem solving
• Fastens and automates processes
• Facilitates predictive and geospatial solutions
• Effective data exploration and data preparation competencies
• Search for data assets and deploy directly to production
• Read and write data in various data files, REST APIs, databases, etc.
• Prebuilt predictive models for data science solutions
• Drag and drop tools to geocode and map locations
• Can power reports and dashboards in Qlik, Tableau, Power BI, ThoughtSpot, etc.
• Enhanced user experience and community support

Who Uses Alteryx?

VMware Inc, Lorven Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Confidential Records Inc., Living Spaces, CoEnterprise, Abbott, Accenture, Adidas, BBC Worldwide, BookMyShow, etc.

What Is Tableau?

Tableau Software is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. Tableau products query relational databases, online analytical processing cubes, cloud databases, and spreadsheets to generate graph-type data visualizations. The software can also extract, store, and retrieve data from an in-memory data engine. – Wikipedia

Tableau is a popular and comprehensive Business Intelligence platform that is secure and scalable. It helps organizations in rethinking their data strategies to extract the optimum out of it. It is easy for organizations to establish a smooth connection with data through competent AI and ML features, data management, and storytelling. Thanks to the efficient Tableau community, there is a lot to learn and expand knowledge base.

Analysis of data with Tableau is fast, simple, and attractive since it caters to users of all kinds and has relevant tools and analytics for everyone. Being a Salesforce company, it helps users see and understand data with its self-service analytical capability. Since Tableau Prep is the new-age ETL tool that facilitates data extraction from different sources, transformation and loading it using joins, aggregations, etc., there is a comparison between Tableau Prep vs Alteryx.

Key Tableau Features:

• Easy creation of interactive visualizations
• Precise, powerful, and secure analytics with data algorithms
• Unified platform for connection, sharing, and collaboration
• Fast and seamless creation of interactive dashboards/visualization
• Simplistic and fast connection with disparate data sources
• Wholesome view of data through dashboards
• Live and in-memory data
• Seamless connectivity to live data sources
• Robust and comprehensive security system
• Creation of customized mobile layouts

What Companies Use Tableau?

Nike, Skype, The New York Times, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, The World Bank, Amica, GMMB, ACT, Amazon, BNP Paribas, Carnegie Mellon University, Deloitte, Forbes, Google, Honeywell, etc.

Alteryx vs Tableau: A Vivid Comparison

Tableau vs Alteryx: What To Choose?

Organizations can choose Alteryx when –

• There are multiple data access locations from data that must be integrated and merged
• Data needs cleaning prior to undergoing business intelligence processes
• There is a need for data automation and documentation for manual data
• There is more involvement of geospatial queries
• Predictive models need to be created and automated for finding futuristic views

Organizations can choose Tableau when –

• There is a larger audience to view the data
• Data must be sliced and diced to extract errors
• There are huge groups who must utilize data with ease
• Maps are needed to show data with zoom facility, dynamic filter, and drill-down

Also Read: Tableau vs Power BI: Comparison Between Top Two BI Tools

Alteryx vs Tableau – The Conclusion

Alteryx and Tableau complement each other and can be utilized together. Raw data can be imported into Alteryx, processed, and transformed data can be exported into Tableau for designing dashboards and reports. Alteryx is good at obtaining data in a usable format while Tableau is good at data visualization. They both fill each other’s gaps and hence are considered a good combination too. Alteryx and Tableau are pricey products and hence cost-effective alternatives could be Power BI for Tableau and Python or R for Alteryx.

As we observe the above-mentioned differences between Tableau and Alteryx, it is tough to take a call on which one to choose. Finally, the decision depends on many parameters like what type of skills are available, what is the budget, what is the timeline of the project, etc.