Sisense and Tableau are two of the most popular business intelligence tools. See how these BI tools stack up against each other to understand which one is right for your organization.
Sisense and Tableau are both very popular business intelligence tools designed to help companies leverage their data to make better informed strategic decisions. This article will help you compare these two BI tools and their key features to determine which one will best meet your needs.
What is Sisense?
Sisense is a BI tool that helps users extract actionable insights from large and complex data sets. Sisense offers analytics tools and dashboards designed for a variety of industries and job roles including IT, human resources, healthcare, customer service and marketing. The tool integrates with a number of popular platforms including Slack, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce so that users can view important data within their preferred software.
What is Tableau?
Tableau is one of the most popular analytics platforms for BI. Businesses can use Tableau for data visualization, organization and analysis in order to better understand their data and use it to make business decisions. Tableau also offers customizable tools for different industries and job functions to deliver the insights that each user needs.
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Sisense vs. Tableau: Feature comparison
| Feature | Sisense | Tableau |
|---|---|---|
| Data visualization | Yes | Yes |
| Embedded analytics | Yes | Yes |
| On-premise connection | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud connection | Yes | Yes |
| Data governance tools | Yes | Yes |
Head-to-head comparison: Sisense vs. Tableau
Data visualization
Data visualization tools and features allow users to view data in a graph or other visual representations. This can make data easier for many people to understand and analyze. Both Sisense and Tableau feature advanced data visualization functionality.
Sisense offers both static and interactive visualizations. Interactive visualizations allow users to customize their view by moving a slider or clicking a button to explore different views of a particular data set.
Tableau offers several data visualization options including:
- Charts: data displayed on pie charts, bar charts, line charts and more.
- Tables: data displayed in rows and columns similar to Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet tables.
- Geospatial visualizations: data displayed on a map to organize and visualize data by location.
Tableau’s data visualization tools are fairly user friendly and are great for sharing data with customers or non-technical coworkers.
Data governance
Data governance refers to how your organization secures, organizes and stores data. One major component of data governance is setting user permissions to manage who has access to data within your BI tools.
Sisense’s platform includes four key user roles that organizations can use to manage data access:
- Admin: Admins have access to the entire system and are also able to manage deployment.
- Designer: The Designer role is for team members that need to create, design, edit and share dashboards.
- Data designer: Data designer permissions are meant for those who can create and share ElastiCubes, a type of analytics database within Sisense’s platform.
- Viewer: Viewers may only view and explore dashboards that have been shared with them. They are unable to edit the data or dashboards.
Each role comes with default settings, but they may be customized to meet your organization’s specific needs.
Tableau offers more customizable options when it comes to data governance. Organizations can choose from several data governance models including centralized, delegated and self-regulating. They can also build their own data governance models within Tableau for a fully customized experience.
Embedded analytics
Embedded analytics allow users to embed and integrate analytics tools into their own existing websites and applications. This feature can be used to give your customers access to analytics as well. Both tools offer embedded analytics capabilities.
With Sisense, users can embed analytics into their analytics dashboards and widgets into their websites using an embed code. Users can also embed Sisense analytics into existing apps or build their own custom, white-labeled apps that better incorporate the design and branding of your organization.
Tableau analytics can be embedded via iFrames or JavaScript API. Like Sisense, Tableau allows users to white-label their widgets and dashboard to deliver a branded experience to customers. Embedded analytics is offered as an add-on with Tableau, so you will likely have to pay a bit extra for the feature.
Choosing between Sisense and Tableau
Choosing between the two BI tools can be challenging because Sisense and Tableau offer many common features and similar connection options while remaining user-friendly. Sisense and Tableau both offer competitive BI software that can meet the needs of small, medium and large businesses. However, Tableau is typically better suited for small businesses than Sisense as the company offers more affordable rates.
The decision on which option is right for you will likely come down to how you plan to use the BI tool. If you’re interested in building analytics-driven apps, Sisense may be the better choice. If you want more control over data governance, Tableau will likely give you the greater flexibility and functionality that you desire.