Alteryx vs. Tableau: Choosing the right data analytics tool for your business

Data Visualization is commonly used in the modern world, where most business decisions are taken into consideration by analyzing the data. One of the most significant benefits of data visualization is that it enables us to visually access huge amounts of data in easily understandable visuals. There are many areas where data visualization is being used. Some of the data visualization tools include Tableau, Alteryx, Infogram, ChartBlocks, Datawrapper, Plotly, Visual.ly, etc.

Tableau and Alteryx are industry standard tools and have dominated the data analytics market for a few years now and still running strong without any strong competition. In this article, we will understand the core differences between Alteryx tool and Tableau. This will help us in deciding which tool to use for what purposes.

Tableau is one of the top-rated tools which helps the analysts to carry out business intelligence and data visualization activities. Using Tableau, the users will be able to generate compelling dashboards and stunning data visualizations. Tableau’s interactive user interface helps users to quickly generate reports where they can drill down the information to a granular level.

Alteryx is a powerful tool widely used in data analytics and also provides meaningful insights to the executive level personnel. With the user-friendly interface, the user will be able to extract the data, transform the data, and load the data within the Alteryx tool.

Why use Alteryx with Tableau?

The use of Alteryx with Tableau is a powerful combination when it comes to getting value-added data decisions. With Alteryx, businesses can manipulate their data and provide input to the Tableau platform, which in return will be able to showcase strong data visualizations. This will help the businesses to take appropriate actions which are backed up with data analysis.

Alteryx and Tableau tools are widely used within organizations where the decisions can be taken into consideration based on the insights obtained from data analysis. Talking about data handling, Alteryx is a powerful ETL platform where data can be analyzed in different formats.

When it comes to data representation, Tableau is a perfect match. Further, using Tableau the reports can be shared across team members. Nowadays, most of the businesses want to see real-time data and want to understand business trends.

The combination of Alteryx and Tableau allows the data analysts to analyze the data, and generate meaningful insights to the users, on-the-fly. Here, data analysis can be executed within the Alteryx tool where the raw data is handled, and then the data representation or visualization is done in Tableau, so both of these tools go hand in hand.

Tableau vs Alteryx

The table below lists the differences between the tools.

Alteryx	Tableau
This tool is known as a smart data analytics platform.	This tool is known for its data visualization capabilities.
2. Can connect with different data sources and can synthesize the raw data. A standard ETL process is possible.	2. Can connect with different data sources and provide data visualization within minutes from the gathered data.
3. Helps in terms of the data analysis	3. Helps in terms of building appealing graphs.
4. The GUI is okay and widely accepted.	4. The GUI is one of the best features where graphs can be easily built by using drag and drop options.
5. Technical knowledge is necessary because it involves in data sources integrations, and also data blending activity.	5. Technical knowledge is not necessary, because all the data will be polished and only the user has to build graphs/visualization.
6. Once the data blending activity is completed, the users will be able to share the file which can be consumed by Tableau.	6. Once the graphs are prepared, the reports can be easily shared among team members without any hassle.
7. A lot of flexibility while using this tool for data blending activity.	7. Flexibility while using the tool for data visualization.
8. Using this tool, the users will be able to do spatial and predictive analysis	8. Possible by representing the data in an appropriate format.
9. One of the best tools when it comes to data preparations.	9. Not feasible to prepare the data in Tableau when it is compared to Alteryx.
10. Data representation cannot be done accurately.	10. It is a wonderful tool for data representation.
11. Has one time feeds- Annual fees	11. Has an option to pay monthly as well.
12. Has a drag and drop interface where the user can develop a workflow easily.	12. Has a drag and drop interface where the user will be able to build a visualization in no time.

Alteryx and Tableau Integration

As discussed earlier, these two tools have their own advantages and disadvantages, but when integrated together, they can do wonders with the data. This integration between Tableau and Alteryx makes the task of visualizing the Alteryx generated answers quite simple. The data is first loaded into the Alteryx tool and is then extracted in the form of .tde files (i.e. Tableau Data Extracted Files). These .tde files will be consumed by Tableau tool to do the data visualization part. On a regular basis, the data extracted file from Alteryx tool (i.e. .tde files) will be generated and will replace the old .tde files.

Thus, by integrating Alteryx and Tableau, we can:

Cleanse, combine, as well as collect all the data sources that are relevant and enrich them with the help of third-party data - everything in one workflow.

Give analytical context to your data by providing predictive, location-based, and deep spatial analytics.

Publish your analytic workflows’ results to Tableau for intuitive, rich visualizations that help you in making decisions more quickly.

Tableau and Alteryx do not require any advanced skill-set as both tools have simple drag and drop interfaces. You can create a workflow in Alteryx that can process data in a sequential manner. In a similar way, Tableau enables you to build charts by dragging various fields to be utilized, to specified areas. The companies which have a lot of data to analyze, and can spend large amounts of money on analytics, can use these two tools. There doesn’t exist any significant challenges during Tableau, Alteryx integration.

Conclusion

When Tableau and Alteryx are used together, it is really useful for the businesses so that the senior management can take decisions based on the data insights provided by these tools. These two tools compliment each other and provide high-quality service to businesses.

Author Bio

Savaram Ravindra is a Senior Content Contributor at Mindmajix.com. His passion lies in writing articles on different niches, which include some of the most innovative and emerging software technologies, digital marketing, businesses, and so on. By being a guest blogger, he helps his company acquire quality traffic to its website and build its domain name and search engine authority. Before devoting his work full time to the writing profession, he was a programmer analyst at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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