Tableau and Sisense are two respected platforms for business intelligence and data analytics. Both were highly rated by Gartner in its latest “Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.” Gartner rated Tableau as a leader and Sisense as a visionary.
BI and analytics applications remain a hot item in the IT world. In fact, data analytics applications have been in that category for 20 years and there is no sign of their popularity declining any time soon. Why? More than ever, organizations are demanding that they leverage the vast amount of data at their disposal.
Whether it’s relational databases, business applications, unstructured data, social media, or other sources, more information is being mined than ever before. Instead of a small team of data scientists slicing and dicing data, today we see teams from management, marketing, sales and IT using analytics in their day-to-day operations.
As two popular analytics platforms, users are often forced to choose between Sisense and Tableau. Both have great strengths. It’s hard to say you could make the wrong choice with the selection of either data analysis. But what’s best for your business?
See also: Best data analysis tools
tableau vs. Sisense: Comparison of Key Features
Tableau is very focused on delivering analytics with artificial intelligence, data management and collaboration. At the heart of Tableau is a proprietary technology called VizQL that makes interactive data visualization an integral part of understanding data. It is very different from traditional tools that require the user to analyze data in rows and columns, choose a subset of the data to present, organize that data into a table, and then graph that table. VizQL skips those steps and instantly creates a visual representation, providing visual feedback as you analyze.
Sisense enables users to extract insights from complex data sets. The set of analytical tools and dashboards includes many customizations for industries such as healthcare, retail, human resources, customer service, manufacturing, technology, financial services, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and marketing. The company can extend that customization down to the departmental level, where Sisense offers a range of different visualizations. This includes interactive visualizations that users can customize the way they want to explore datasets.
What about the latest features and updates? Tableau has recently added features like Ask Data in Slack (ask questions in natural language and get data visualizations automatically); Einstein Discovery in Slack (predictions in the workflow); and Model Builder (building and consuming predictive models together using Einstein).
The latest big addition from Sisense is Sisense Fusion. It is a customizable, AI-driven analytics cloud platform that can be applied to workflows and apps. Users can analyze, explore, and collaborate with or without code, and create self-service dashboards and apps with built-in analytics.
Both offer plenty of features, but Tableau is a bit ahead.
See also: Top Business Intelligence software
tableau vs. Sisense: comparing ease of use
Tableau users should be well versed in working with the R programming language, which is widely used in statistical programming and data analysis. But Tableau is working to become more user-friendly. The AI-powered analytics features lower the threshold for data science techniques. Tableau works very well when using Excel and statistical data as raw material. For other formats, ease of use may suffer.
Sisense scored slightly higher than Tableau in terms of ease of use. Users usually notice the intuitive nature of the various functions. As such, it wins in this category.
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Tableau vs. Sisense: Comparing Analysis Capabilities
Tableau seeks to differentiate itself with what it describes as an intuitive, richer-featured analytics experience, based on the proprietary VizQL engine. It can connect to data live (executing queries in the database and returning results in real time) or in-memory (taking data from source systems into Tableau). This allows users to monitor performance, cost, and data freshness. Tableau also ranks very well in live queries and extracts, allowing analysts to run queries faster. Using the R language makes it the winner in terms of statistical capabilities.
Like Tableau, Sisense offers a good range of visualization options to show the results of analytics, as well as the ability to embed analytics into different applications, and plenty of data management features. It can also handle very large and distributed data sets.
There is little to choose between Sisense and Tableau in this category.
tableau vs. Sisense: Cloud vs On-premises Comparison
Tableau originated in the on-premises world and has steadily added more and more cloud features. It offers cloud-hosted solutions such as Tableau Online and Tableau CRM, but its strength lies in on-premises deployments and this is where much of its massive installed base is located. So it can be challenging to scale out Tableau workloads in the cloud.
Sisense, on the other hand, maintains a focus on the cloud and that is where its strength lies. But it offers a wide variety of data connectors to simplify the task of analyzing on-premises data. For on-premises systems and data, Tableau wins. In the cloud, Sisense leads.
See also: Data mining techniques
Tableau vs. Sisense: CRM Comparison
CRM and BI often go hand in hand. Since Tableau is owned by Salesforce, it offers excellent marketing and enterprise product capabilities. It is currently being integrated with Salesforce Einstein Analytics (known as Tableau CRM). For example, a dashboard extension for Einstein Discovery brings predictive modeling capabilities from Einstein to Tableau.
With Sisense, you need to implement Sisense Infusion Apps. This gives users the ability to ask questions with natural language questions, analyze and share information, and make informed decisions in other tools. These features can be embedded in Slack, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce, among other tools.
Overall, Tableau wins in this category because it can offer CRM in one package.
tableau vs. Sisense: Compare Integration
Tableau has its hands full with the integration with Salesforce. This creates a somewhat fragmented experience between Einstein Analytics and Tableau, but steady progress is being made in bringing the two together. It won’t be long before those issues are resolved. As a result, Salesforce customers will be resold to Tableau and vice versa.
Sisense integrates with a wide variety of platforms, applications, and data sources. But overall, Tableau is a bit ahead of integration.
See also: Trends in real-time data management
tableau vs. Sisense: price comparison
Tableau has a reputation for being expensive. By some estimates, it works out to about $75 per month per user for decent analytics functionality. But those who just want to interact with some basic dashboards can get it much cheaper. That said, the addition of Tableau CRM for a list price of up to $150 per user per month means newer functionality, and Salesforce integration doesn’t come cheap.
Sisense is in a similar price range to Tableau, at $83 per employee/month and above. Still, user reviews rate it higher in value for money than Tableau. This may have to do with Sisense’s simpler overall pricing model.
This one is tight. No clear winner.
See also: Top Business Intelligence software
Tableau vs. Sisense: Conclusion
Tableau has a fanatical user base and a very loyal user community. The user conferences attract a large audience. Its popularity is also growing, in part due to the distribution of a free platform known as Tableau Public. Here people can share and explore online data visualizations. It contains over 3 million interactive visualizations. But it’s in the data scientist, analytics, and power user markets where the feature set garners the most praise.
That said, Tableau also seems more suited to SMBs. For the mid-market and large enterprise space, there is little choice between the two. Tableau lacks the mobile application capabilities of Sisense, so mobile heavy applications are better on Sisense.
For those looking to build apps with built-in analytics or embed analytics in other apps, Sisense is probably ahead of Tableau. But for general BI and analytics, Tableau is rated higher by Gartner than Sisense.