A look at Virtual Tableau Training. How Can Virtual Labs Make it More Effective?

By: Karen Spencer, OrasiLabs Product Manager

Tableau has emerged as a revolutionary tool for many enterprises; it has transformed the data visualization landscape. As a simple, intuitive, fast, and user-friendly tool, Tableau has expanded in many verticals and user-levels in a brief time.

With Tableau by their side, companies have harnessed a tremendous amount of value from Big Data without getting lost in its complexity and scale. Many business users and decision-makers are excelling from applying data’s outcomes through easy and actionable reports, dashboards, and visual-packages. Tableau has allowed business intelligence and analytics to expand to new utilization levels.

Tableau’s table

Understanding this tool and becoming confident in its features; however, does come with a learning curve. Tableau training comprises several areas – like understanding interfaces, connecting to data sources, navigation, use of drag-and-drop tools, creating compelling visualizations, and more.

Students must learn to slice and dice data, plan aggregations and measurements, as well as plot map visualizations. It entails formatting data, making data-driven stories and insights, and enacting critical best practices essential to Tableau’s successful use.

While there are many methods to delivering Tableau training, there can also be challenges. When delivering training on any software application, one must consider things like how to provide students with hands-on practice time and how to allow instructors to see what the students are doing – even in a virtual class.

Embrace virtual labs for Tableau training

Tableau training can be made more effective with virtual labs. It is an excellent alternative because these labs have many benefits for both students and instructors. A virtual lab ensures that Tableau training,

1. Covers all essential features and tools.
2. Provides the appropriate hands-on activities depending on the user’s experience level and time.
3. Can adhere to your specific curriculum.
4. Is cost-effective, collaborative, and engaging.
5. Allows enough room for trials, applications, and experimentation.
6. Provides a realistic Tableau environment without adding extra costs or setup time.
7. Is scalable and delivered in an on-demand set-up.
8. Can be accessed by students with only a browser.
9. Encourages complete understanding and optimum usage of Tableau’s features.

The future of Tableau training

Businesses will never stop needing data intelligence and insights. This strength will become even more critical as organizations face a post-COVID business landscape. Speed, fast customer service, confident response time, rapid time-to-market, and swift time-to-service would be crucial factors for any enterprise in the face of new competition.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global Business Intelligence (BI) market size will grow from $23.1 B in 2020 to $33.3 B by 2025. As per estimates by a report from Mordor Intelligence, the BI Market stood at $20.5 B in 2019 and can reach $40.50 B by 2025. It was noted in the report that data visualization tools had found enhanced usage for analytics in various organizations over the years.

From designing infographics and charts to building BI dashboards and performance scorecards for business metrics and key performance indicators in an easily understandable way, these tools have manifested the right growth path. This space is expanding into advanced analytics, such as predictive analytics, statistical analysis, big data analytics, data mining, and text mining. The increased use of these tools, because of the enhanced capability of drawing valuable insights, is also driving the need for business intelligence across various industries.

BI tools will stay vital for their specific value in optimizing internal business processes, accelerating decision-making, driving revenue growth, getting a competitive advantage over competitors, and increasing operational efficiency. They will also equip companies to identify market trends and spot business problems that need to be addressed. The report also shows a substantial increase in the need for data analytics and data visualization tools.

BI and Analytics will continue to gain additional strongholds, and that’s where tools like Tableau will shift more towards the center stage of business strategy. It’s a great time to master these tools in a smart way, and while doing so, leverage the myriad benefits of using virtual labs in Tableau training.