Domo vs. Tableau

If you’re a data analyst, you’re likely familiar with Tableau. It’s a commonly used tool and is consistently mentioned in industry reports about business intelligence and analytics.

But how does it stack up with other tools on the market? If you’re considering implementing a cloud BI solution or analyzing whether you currently have the best tool for the job, we’ve pulled together some notes to help you evaluate which tool is the right one for your business.

An introduction to Domo

Domo is a full-service, end-to-end business intelligence solution that supports every phase of business intelligence: from integration and connection, to transformation and data pipelines, to analysis and visualization, to exporting and sharing embedded analytics. Domo supports every phase of BI and every type of BI user: data analysts, data scientists, and even business users.

An introduction to Tableau

Tableau is a BI analysis and visualization tool. It provides robust capabilities for analyzing data and creating interactive visualizations. Tableau has been built to support complex data science (recently strengthened because of their acquisition by Salesforce) and analytics, allowing experts in data to build out analyses with a wide suite of visualization tools.

Key features to consider

When considering the right tool for your cloud BI, you need to look at how the tool performs in the core analytics and business intelligence features. But you also need to understand how the tool fits into your whole ecosystem of end-to-end BI. Is this a tool that focuses on one area and will require multiple additional tools to meet your needs? Or does it include multiple features that can meet all of your needs?

Domo product highlights

Dashboards: Domo includes tools to build custom and ad-hoc business intelligence dashboards. With an intuitive UI, users can easily create shareable dashboards with a large variety of visualizations through Domo’s native chart library. These cloud-based dashboards can be built on real-time analytics and embedded directly into key stakeholders’ workflows and tools.

Integrations: While Tableau has the ability to connect with data sources, few connections are as easy to build as it is through Domo. With more than 1,000 pre-built connectors, Domo allows you to easily connect your data from nearly anywhere, including your existing data lake or data warehouse. Plus, with powerful ETL tools, you can easily build custom connections to any data source.

Usability: Domo is built to be intuitive, allowing users from less technical backgrounds to build analyses and visualizations. It also supports more advanced users giving them the options to build complex data science workflows and work with custom SQL scripts, R or Python.

Speed: Because Domo is built for the cloud from the ground up, it can take advantage of the speed and flexibility of the cloud. Queries on large datasets that take several minutes on Tableau are completed within seconds on Domo. Plus, because Domo was built to be user-friendly, workflows are intuitive and require far fewer clicks than Tableau.

Governance: Control who has access to data with robust and flexible data governance tools. Use Domo’s established roles and permissions, or build your own. Integrate with SSO for maximum security and flexibility.

Intelligent Applications: Domo allows users to build custom low- and no-code applications. These applications support integrating data where and when needed. Use them to connect custom data sources or build data workflows into third-party applications.

Tableau product highlights

Dashboards: Tableau includes tools to build powerful, interactive visualizations and dashboards. While some visualizations can be built by beginner users, most require advanced knowledge of the platform and data source.

Integrations:Tableau supports connectors for many commonly-used business systems.

Speed: When analyzing and building a simple visualization, Domo is able to process the data, build a visualization, and publish or share it in a matter of minutes while Tableau can take 15 or 20 minutes more to perform the same functions.

Governance: Tableau has tools that enable governance, including row-level security and Tableau server access.

Data Science: Many advanced data science tools are only available in the desktop version, including Tableau Prep Building and connections with third-party tools. However, many of these advanced features require training courses on the product to understand how to utilize them.
 

Advantages of using Domo for your business

Domo shines as an enterprise BI platform. Here are some key advantages to using Domo over Tableau.

Built for the cloud and mobile.

Domo was built from the ground up for the cloud and all features work in the flexible mobile application. Tableau includes robust features in the desktop version and later built the cloud version. All Tableau dashboards have to be created separately as mobile versions to function specifically for mobile devices, meaning you have to do double-work when building dashboards.

Enhanced speed to insight.

While Domo is able to process larger datasets faster and display results in a matter of seconds, it also takes far fewer clicks and steps to build simple and complex visualizations. Users report being able to complete analysis, build a report, and share it with stakeholders in a matter of a few minutes on Domo.

Intuitive features support different user types.

Tableau is heavy on the data science features. While this is helpful for technical users, those just getting started in BI or data science will find these features difficult to use. Domo supports users from all different backgrounds. With self-service BI options, business users can access Domo and intuitively use basic features. And users with more technical backgrounds can utilize the internal data science tools in Domo for advanced analysis or they can integrate with R and Python to write or import custom scripts.

Customized for your business.

Domo is built for you. Whether you want out-of-the-box integrations or if you need to customize the tool to fit your specific workflows, Domo can support your needs. With Domo’s intelligent app-building environment, you can create custom applications that put your data where you need it. Plus, Domo has wide-ranging integration capabilities that allow you to connect your data across a variety of data sources and tools—even Tableau. This gives you the power to support the connection, integration, transformation, visualization, and publication of your data all in one place.

Robust education and training opportunities.

Domo has an active user community called Domo Dojo to support your organization with customizing and positioning Domo to fit your needs. You also get access to Domo University for training and ongoing tutorials of different platform features. Plus, the Domo Knowledge Base includes articles related to Domo features and general data science guidelines to help users gain a deeper understanding of how to enable and apply data science and BI in their organizations.