This US firm wants to make you a data analytics expert with software ‘dramatically’ simpler than Excel

As the trend of data analytics grows, US cloud computing and data analytics company Tableau Software has set itself the task of arming employees across sectors with simpler tools to mine the increasing amounts of internal data companies generate, according to chief executive Adam Selipsky.

The aim is for all workers to be able to easily use simple software to understand company data. Tableau, said Selipsky, was already “dramatically” simpler than Microsoft Excel, the software businesses have traditionally relied on for data management, but it needed another leap in simplicity to be able to reach its targets.

Without committing to a time frame, Selipsky said in an interview he hoped to reach tens of millions of users worldwide. “We have to make it more accessible because by the time you get to that 10,000th employee, they are probably not a very technical person, they are certainly not an analyst,” he said.

The company has 86,000 customer accounts and millions of users globally, and is being used by names like Wal-Mart and Morgan Stanley. Sectors such as retail, financial services and health care have seen the highest adoption rates among sectors.

And Asia is Tableau’s fasted growing region, with more than 16,000 customer accounts in 2018, Selipsky said. The company has recently set up shop in Hong Kong and has had a regional headquarters in Singapore since 2012.

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The company was founded in 2003 in Seattle and listed on the New York Stock Exchange 10 years later, raising more than US$250 million. But Selipsky, a former Amazon employee, said Tableau was in its “early stages”.