How Tableau democratised analytics with a bold PoV
Raw information only reaches us on an intellectual level. We get it, but it’s not usually enough to make us carpe the diem.
If you want someone to not only get you, but also take action, you must first inspire them with your message and then inspire them to act.
And humans have been using stories since we sat around a campfire to do just that.
Because stories alter perspectives and exert influence.
In one Stanford study, researchers found that students remembered six to seven times more words when they were embedded in a story.
Another research in 2010 found that character-driven and attention-grabbing stories not only made people feel empathetic, they also encouraged cooperation and understanding.
Your PoV articulates the problem you’re solving AND sets you up as the answer.
AltaVista pioneered online search but when we search the web today we ‘google’ it. Google certainly had a more intuitive approach to online search but, for me, it was their Point of View that made me a fan:
“To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
It said what the company was all about.
And category leaders like Google, AirBnB, Southwest Airlines, or Amazon understand that once you draw peoples’ attention to a problem, it becomes far easier to present yourself as a solution.
That’s because people buy into a category and good PoV helps us separate products that we love from those that we merely tolerate.
Category leaders tell a story.
Pick a random B2B brand, the bigger the better, and go visit their ‘About us’ page.
You’re likely to be greeted by something about being a global leader, then they’ll tell you that they’ve been in business since before you learned how to put on your pants, tell you that they work together with their customers, have a global presence, and finally announce their commitment to sustainability and R&D.
Yawn.
Instead of boring you with facts, category leaders tell you a story about what makes them different. Like really different.
Because in the sea of sameness different is attractive. Highlighting that difference certainly won’t endear you to everyone but that’s exactly the quality that’ll make it easy for people to find you.
Your PoV should make it clear that you’re different and better than everything else that came before you.
A compelling product story has 4 parts:
- It lays out a clear problem.
- It explains the ramifications of inaction.
- It describes a future without the problem (aka The Promised Land).
- It entices you with the promise of successful outcomes.
These 4 components work because people don’t buy products, they buy progress.
And that’s exactly how Tableau went from going door-to-door seeking venture capital to getting acquired by Salesforce for $15,7 billion.
It wasn’t a ground-breaking technology. Or even unique.
Ever since businesses have been generating data there have been expensive and Power BI tools to help them make sense of it.
Tableau’s story began at Stanford where prof. Pat Hanrahan joined forces with his Ph.D. student Chris Stole and a data-analyst-turned-VC Christian Chabot.
Before Tableau came along, BI was only available to those who could afford expensive licenses and training in using them.
Tableau wanted to replace all that with BI software that could be used by anyone who wanted to see and understand data.
That was their Point of View and it created a new $17 billion a year category for a new kind of business analytics products.
That was their point of view, their story.
The three founders wanted everyone to know they had revolutionised data analytics.
Their problem: no one was looking for an easy-to-use BI software.
Why? Because it was common knowledge that BI was expensive and only really useful for large corporations.
And that belief had left people blind to what Tableau was offering.
It’s hard to get people excited about something they haven’t experienced before, so Tableau started offering a fully functioning free-trial account.
Realising that people need to be shown how data visualisation can make their personal and professional lives better, they also developed Tableau Public, a free cloud-based version that doesn’t require any downloads, opening the tool to even more people.
The best way for Tabeau to tell its story was to show it.
So, they started a conference for data visualisation experts. The first one had 250 attendees. The one in 2019 was attended by 20,000 people.
Tableau shared their PoV with the world by making their technology available to everyone. This, more than anything, told people what they were all about.
When it comes to selling their product they skipped IT departments (gasp) and went straight to marketing and sales.
They went straight to the people who could benefit from data analysis on a regular basis, but had traditionally relied on IT or outsourcing analysts to serve up reports.
Tableau pioneered self-service analytics and, for a while, it was the only choice in a category it created.
Today the market is worth billions of dollars and hundreds of products competing for the same customers.
Tableau is now owned by Salesforce and continues to serve 86,000 businesses globally. True to its original point of view, Tableau continues to empower people at any skill level to input their data and get out beautiful charts and interactive data visualisations.
Tableau is an example of how people are drawn to category leaders.
Here’s what I have learnt from Tableau:
- Your PoV is the source of your story and stories exert influence where facts don’t.
- Your PoV articulates the problem you’re solving and sets you up as the answer.
- Turn your PoV into a story that’s clearly different than everyone else’s.
- Having a unique PoV is more important than having a unique product.
- Category leaders live their PoV in everything they do.
