Reflecting on an Year of Doing Business with Tableau

The Beginning: How It All Started

It was 2012 and I was data analyst at PepsiCo India when I first saw what Tableau looks like.

My main day to day job was to analyze sales generated by transactions of 1,300 salesmen across 3,500 distributors selling about 300 food and snacks SKUs to 2,50,000 retailers. Most of the analysis exercise involved exporting data into CSVs from SQL Server or SAP and run the analysis through and finally share via e-Mails, Excel files, and PowerPoint presentations.

I was a young guy of 22, and there were huge learning opportunities, and mostly the job was a lot of fun. And then, one day, out of curiosity, I accidently happened to install Tableau Desktop on my system. It was time right after the lunch. Those were the days, I later learned, Tableau was trying to enter Indian markets. I sat down, and connected Tableau to one of my Excel file with a few thousands of sales records having aggregated sales data for a few months.

Tableau's mission: "Helping you see and understand the data." truly was experienced in that moment. It was like a whole world of excitement and opportunities opened in front of me. And this was during the time I was no where close to understanding technologies - I was a final year graduate student at Delhi University trying to get an English Honors degree studying and writing about plays, poetry, and novels. Hours passed. And I kept paying with the data. Few things I was able to understand, and few I was not. But I could not sleep that night.

An Affair with Tableau

A few days later, our VP IT - who must have observed me doing this stuff, called me to his desk, when he asked me about Tableau, and I was scared to death if I had violated any IT policy by downloading some software which I should have not. To my relief, we ended up having a really brief discussion about what I was doing with Tableau.

I switched the job a few months later, and moved to GSK, and then another year later at Reckitt Benckiser in early 2015 where I was analyzing Supply Chain data. I saw Tableau there again - we had a standalone single Tableau Desktop license.

This was year when my mentor at PepsiCo called me and asked me quit my RB job and shift to Mumbai and start working into consulting with a Tableau partner company. I moved to the city and started consulting. It was a lot more dynamic and fun job because the team was really small and we were one of the early movers and had the responsibility of building a team of analysts from grounds up and that is what we exactly did. We built a team of about 50 analysts in a snap of about 18 months. And that is when I shifted back to Delhi to work with Boston Consulting Group.

Starting of ScatterPie

I came back to Delhi. Started working in a really different, challenging and rewarding environment. It was exhausting, but a lot fun at the age of 27. But somewhere deep down I knew something was missing and I was not happy. One day, out of blue, I called my manager and told him that I was to do something else. And within a month I was out again, free to do whatever I wanted. It was scary. I discussed with my mentor (who later became our CTO and joined as a founding member), a few friends and started ScatterPie Analytics.

Tableau + ScatterPie

Tableau was one of our core offering, and something which we were best at. We wanted to be in the beginning one of the best, and eventually the best Tableau consultants in the country. We started with a small but strong team, with a focus on solving the customer problem - which resulted in a very customized offerings to our customers. But we were all bunch of passionate analysts.

Tableau folks and I used to hang around a lot and discuss on the pressing problems which can be solved by using world class tools available already - Tableau being one of them. This was time when Tableau had been acquired by Salesforce. And eventually, we decided to officially partner with Tableau. After a long and comprehensive process of 2 years, we became partners and kicked-off our first joint sales in April 2022.

What is Next

De-facto, in our first year, we started as Bronze partners and within 10 months of joint operations are promoted to Silver Partners. Naturally, our next milestone is to work as Tableau Gold Partner next year - which is not an easy milestone, but I am confident, that with our joint efforts, we will achieve this milestone.

However, the important here is not that we are bronze, or silver, or gold. What is important here is that ScatterPie And Tableau have a vision which is pretty similar to each other - and we are on a mission to modernize analytics for today's enterprise and bring the data closer to people. And this common vision is what keeps me excited, and going. To the customers. Thank you.

Thanks again,

Acknowledgements

1. Big thanks to our distribution partner Savex Technologies Pvt. Ltd and all friends from Savex.
2. Big thanks to DEVRAJ BADIGER , our partner manager at Tableau-Salesforce - I learn something from you every week.
3. A huge thanks to Anjali Joneja Amar , Country Head India Tableau for sharing her vision and inspiring us through her leadership.
4. The talented, and more importantly, passionate team of ScatterPie Analytics , I am proud of each of you.
5. All friends at Tableau Sales and Solution Engineering teams - your support, care, and encouragement keeps us fueled.

Note: Please excuse typos, and grammar errors; this article has not been proof-read.