Tableau vs SPSS Statistics

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Our analysts compared Tableau vs SPSS Statistics based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Business Intelligence Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

SPSS Statistics Software Tool

Product Basics

Tableau is a data visualization and analytics solution for enterprises and individuals. A rich library of connectors helps you pull data from files, cloud sources and servers. A separate data management module, Tableau Prep, ensures your data is ready to transform when it comes into the platform.

Its latest features include AI with Tableau Pulse and the Einstein CoPilot.

Software, healthcare, manufacturing, banking and financial services, and retail companies will find it helpful. Whatever your domain, chart, plot and map data will give you a clear picture of business performance.

Besides, you can track daily operations and support line-of-business decisions with hardcore data. At the higher level, it boosts planning by giving senior management the freedom to dig deeper.

A Tableau Creator license costs $70 per user and includes Tableau Desktop and Tableau Cloud. Alternatively, you can deploy it on-premise and connect to the cloud using a bridge. A free trial of Tableau Desktop is available, and Tableau Public is always free to use.

Though it's a user favorite for data visualization, many users find it expensive and slow when handling large datasets.

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IBM SPSS, or Statistical Product and Service Solutions, is a data analysis platform that provides advanced statistical insights to propel business decision-making and research by crunching large datasets. With a user-friendly interface, it empowers everyone from basic users to experienced data scientists to perform statistical analysis. Scalable and agile, it is suitable for companies of all sizes.

Users can purchase it through an on-premises license or a subscription plan to a hybrid SaaS. Users who choose either monthly or annual subscription receive access to the base version and can choose which of three optional add-ons to include, if any, between Custom Tables and Advanced Statistics, Complex Sampling and Testing, and Forecasting and Decision Trees.

Perpetual and term licensees can choose between four editions that offer different levels of functionality: Base, standard, professional and premium. It was first launched as Statistical Package for the Social Sciences by three Stanford students in 1968 and later acquired by IBM in 2009.
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$15/User, Monthly
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$99 Monthly
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Product Insights

  • Include Location Insights: Tableau scored a perfect 100 in our rankings with full support for geographical searches, geocoding and in-and-out zoom actions in maps. It stores the names of cities, countries, airports and zip codes, converting them to latitudes and longitudes. Already a user favorite for visual analysis, it wins the award for Best Geospatial Visualization and Analysis in our BI product directory.
  • Handle Data Queries: According to our analysis, Tableau got a top score of 99 and our best-in-class award for data querying. It allows automatic batch updates, while Power BI must rely on the bulk operations feature to update its underlying data, and Oracle Analytics doesn’t support batch updates at all.
  • Prepare Data: Tableau got a score of 100 in our assessment for its robust Tableau Prep module. It cleans and shapes data, allows forecasting models with R and Python scripts and accepts unstructured content, provided you convert it into a standard format first.
  • Manage Access: The Tableau Blueprint involves assessing if your organization’s data architecture is ready to adopt the platform. As part of this exercise, you can opt for one of three governance models — centralized, delegated or self-governing — with varied access permissions for different roles. Such a level of detail gets Tableau a top score of 100 in our analysis.
  • Visualize Your Metrics: Tableau earns the top score of 100 in our rankings and wins our analyst award for dashboarding and data visualization. It surpasses Power BI with dashboard starters, animations and auto-refresh capabilities. Plus, it can switch to use extracts when live connections aren’t necessary.
  • Track License Usage: View license information in detail, such as the number of active licenses and the last used date/time. Once you’ve configured the registry key on every computer with a Tableau Desktop instance, it’ll start sending usage reports to the Tableau Server.
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  • Increase Reliability of Analysis: Data analysts and scientists can reach more dependable conclusions and ensure high accuracy, backed by numbers and models made from their data.
  • Assists in Decision Making: Organize and analyze data sets in order to draw conclusions, glean insights and make data-driven business decisions.
  • Statistics with Speed: Maximize productivity by quickly crunching data sets. Handle complicated tasks in a third of the time of many non-statistical programs.
  • Data Management: Remove manual work, as the system does all the legwork in preparing and organizing data sets for analysis. It estimates and uncovers missing values, improving the accuracy of reports.
  • Ease of Use: According to the IBM website, 81% of reviewers rank SPSS as easy to use. A point-and-click interface and natural language processing allow analytics capabilities to be accessed by those without coding skills or advanced statistics knowledge.
  • Scalability: Built to scale and work with large volumes of data, supporting anything from basic descriptive analytics to advanced statistics simulations. Purchase as many licenses as needed, ensuring cost-efficiency for small businesses as well as robustness for large scale enterprises.
  • Customized Predictive Analytics: Tailor predictive analytics to unique needs and perform ad hoc analysis to find the information needed, making better predictions over time.
  • Free Trial: Access all capabilities with a free 14-day trial period.
  • Academic Versions: An academic version is optimized for higher education and research. Program availability varies based on user roles, including students, teachers, researchers and campus-wide administrators.
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  • Connectors: Combine data from various sources by choosing from a wide range of connectors — no need to spend on expensive third-party data integration tools. Tableau Bridge connects private networks to live data sources via Tableau Cloud.
  • AI: Tableau now offers AI capabilities thanks to Einstein Analytics.
    • Tableau Pulse: Explore data independently and ask questions with AI analytics. Tableau Pulse is available with Tableau Cloud and Embedded Analytics.
    • Explain Data: Understand the displayed insights with natural language explanations of data points.
    • Einstein CoPilot (Beta): Close the gap in understanding data with AI insights. Discover hidden trends by asking follow-up questions without losing context, thanks to generative AI. Einstein CoPilot is available with a Tableau Cloud subscription.
  • Tableau Prep: Clean and transform data of all types, including survey results, feedback data and social media posts. Shape and combine it with Tableau Prep, which is available with the paid edition only.
  • Data Stories: Convey your message with compelling narratives to get stakeholder buy-in. Drag and drop sheets onto the storyboard to show the growth, decline or stability of critical metrics.
  • Animations: Explain how data changes over time with animated charts and customize them to include graphics, labels and colors.
  • Filtering: Focus on the data that matters; it’s as easy as dragging and dropping desired fields to the Filter shelf. Specify a value range, set a condition or choose the top values to display.
  • User-Based Licenses: Explore cost-effective license combinations that work for your team.
    • Creators can build dashboards, permissions, and governance rules, and establish connections to new sources. They’re content authors who transform and analyze data. This license is available at $70 per user monthly, billed annually. However, they can’t control the Tableau Server or Desktop environment.
    • Explorer licenses are suitable for line-of-business users whose role requires independent data exploration. They can author content but within a governed ecosystem. Each Explorer license costs $42 monthly, billed annually. They can’t connect to new sources, modify data, or use the Tableau desktop or custom SQL.
    • Viewers can interact with data, apply filters and follow pre-decided workflows. This license is available for $15 per user monthly, billed annually. Viewers have limited rights and can’t create and edit visualizations and the underlying data.
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  • Data Source Connectivity:  Enables reading and writing data from a wide spectrum of file formats and sources. These include ASCII text files, spreadsheets and databases like Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access, as well as those from other statistics packages. 
  • Data Preparation: Streamlines the data preparation process. Identify invalid values, view patterns of missing data and automate data preparation to analyze and clean up large data sets in a single step. Validate the accuracy of analysis with a thorough, efficient data conditioning workflow. 
  • Point-and-Click Interface: Allows users without coding knowledge to leverage point-and-click data analysis with drop-down menus and drag-and-drop functionality. 
  • Automated Analytics: Automate common tasks with syntax and create customized data analyses that run using algorithms. 
  • Comprehensive Statistical Analysis: Perform many kinds of statistics tests, including but not limited to linear and non-linear models, simulation modeling, bayesian statistics, custom tables, complex sampling, advanced and descriptive statistics, and regression.
  • Ad Hoc Analysis: “Slice and dice” data by creating customized tables to dig deeper and improve understanding.
  • Predictive Analytics:
    •  Uncovers complex relationships between variables with functions like time series analysis, forecasting, neural networks and temporal causal modeling. 
    •  Simulates values and accounts for the uncertainty of the future using probability distributions. 
    •  Improves predictive models with multilayer perception and radial basis function. 
  • Geospatial Analysis: Explore the relationship between data points that can be tied to specific locations.
  • Direct Marketing: Improve campaigns and target key customers. Conduct advanced statistics analysis of customers or contacts with RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis.
  • Open-Source Integration: Enhance syntax with programming languages R and Python through a library of more than 100 free extensions on the IBM Extension Hub, or opt to build programs.
  • Export with Ease: Export data to a proprietary file format. Can be exported to a variety of widely accessible formats such as text, Microsoft Word, PDF, Excel, HTML, XML, XLS and more. Export to a variety of graphic image formats.
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Product Ranking

#1

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#86

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Analyst Rating Summary

84
we're gathering data
95
we're gathering data
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100
we're gathering data
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Tableau
SPSS Statistics
+ Add Product + Add Product
Advanced Analytics Augmented Analytics Data Management Data Pre-processing Data Transformation Data Visualization Embedded Analytics Capabilities Geospatial Visualizations And Analysis Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting 95 32 100 95 90 100 93 96 95 96 100 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

100%
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 10554 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1881 reviews
88%
of users recommend this product

Tableau has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 10554 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

87%
of users recommend this product

SPSS Statistics has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 1881 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

4.5 (18)
4.3 (18)
4.4 (2083)
4.2 (712)
n/a
4.51 (528)
4.5 (2284)
4.5 (425)
4.4 (3909)
4.6 (40)
4.2 (2260)
4.2 (158)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Tableau and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Advanced Analytics.

Advanced Analytics Award

No awards.

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Visualization: Almost 98% of users who reviewed its visual capabilities praised the platform for its dashboards and the freedom to play around with data and modify charts as desired.
User-Friendly: According to 93% of users who mentioned ease of use, it makes data accessible with its easy user actions and handy tooltips.
Data Connectivity: About 92% of users who discussed data sourcing praised its ability to pull data from disparate systems.
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Research Analysis: It’s easy to analyze and interpret large and complex datasets to generate insights, according to 96% of reviewers who mention this feature.
Ease of Use: The platform is user-friendly and easy to navigate as observed by almost 95% of reviewers mentioning ease of use.
Interface: The interface has a clean layout and visually appealing design according to 75% of users referencing it.
Syntax: It’s easy to use (copy and paste) and proof syntax, and save for later, as noted by 95% of reviewers who talk about this feature.
Resources: Of users mentioning support, 93% agreed that access to various support manuals and courses, as well as an extensive user community, was helpful.
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Pricing: Around 90% of the users citing cost found it expensive.
Speed: About 71% of the users who discussed performance found it slow when processing large data volumes.
Onboarding Woes: Approximately 67% of the users who reviewed the platform's adoption said there was a steep learning curve.
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Learning Curve: It needs extensive learning to understand advanced tools and different aspects, as observed by almost 75% of reviewers mentioning training.
Cost: More than 90% of users referencing the price remarked that the product is a bit expensive.
Slow Operation: The system runs slow at times while using huge or complex data sets, and needs to restart, as observed by 92% of reviews on this topic.
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Tableau Desktop is a BI solution for data visualization, dashboarding and location analysis. In online reviews, users said they found its drag-and-drop charting a boon for creating charts and maps. Regarding customization, many users praised the platform for its various labeling and design options.I recently tried the Tableau Desktop 2024.1.3 version. The trial is only for 14 days and is enough for a sneak peek into Tableau’s dashboarding and data storytelling capabilities. For more straightforward use cases, Tableau is incredibly user-friendly and fast. Creating a new sheet gives you a canvas to create a visualization. Once you have the required sheets, combining them into a dashboard view is straightforward — select and add.My dataset included healthcare data, including details of patients, their hospital visits and insurance payer details. One use case was to find the total claim settlement amount. I dragged the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields to the column and row shelves, and Tableau gave me a bar graph. The toolbar had single-click options for sorting data from increasing to decreasing values or the other way around.To view the number of encounters by payer, I dragged the Payer field to the row shelf and used the SUM(ROW_COUNT()) function on the column shelf. The chart popped up with more visualization and layout options.I wanted an interactive filter to view the average claim cost by birthdate. I dragged the Birthdate field to the Filters shelf and right-clicked on it to set the end date as October 22, 1961. Selecting Show Filter added a slider conveniently to the right of my visualization. I could see the data for people born before October 22, 1961, and if required, I could change the end date.Another use case would be viewing the data by the type of hospital visits — how many people were inpatients, outpatients or those who needed emergency care. I dragged and dropped the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields into columns and rows, respectively. Similarly, I dropped Encounterclass into the Filters shelf and clicked on Show Filter to enable a checkbox on the screen. It had all the categories of visits, giving users the option to select the desired views.One-fourth of the users discussing adoption said there was a steep learning curve. Tableau relies on Python and R scripts for statistics in its visualizations. It's where the named licenses can prove to be a blessing, as you can opt to train upcoming Creators and Explorers. We recommend factoring in training if you want to hit the ground running.Some reviewers felt discounted packages for business editions should be available, similar to the free student licenses. At $70 per user, the Creator license can seem costly when compared to Power BI ($9.99 per user) and Qlik Sense ($30 per user).Here's the good news, though. Its built-in user management acts as a permissions layer for your organization - users can only access the relevant content. Plus, an organization will have very few Creators and a greater number of Viewers and Explorers, and the license fee reduces from Creator to Explorer to Viewer.We recommend opting for a wise license combination to get the most out of the product.On the upside, the vendor constantly releases new features, the latest one being Einstein CoPilot in beta.Overall, Tableau is a competitive BI solution, but if the pricing seems inflexible, quite a few other solutions offer live insights and advanced analytics out of the box.

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SPSS Statistics is a point-and-click data analysis software that allows non-technical users to leverage advanced statistical analysis. Users praised its user-friendly, visually appealing interface. Many reviews also appreciated how easy it is to use and proof syntax, along with the extensive help documentation available for better understanding. Despite its ease of use, a majority found that using advanced tools involved a steep learning curve. Additionally, its cost runs on the high side and processing large amounts of information slows down its performance, as observed by most reviewers. It’s a good fit for students, data scientists and companies that want to analyze data sets but don’t have the technical resources and expertise to use a more advanced tool.

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