Tableau Helps Charlotte Untangle Its BI Web

Every company knows that the best way to tell its own story is through the eyes of its customers. KMWorld did a great job of telling how the city of Charlotte, N.C. is using Tableau to put BI in the hands of business users and reap huge ROI.

The article recounts how Tableau landed at the top of Charlotte’s list of software that could, “empower business users, be easy to use and have a strong set of built-in visualization tools.” It goes on to point out how multiple non-IT users across the staff are using Tableau to be more productive because they can access data themselves rather than waiting for reports from IT.

Jim Raper, manager of the data administration team for the city of Charlotte, told KMWorld about how they used Tableau to compare the impact of oil additives on the fuel mileage of city refuse collection trucks, "We put the data into Tableau, and in 15 minutes we discovered that one of the additives was not improving mileage. This piece of data helped save the city $50,000 in future expenditures." Now that’s some rapid-fire ROI!

KMWorld went on to highlight Tableau’s Web-based training programs and Charlotte’s own “BI Olympiad,” which includes a contest for the business units across the city. The staff are tasked with a real business problem, finding the data and presenting it. "Although the teams can use any BI tool they want," says Raper, "the top three all used Tableau, because the analyses could be done so quickly." We love to hear about these types of internal programs, especially when Tableau is behind the winning team.