Elaura saves weeks with code-free analysis in Tableau

Elaura is a consulting company headquartered in Singapore, serving clients of all sizes across Europe and Asia Pacific.

To analyze team performance, Elaura uses a professional development tool—The Birkman Method—to collect behavioral data from individuals in an organization. Consultants then analyze and visualize the data in Tableau.

In video 1, Jon Mason, CEO and Principal Consultant, talks about how Tableau has helped Elaura quickly and easily explore their data—without coding. Jon also speaks about how Elaura is mapping behavioral data for hundreds of individuals in Tableau.

In video 2, Jon shares how he's improving client relations by communicating findings in Tableau.

Tableau: What attracted you to Tableau?
Jon Mason, CEO and Principal Consultant: When we came across Tableau, I very rapidly saw that instead of spending two weeks programming a new feature, I could just do this in about 30 minutes in Tableau.

And so you're right there, you know, it's like being able to set out on the journey today rather than saying, "Well, that will be three months of preparation before we can go on the journey."

Tableau: How does that affect your daily work?
Jon: It means that I don't have to spend all my time trying to code things if I want to be able to explore them. I just open Tableau and say, "Well, let's explore."

Tableau: What impressed you when you first started using Tableau?
Jon: Simple things like being able to scale marks as you need to, that's something that's actually quite complicated to code.

But if you're using Tableau, all those things, you know, I need these marks bigger, bang, it's done. It’s really great.

Tableau: What kinds of data do you visualize in Tableau?
Jon: We use a core tool called the Birkman Method. And that's a tool that helps organizations to do personal development, professional development, and organizational development.

For each individual in an organization, we generate 301 data points using the Birkman Method and Tableau is fantastic for helping us analyze that data, visualize that data, identify outliers, identify trends, identify gaps and so on.

Tableau: What do those visualizations look like?
Jon: One of the very simple but powerful visualizations that we get within the Birkman tool sort of straight out of the box is the thing we call the lifestyle grid. And it's a way of mapping any group of people. So it could be 3 people, it could be 300 people.

So what would be great would be to be able to map one person's usual behavior on the grid alongside someone else's need. And using Tableau, I can do that very easily.

Tableau: Has Tableau had a positive impact?
Jon: I may need to look something up, but then I'm straight into the analysis and very little time spent preparing data and working out how could we possibly do this because it's all built into Tableau.

And it's very, very simple, but in terms of the impact it has on actual behavior and understanding of behavior is enormous. So it really turns the lights on for people.

Tableau: Has Tableau impacted the way that you interact with clients?
Jon: Tableau is really about how we can see what the data is trying to tell us. So, actually, we're using Tableau sort of behind the scenes to get at the answers that we can then communicate in a way that the client gets.

Tableau: Do you have an example of a problem that you solved in Tableau?
Jon: One of our clients in the U.K., was a very fast-growing consultancy group. And they had grown. It was a particular group of people who'd started this—this business who all had a common background.

And, basically, they ran out of people with their background they could hire. So they started hiring, those days, Big Five and Big Four consultancy group consultants.

So these people had been very successful in Big Four or Big Five consultancy setting really didn't fit in this organization.

Tableau: How did you utilize Tableau?
Jon: We were able to do some benchmarking for them saying, you know, these are the people we're trying to reproduce, these are the people that aren't working out so well.

Can you surface any key characteristics? There were about a dozen that had some bearing on it. But there were two or three that were really critical that fell out very quickly from looking at this data in Tableau and the difference it made to the client when we started applying this in their recruitment.

I think the difference it's made is, as I say, being able to sit down and say to a client, "Look, this is it." And start to explore the data with a client is very powerful.

Tableau: What would you do if you didn’t have Tableau?
Jon: My life wouldn't stop if Tableau wasn't there. But my life would sort of go back a couple of centuries in some ways if it wasn't there.

I'm very glad there's a world where Tableau exists.