Tableau: Why did you choose Tableau?
Dr. Abdullah Alkadi, Vice President Studies, Development, and Community Services: We felt that we have a lot of data, and not only that, many agencies would ask us for certain data or certain information—so we thought the usage of Tableau would help us to do the analysis—sophisticated analysis—especially its linked and visual analysis.
Tableau: How are you using Tableau?
Dr. Alkadi: We brought the databases related to the students, the databases related to the HR, Human Resources, the database related to career development, databases related to scholarships—because we’ve been sending many of our TAs or lecturers abroad—and now we have more than eight hundred persons are studying abroad all over the world, even into research databases related to research, databases that are related to appointments.
Linking all those information using Tableau I think would maximize the efficiency of everything, reduce your cost and also would give you the right answer in decision whenever it's needed.
That's how we're using it and using Tableau to read through those databases, although they are not integrated, but we used Tableau to go and read from those databases and do the analysis that we're looking for.
Tableau: What is one of your favorite features in Tableau?
Dr. Alkadi: The interface also is customized where you can I mean do an interface that would help those who would like to use certain languages whether it’s Arabic or any language.
Tableau: Where did you learn about Tableau?
Dr. Alkadi: I saw this company, Bilytica—I have to acknowledge them for to introducing Tableau. After I saw Tableau I said that’s it, that’s what I’ve been looking for the last few years, so to me it’s something, I mean big, it saved me time. When I say "saved me," it saved the institution time, money, effort.
Tracking and improving use of valuable equipment with sensors
Tableau: Can you share a specific project where you are using Tableau?
Dr. Alkadi: We are using sensors especially with the valuable devices. So we have very expensive equipment, which need to be monitored and traced, so we’re linking that not only that, who is using it, not only that, we’re linking it also to the maintenance, to the functionality.
Tableau: How do you increase efficiency with Tableau?
Dr. Alkadi: I mean, one of the colleges is having that equipment, it’s used once a year, for example, so letting other people that we are having this device with this functionality might help those people to use it to maximize the usage of that device.
So linking all those information using Tableau I think would maximize the efficiency of everything, reduce your cost and also would give you the right answer in decision whenever it’s needed.
After I saw Tableau, I said that’s it, that’s what I’ve been looking for the last few years. So to me it’s something—I mean big, it saved me time. When I say "saved me," it saved the institution time, money, effort.