Today, executives at Nacional Financiera have access to important data points 24 hours in advance. Adjusting their planning strategy on the fly across different business areas—marketing, promotions, and accounting—better positions them to hit annual goals. And with Tableau, the team works off of a single source of truth, leading to better accuracy and collaboration.
Tableau: How much data do you typically analyze? Guillermo Martinez Ceballos, Financial Reporting Manager: The current volume that we have from Nacional Financiera, we are talking about 30 million records because we have a history of approximately 15 years; we have a data warehouse that has allowed us to continue storing historical information. Tableau: What departments use Tableau? Guillermo: So the main areas that need to share information in the final analysis is our leadership in the area of planning and financial programming, with different areas of marketing, promotion, and accounting analysis. [Also in] financial information where we coordinate which information will be useful to the institution. In the end, with all of us working together, we know how to arrive at the same figure, even though we perform different analyses. Tableau: Can you share an example of how you use Tableau? Guillermo: Since we are a financial institution, we have to be monitoring the goals—the indicators that we have forecast for each year—and monitor these on a monthly basis to ensure that we are vigilant. They have made dashboards where we compare the information we have against the information programmed in order to see whether we are complying or if we are late with the information in respect to fulfilling the targets for each of the different business areas.
If we didn't have Tableau, what we would be doing now…is waiting for the operational areas to compile [reports], which takes 10 to 15 days or up to a month.
Tableau: How has Tableau influenced your work? Guillermo: Tableau has allowed us to have access to the information 24 hours in advance, which allows us—with both the executive reports and the analysis reports that they make—to look forward to see whether there are any incidents for the monthly closures. This enables everyone to see, analyze their perspectives, view their incidents, and be able to improve for the next month and meet the annual target. Tableau: What would your reporting process look like if you didn’t have Tableau? Guillermo: If we didn't have Tableau, what we would be doing now, rather, what the people who prepare and consult the reports would be doing now is waiting for the operational areas to compile them, which takes 10 to 15 days or up to a month to obtain the information.