The end of December was a bit of a blur, and it seems like I missed a lot- including Tableau’s acquisition of Narrative Science. Tableau has been a leader in the data visualization space for many years, and was acquired by Salesforce in 2019 where it has continued to grow in its depth of integrations and functionality. So, what is Natural Language Generation and why should we want it?

• What is it? Natural Language Generation is a form of Artificial Intelligence that translates data into readable content.

• So What? Have you ever built a beautiful dashboard, with automated data feeds that are scheduled or API-fed only to be asked for a write-up or even worse, a scheduled write up for an embedded version? Yeah, me too. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to help provide context, ask deeper questions, find more datasources to answer those questions, etc. This could be transformational for analytics teams as well as organizations who can’t afford full teams in-house. I’ve seen it in practice, the more context you provide in the setup, the more context the end-user gets and the more time you get back in your day.

My team’s current stack includes two Salesforce products: Tableau and Datorama. I’ve always questioned why they don’t merge the two products into one, but for now we leverage based on strengths.

• Datorama: Great tool for MDM, automation (a lot of native API integrations), and storage for a reasonable price. Cons: the visualizations are not up to Mandee standards, sometimes they have load time issues.

• Tableau: Best in class visualization tool, customizable dashboard capabilities. Cons: connects to data but is not a storage tool (yes, i know you can make extracts, I could write a novel about that process and why it’s still not good enough) therefore is very slow when accessing large datasets, even when using buttons to filter once loaded.

What will I be trying when this partnership is finally rolled out?

Datorama as the data hygiene and storage tool, Tableau as my front end with the Narrative Science NLG functionality turned on and dialed ALL the way up.

Cheers to innovation.