Our synopsis - Tableau's CRM with Einstein Analytics
Recently, Tableau released this article on their partnership with Einstein Analytics.
Given that Tableau is owned by Salesforce, the article predominantly focuses on how Einstein Analytics and Tableau can now be used in unison to generate powerful insights from the associated machine learning and visualisation features that come with these modern tools.
At White Box Analytics, we like to consider ourselves experts of Tableau and the use of the software when it comes to visualising our clients’ data in order to generate insights, so when we stumble across articles which suggest that an AI interface can do some of these things without even involving a human analyst or data scientist, we love to delve in to see if such claims are true!
So, what is Einstein Analytics?
Well, they’ve already renamed it Tableau CRM for starters but we digress...As quoted in the article, ‘Einstein Analytics allows you to combine internal data and external data and provides users with a more intelligent experience.’ It was built to function natively with Salesforce, and the ‘intelligent experience’ comes about from ‘dynamic machine learning-powered predictions’.
The way these predictive models work isn’t specified, but their outputs are displayed in a neat side menu in Tableau which has a number of predictions about relevant data field variables, like, for example, expected customer engagement growth, re-subscription rates and product usage forecasts.
Why it might be relevant to you?
Given this technology was built for the Salesforce CRM system, and over 150,000 customers use it, an integrative software like Einstein Analytics may provide a lot of users with a nice leg-up when it comes to interpreting and interacting with their organisations data.
Given that it can then exist within the Tableau dashboard environment, it also promises the ability to generate insights from both internal and external data.
Why you might not be able to use it?
Firstly, if you don’t have Salesforce, then we’re unsure if Einstein analytics will be available or if it is, then work that well. They say that it will work with any CRM, so time will tell.
Secondly, we are slightly wary of “AI” promises, particularly when it comes to blending data, especially if generated outside of the Salesforce environment. Data is often messy, stored differently according to the database(s) it’s located in, and hence needs more thought/transformation before it can be properly integrated into a current set-up.
This isn’t to say that Einstein Analytics can’t do this, but given it was built specifically for one CRM tool, the likelihood of seamlessly connecting internal and external data and subsequently generating predictive insights from that data, will create many complications.
Final thoughts
We’ve been huge fans of Tableau for many years and were wary of the Salesforce purchase impact. This innovation feels like a great step forward for marketing teams and understanding CRM in general. How useful it will be for those not using CRM data, we’ll have to see. We might start seeing a pattern emerging of where Tableau is going via Salesforce and although it’s a path that will undoubtedly create huge benefits for some, I wonder if it will alienate others and Microsoft will be there to pick up the pieces with Power BI.
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