Customer relationship management software behemoth Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) announced June 10 it was buying Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA), an analytics platform company, for approximately $15.7 billion.
More than 86,000 organizations around the world use Tableau’s analytics and data visualization tools. San Francisco-based Salesforce said that by adding Tableau, it would play a greater role in driving digital transformation, enabling companies around the world to tap into data across their entire business and surface deeper insights to make smarter decisions, drive intelligent, connected customer experiences and accelerate innovation.
At first, Tableau customers may not notice much of a change. Following the acquisition’s close, Tableau will operate independently under the Tableau brand. It will remain headquartered in Seattle and will continue to be led by CEO Adam Selipsky and the current leadership team. In a statement, Selipsky said, “Joining forces with Salesforce will enhance our ability to help people everywhere see and understand data. As part of the world’s No. 1 CRM company, Tableau’s intuitive and powerful analytics will enable millions more people to discover actionable insights across their entire organizations. I’m delighted that our companies share very similar cultures and a relentless focus on customer success. I look forward to working together in support of our customers and communities."
Healthcare has become an increasingly important sector to Tableau. In fact, although it was already a well-established and public company, Healthcare Innovation named it one of the Up and Coming companies in 2016, because it was becoming an increasingly important player in the healthcare field. At the time, Andy De, the company’s managing director and global general manager for healthcare and life sciences, said healthcare was the fastest-growing vertical market for Tableau, although the company does not release revenue figures by vertical market.
De said Tableau was growing so fast in healthcare because it helps C-level executives as well as clinicians easily see data that has for years been siloed by department or business unit. “The challenge is, given the diverse landscape in healthcare, how do you draw a 360-degree version of the truth around processes, which is critical to drive decision making at the point of care and to drive everything from supply chain management and revenue cycle management to population health management? The beauty of Tableau is that we have over 50 different kinds of data connectors built into the software and we are not stack-specific; we are stack agnostic.”
Some BI tools require a level of sophistication to use, but Tableau’s ease of use and flexibility allow it to be used by doctors and nurses, De said. “Most healthcare providers have invested $15 million to $20 million on legacy BI software, which is built for a different era,” De says. “Tableau is virtually the only analytics software built for the data knowledge worker or consumer.”
He gave an example from Mount Sinai Health System, whose director of BI deployed Tableau to empower physicians and nurses. An emergency department physician played around with data after hours and uncovered $125 million in revenue leakage within weeks. The chief financial officer has institutionalized his discovery to monitor denials management. In another case, De says Providence Health created its own operational analytics platform built on Tableau. It has allowed Providence to aggregate data from 11 different data sources, and standardize on 40 standard reports, with incentives aligned to drive accountability, utilization and quality.
In addition to picking up market share in the healthcare space, Tableau has integrated its visual analytics tools with tools from EHR vendors, including Epic and Cerner.
