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Rethinking Data Paradigms To Unlock the Power of Information

This week, Salesforce’s Tableau hosted its annual user conference in Las Vegas. It made a number of announcements aimed at improving performance and usability. Tableau also announced ChatGPT and Tableau GPT. Tableau Pulse is analytics that are personalized to the needs of users.

From where I was sitting near Boston, I heard the keynotes and saw the demos. I decided to let the others explain the details of what, in my opinion, were some really nice tools for analysis and visualization. One could call them the next generation without being wrong.

Instead of focusing on product details, I recommend that we examine how the industry positions Tableau and similar products, focusing primarily on data. I find it strange that the industry seems to be so focused on data. The conference was an excellent example.

While my industry has evolved a lot over the years, I find it puzzling that our concept of data is still the same. Data is important to our work, but we have become so obsessed with it that it’s holding us back.

Shifting focus from data to information

Data was everything in the old days. We regularly exceeded the storage capacity of our systems, and stored data in flat-files (Google it!The flat files were resource hogs.

It was just in time that the relational database management system appeared and made data manipulation easier. Even so, we could only store a few megabytes or even a few hundreds of megabytes for most businesses, except those that were using mainframes.

RDBMS systems of the early days were designed to provide data to users who then transformed it into information to be used for decision making. Today’s CRM systems, along with many back-office systems, process data to create information that users can use in real time.

Today’s information allows us to make better, more detailed decisions. This should make all of us very happy. Why do we call it data, when we are actually referring to information that we consume and seek? This may seem like a semantics issue, and it is, to some extent, but the inaccuracy is deeper.

We can only have ideas if we know how to use words. If we keep using information when we really mean data, we could be preventing ourselves from finding solutions.

A novice uses data as a term to describe anything from an item number or a sales forecast and asks, What data do I require to understand my business. Managers ask, “What information do I require to understand and improve my business?” The manager, on the other hand, is always looking forward, whereas the amateur is only looking back.

Bridging the Power of Information Gap

At the Tableau Conference they first said data, then displayed information. Some amateurs who watch this video will have difficulty with the transition. Other viewers won’t. Many people will be disappointed that their data approach does not match the demonstration of power of information. The disconnect will confuse them.

We must educate the market about our technology, so that everyone can benefit. When we use information to mean data, we dumb down the message and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

The point I’m making is that progress happens at the margins and not in the middle.

It would be a mistake to pick on Tableau for anything other than a product. The data/information gap is also so entrenched that it will be difficult to make any significant changes.

It is important that we all go to the margins if there are really improvements. I’m sure there are many other ways to use data, such as in a data lake or CDP. The sophistication of these technologies proves, however, that Tableau is dealing with information. This is what we should embrace.