Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) is a traditional BI platform that has data visualization limitations.

The organizations using OBIEE have started sensing its limitations with the arrival of modern data visualization tools such as Tableau. In these organizations, the Tableau users are most likely to use a manual export/import process via Excel for visualizing the OBIEE data in Tableau.

In this blog post, we’ll run through a quick overview of the pros and cons of exporting and importing data from OBIEE to Tableau via Excel.

Pros of Excel Export/Import from OBIEE to Tableau

As the users are most likely to have Excel in their machines, they can derive insights out of OBIEE data using Tableau visualizations without any additional setup.

The elimination of additional setup helps organizations avoid the direct costs incurred in using a Tableau to OBIEE connector for automating the connectivity.

However, the inefficiency of the approach adds to the indirect costs, which we’ll see in the cons section below.

Cons of Excel Export/Import from OBIEE to Tableau

While the manual process enables users to visualize OBIEE data without any additional setup, the approach is highly inefficient.

The inefficiency is due to the time and efforts required to mash-up OBIEE data with other data sources and the possibility of manual errors.

Let’s have a quick look at the numbers:

A user typically spends about 4 to 5 hours every week for exporting the data and mashing-up with other data sources, along with figuring out manual errors and fixing them.

These 4 to 5 hours, when monetized costs roughly around $10,000/user/year, which is more than 27 times the cost of a BI Connector’s Tableau to OBIEE Connector, that gets the job done much seamlessly and securely in a plug-and-play mode!

Conclusion

The cons far outweigh the pros of the Excel export/import approach, and hence, it is good to avoid it, and look for the alternative options.

You may want to look at the 2 alternatives to the Excel export/import approach mentioned in the post – 3 Ways to Address OBIEE’s Data Visualization Drawbacks with Tableau.