Our Top Pick for speculative investors is a provider of data visualization analytics solutions, explains Rob DeFrancesco, editor of Tech-Stock Prospector.
Tableau Software (DATA) has been working its way into enterprises via a land-and-expand strategy, often from favorable word of mouth that spreads from one department to the next, helping the company further penetrate existing accounts.
Two key positives: its solutions are cheaper and easier to use than traditional business intelligence offerings.
In addition, Tableau is signing up new customers at a blistering rate, adding 2,500+ accounts in the September quarter, bringing its total customer count up to more than 23,000.
A big positive development for Tableau: There has been a major shift when it comes to the involvement of IT departments, which now often lead the push for the company’s solutions, wanting to move business intelligence to the self-serve model.
According to Tableau CEO Christian Chabot, IT departments are championing the company’s style of analytics because they see that its solutions require fewer resources, aren’t difficult to learn, and empower employees by offering clearer results, making data easier to interpret.
Older generation tools for business intelligence (from the likes of IBM/Cognos and SAP/Business Objects) continue to be held back by their complexity and high costs, with some customers forced to pay 3x for services over the price of the actual software to cover training and upkeep.
Chabot says Tableau is seeing big growth from customers who didn’t participate in the last generation of pricey analytics, as well as from those deciding to switch over to newer offerings.
For 2015, the Tableau consensus revenue estimate of $552.8 million indicates growth of just over 41%.
