A frequent question prospective clients ask is "How are you different from Tableau?"

On the surface, Protobi and leading BI tools are similar in that both create clickable graphs and tables from data. Beyond that they're radically different tools for different purposes, and even coexist quite nicely.

Tableau is fabulous, with admirable design, quality, support and and expert network. I've licensed Tableau professionally in my own work as a quant analyst and have done Tableau implementations for clients. I was a fan of Tableau when starting Protobi and still am now.

But nearly always we get that question from analysts who have a license to a leading BI tool, but aren't using it to visualize, analyze or deliver survey data. That's the key difference.

Visualize survey data .. all of it

Protobi is uniquely useful for data typical of market research surveys and clinical trials. A 30 minute survey can easily have 40+ questions and 400+ data columns. These questions can have complex structure and metadata.

If you're the research analyst, you have to look at it all, from every angle. If you're the marketing manager who spent $50K+ to collect it, you want to see what's in it, easily, now. Protobi gives you visualizations of every column in the dataset, immediately.

With other BI tools, you can create visualizations any field, but have to create them painstakingly one-by-one. That's fine for offline exploratory analysis or a focused online dashboard, but not for a complete survey or clinical trial.

A solution now, not just a license

Protobi is available immediately, online as a web app, both the Designer and Viewer versions. Protobi Professional offers a "white glove" solution. You send the data, and get a completely configured view, with permissions to edit and share with colleagues and clients. At a finite price.

Protobi doesn't just help you create client deliverables (e.g. PowerPoint), it is a client deliverable. It generates not just individual tabs, but entire decks of crosstabs, in Excel and charts in PowerPoint. And you get premium support from a knowledgeable analyst.

By contrast, with other solutions, you purchase a software license for the Designer version on your desktop. Then you purchase a server or cloud license to collaborate. And hire a consultant to design the dashboard. The costs and time accumulate fast.

Professional analysis workflow

Protobi supports the practical workflow of creating a comprehensive deck with topline results of everything, finding the key story and surprising insights for the executive summary, and answering followup queries that always come up.

Survey data tends to have a lot of metadata that BI tools cannot handle. Variable labels? Value formats? Collections of check-all-that-apply questions, ratings, and rankings? Text verbatims? No problem.

Plus there are the little things. Bin numeric values into ranges. Highlight statistically significant differences. Etc. All handled. We've been there, writing decks for clients on timelines.

Who benefits?

Protobi initial champions are often analysts those who are on the hook to crunch data for client presentations. Marketing managers get excited when they get clear access to their data from a vendor for the first time. And professional research firms get excited when their clients are delighted and sign new proposals.

Challenge us!

Send us your survey data at info@protobi.com, Aand we can turn around a professional pilot. In the meantime, try using with some other package. And let us know how they compare .. if they compare at all.

We always treat your data as confidential and proprietary to you, but you can contact is an advance for any assurance you may require.

Pieter