Insights and inspiration gained at recent Tableau conference

At the Tableau Conference last month in New Orleans, Patricia Urzay, a member of DSC’s Supply Chain Solutions & Analytics team, discussed dashboard design, audience appeal, data preparation, calculations and other topics in sessions presented by the Tableau team and Zen Masters (expert users recognized in the community). The conference presented a forum for colleagues in various fields advancing business intelligence (BI) tools to dialogue, share leading practices and network.

“I learned about the latest tools and techniques for creating intuitive, insightful and scalable dashboards that will help us continue to deliver value to data-driven decision processes,” Patricia said. “I was inspired by many ideas and capabilities that we can further leverage here at DSC.”

DSC’s Solutions team uses Tableau, a leading technology that brings together business intelligence with familiar natural language and aesthetics to visualize and analyze data. DSC is using Tableau in combination with other systems to produce interactive visualization products (dashboards) for internal and customer audiences. The tools improve the visibility of interrelated elements of the supply chain, providing holistic views into networks with the ability to drive down into details.

“We are excited to be externally releasing the next iteration of one of our most compelling BI tools, Foresight,” Brian Hecht, Director of DSC’s Supply Chain Solutions & Analytics team, said. “This tool is capable of giving our operations leaders and customers really compelling visual insights to help them predict and plan.” DSC’s Foresight tool has been under development for about two years, and is the result of collaboration and integration across multiple disciplines and systems. The recent conference provided the opportunity to benchmark DSC’s new tools and assess their performance compared to trends in the BI community.

“I feel very confident that DSC is providing thought leadership when it comes to BI and developing high-value solutions,” Patricia said in assessing her conference experience.

The [logistics center] team has always gone above & beyond in ensuring our ability to service our customers comes first. The team has always far exceeded the expectations of partnership between our companies.