Most people will agree that access to business metrics and reports must be easy and — in order to make data actionable — people need to collaborate around insights to come up with smart decisions.

That’s why we believe the how and where to distribute your data must be a central part of your Business Intelligence efforts.

Instead of having your data disconnected from your communication in a separate tool, why not push data insights to the place your team communicates anyways? To Slack.

Getting your Reports into Slack is much more than just pushing images to a chat — it’s a new way of doing Business Intelligence!

Integrating your Analytics tools— such as Tableau — with Slack has some big advantages over traditional “report bursting” via Email, as well as a pure on-demand approach:

Your Data becomes more visible

Raising visibility and awareness for your data is the first crucial step to actually make data-driven decisions part of your culture.
And a highly visual chart in your team’s Slack channel is definitely more visible than just another email. Unlike an Email you don’t even have to open the message in Slack — it’s already there jumping right into your face and hard to ignore.

Collaboration becomes fast & easy

If you spot something interesting in a report, removing barriers to get some more eyeballs on an insight is absolutely critical.
Ease of access and ease of communication matters a lot.
With your data visualisations directly in Slack, it becomes extremely easy to gather everyone around an insight and to kick off a productive conversation in no time.

Context, Context, Context

Data is m̶o̶s̶t̶ only relevant within context. With our Tableau to Slack integration for example, you can browse and pull your Tableau views to any discussion in seconds— without ever leaving Slack.
Somebody has a question about a number or recent development within a conversation? Post the according Tableau View right into the conversation within seconds! Having the right data at your fingertips will most definitely change and improve the way your team interacts with data.

Spot Issues earlier — and resolve them together

You should also push your most important reports frequently into Slack. Think about having your business-critical KPIs pushed to your #general channel in Slack every morning. It’s very likely that someone will notice if a significant change happened overnight. And then, you have your team already there, so starting a conversation around this issue becomes really easy. Loop in all the people that need to know about it or can provide valuable input to find a resolution.

Slack + Analytics = 💪🤓

All this makes clear why Slack combined with analytics is much more than just chit-chat — it’s communication with the relevant people along relevant context from your data, which is a powerful cocktail for really smart decisions.

We believe it is time for a new way of doing Business Intelligence — making your data more actionable, your team smarter and your organisation more data-driven.

PushMetrics’s Tableau to Slack integration is a great way to get started with this — that’s why you should definitely give it a try.

It’s super easy to get started. Just go to our website and click “Add to Slack”.

About the author: I’m Julian, the founder & CEO of PushMetrics — we help organisations make better decisions from their data. Let me know your thoughts and ideas about Analytics and Slack and shoot me an email at julian@pushmetrics.io