Tableau Software, Inc. is well-equipped to navigate the tech marketplace in the coming years, said John Furrier and Jeff Kelly, reflecting on their learnings from the first day of the Tableau Data 14 conference. Tableau has experienced rapid growth, and is in the process of figuring out how to maintain its customer-centric reputation while continuing to expand.

As Tableau grows, it adds members to its ecosystem of partners and increases its software capabilities. Kelly pointed out that this growth may change how Tableau relates to its customers. There are a few ways these changes might ruffle Tableau customers’ feathers:

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1. Tableau markets itself as platform that doesn’t need specialized training to use.

As Tableau’s capabilities expand, using the tools may get more complicated and require Tableau’s partners to step in and offer education as to how business users should navigate new aspects of Tableau products.

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2. Tableau is widely know as a customer-centric company.

As it grows, it will be harder and harder to maintain the level of interaction to which customers have been accustomed. It may fall to the partner ecosystem to pick up the reins.

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Tight integration, Kelly said, will be essential in order to keep customers happy as Tableau grows.

Read more after the video.

Tableau’s place in the market

Commenting on Tableau’s rapid growth, Furrier observed that “Tableau is in a good position.” The company is keeping its “nose to the grid stone,” he said, trying to stay humble as it amasses partners and clients. Furrier asserted that despite the company’s attitude, Tableau is aware of its potential and the “sweet spot” it occupies in the market. Kelly concurred with his fellow host, expecting Tableau will try to maintain “that startup feeling” in order to continue attracting customers based on its culture of innovation and openness.

Furrier suggested that open culture has a lot to do with why the Tableau founders have stayed with the company. Furrier said that Tableau CEO Christian Chabot knows when to reach out for help. It’s about self-awareness, Furrier observed: “You gotta know what you don’t know.”

Both hosts agreed that there are several markers of Tableau’s potential: their huge growth, great reciting, employee retention, and the fact that many of Tableau’s customers eventually come to work for the company. They also touched on conference attendance, citing that it’s grown by about 2,00 people since the previous year.

Tableau leads the business intelligence revolution

One of the themes both Furrier and Kelly said they’d encountered at the conference was people “betting their careers on Tableau.” Because the software company offers tools that are so different from established enterprise-level data analytics, it can be a real risk for businesses to adopt the “new thing.” The rampant rate of adoption, Kelly said, suggests customers have “a lot of faith in Tableau,” said Kelly. And, so far, trends at the Tableau Conference suggest that those risks are paying off.

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