Business Users Get Answers with Self-Service Dashboards

RBC Wealth Management U.S. is a national full-service brokerage firm with over 2,200 registered representatives, over $170 billion in assets, and a lot of data. Shawn Spott, VP and Manager of Marketing Research, is responsible for the strategic analysis of that data. His team provides management and business lines a top down view of their business and performance. When faced with the challenge of providing multiple partners access to information that was relevant and timely, Shawn was concerned about his chances for success. He turned to Tableau.

"I’ve worked with many BI tools that claim to put the power in the users’ hands and simplify BI. And it’s never ever happened."

Then Shawn and his team discovered Tableau.

"Tableau isn’t a mash-up of all functionality a BI tool might have. It is a focused set of options that can be customized to the audience. By segmenting my users based on their needs, then matching those needs to Tableau Server features – I have been able to satisfy everyone," says Shawn. "Tableau’s visualization and dashboard capabilities are very appealing, as is its ability to provide the data to users in the formats they prefer.” RBC Wealth Management is now using Tableau desktop and server services to deliver KPI and trend information to business lines, sales development, and marketing groups. RBC leverages dashboards, tactical reporting, and direct data access while providing over 80 users, from executives to line managers to field salespeople, with decision support information. The platform spans the entire retail database – integrating multiple data sources with a total reach of about 1.25TB.

When he chose Tableau, Shawn wanted to bridge historic gaps between disparate systems and create a unified information view. “We went for a year and a half trying to figure out what the presentation layer should be. We looked at Oracle BI, that didn’t meet our requirements. We looked at SAS reporting, that didn’t work out. We looked at homegrown solutions and tried to cobble together something.” In 2009, a member of Shawn’s team suggested Tableau Server as a solution.

“Amazingly positive response from the users”

“I had spent 15 years in BI and I banged my head against the wall repeatedly trying to convey information to people through sheer volume. I came to the conclusion that providing people with lots of data was pointless. They couldn’t consume it, digest it, synthesize it,” said Shawn.

Shawn’s team partnered with IT to design a pilot program on Tableau. “We created a suite of a dozen reports and took it out to the field. It had an amazingly positive response from the users.” Because Tableau Server is a web-based service, field staff can access it from anywhere."Our adoption rate is really high."

Shawn’s team was also impressed with the speed of the pilot rollout. “In August we had an idea to implement Tableau Server – by the end of September we were live in production and users were already asking for more.”

“The efficiency of my team has gone through the roof.”

The workload of Shawn’s team to support the field dropped dramatically because Tableau allows users a self-service model to get information. “Historically they would have called us, and we would have put the data in a spreadsheet and delivered it,” said Shawn.

“The efficiency of my group has gone through the roof. I've got more clients than we've ever had, I've got more reports, and we're still doing new development. Because Tableau Server provides us with the self-service model, we're able to continue to keep projects moving through the pipeline. The maintenance footprint is so small, we just load and go. We spend three weeks of the month solving new problems and doing new development. It's been off-the-charts successful.”

“We’re serving groups we never thought we would.”

Shawn continues, “After the pilot we realized there was no reason to look beyond Tableau for our distribution portal.” What started as a plan to support 40 primary users has already expanded two-fold, with 80 current users. With even more expansion coming, RBC Wealth Management has increased the Tableau platform with the addition of the core license product. "We're serving groups we never thought we would service."

“We've brought a lot of information to the financial, strategic, and executive groups. We've never been a wholesale reporting team before because we couldn't support it." Shawn’s team provides information based on the needs of different businesses and lets users answer questions like "what is the state of cash at RBC?" They create dashboards to show trends and critical point-in-time information. They also create analytical queries to service microsegments of the business. For example, there are close to one million accounts at the firm. A fraction of those are in a class known as managed accounts. Within that class there are 50 different attribute permutations across seven account types. The managed account business wants to slice and dice within that microsegment to see performance and product adoption rates. “Microsegments address security, speed, and relevance for my users without the usual overhead. Most of my clients don’t want to perform grand queries across a universe of data – they have their specific business questions, and that is the extent of the world they want to see.”

Multiple groups within RBC are using self-service dashboards and query tools on the Tableau server platform, including:

• Management
• Fixed and equity analytical groups in Capital Markets
• Product lines: insurance, trust, private wealth, high net worth, retirements, institutional investors, cash
• Sales support: consultants in the field who assist brokers and branch offices
• Corporate departments: finance, sponsorship, marketing

With the flexibility of the platform, a wide range of specific topics can be bundled in workbooks and projects. This allows multi-dimensional access with the specificity and relevance needed by the users.

Expecting More Users and More Savings

Shawn believes that Tableau Server will continue to grow in value for RBC Wealth Management. “Given where I see this going, I'd expect we'll be between 200 and 300 users by this time next year. It's a grassroots effort that is putting successful BI in groups where historically BI was not readily available. Everyone who sees it, wants it.”

Shawn is also expecting to save real dollars with the Tableau implementation. One area of savings will come from migrating to Tableau for mapping. “We're migrating all our geospatial analysis and mapping to Tableau,” he said. “I'm saving in the neighborhood of $100k over the next three years by migrating our mapping services.”

"Additionally, with the move from seat licensing to server licensing we are expecting annual savings on maintenance and support."

For RBC Wealth Management, Tableau is a way to deliver business-critical information to users while giving users the ability to slice and dice data to answer their own questions, all with self-service BI.

Sample RBC Wealth Management U.S. Dashboards and Reports

For More Information About This Case

Contact: visualanalysis@tableausoftware.com or call (206) 633-3400 x1