Personal News

Big news: I’m joining Sigma to help support their product team.

I’m doing this because it’s a no-brainer. Sigma takes organizations beyond what the industry–and their leadership–thought was possible with data. And I say this because I’ve seen it first hand.

Back in October of 2021 I was introduced to Sigma. Before I took the meeting, I was skeptical. I had seen so many different technology demos–all were so underwhelming.

When I saw Sigma, I could see its future and it was very intriguing. They were building a product that was solving many problems that I had encountered regularly.

The thousands of customers I’ve supported have mostly wanted spreadsheet-like interactions with their data. They needed it to scale with their data and the security their organization needed. Visualizations were nice–but they needed to be able to iterate on their data at scale in a form-factor that worked for them.

Of course Sigma goes beyond that: they were working through solutions–solutions that are now publicly available–that would allow their customers to update and store values to build forecasts, do scenario planning, or quickly iterate on top of their data–something that has been sorely missing in the space and something that reminded me of an all-to-common experience of companies large and small.

I’ve built many complicated dashboards in my time–and they were only complicated by the limitations of the products.

I once saw a company spend a million dollars on an internal custom application built on python–only to have it break in the first month. The cost of the fix from the original vendor: an additional million dollars plus an annual retainer of $300,000. This customer eventually came to me and asked for a second opinion. I was able to position Tableau–and build a solution in 16 weeks–with a price tag of 20% the original cost.

If Sigma had been available back then–in its current form, I would have positioned the product for them–and it would have solved their problem–by my estimates–in about a week.

And this is what’s wild about Sigma, they have so many product features that are ready to solve critical business problems in a short period of time with a team that doesn’t need to be overly technical.

My job is to highlight the amazingness of where Sigma is at today–and where it’s going to go.

Of course there is the gorilla to address here–what’s going to happen with how I support Tableau.

Well, there will certainly be changes. And my support for the data and analytics communities will never change. I still have a stake in two companies that still support Tableau.

I’ll be forever grateful. Tableau helped build my career–this is something that I am eternally grateful for. Almost 12 years ago I started regularly using the product. For the next decade Tableau was an innovator in the space that helped make it easier to bring data to the people by making it easier to see and understand data.

There is no doubt that the entire industry is grateful for the innovations they brought into existence. New technologies–like Sigma–stand on the shoulders of a giant to help further evolve the landscape of how data will transform organizations.

Our industry is full of trailblazers who have made data available to everyone in a business. Their innovations lit the path. The next wave is not just about seeing data but actively collaborating with it, providing flexibility–and enabling their customers with data.

So for me–this week marks a chapter change. Embracing the future, while acknowledging and building upon the legacy of the tools from previous chapters