Instituto Unibanco improves public education for millions of students among 2,500 schools


Creating a single source of truth for 5,000+ administrators

The Instituto Unibanco has a mission to improve Brazilian public education, working with over 2,500 schools in five states that contain approximately two million students.

“We discovered Tableau in 2014, and our immediate reaction was a blend of desire and excitement about the possibilities,” explains Ricardo Henriques, Leader and Director at Instituto Unibanco.


Before Tableau, standard reporting took about a month. Now reports are available within a week. Ricardo says, “We can use this extra time to optimize more reports, work on analysis in a more in-depth fashion, and think more about how to further improve the delivery of reports.”

Instituto Unibanco maintains an Oracle database, containing data from the foundation, other institutions, and public bodies. They also have data in TXT and CSV formats, among others.

“Tableau lets us organize these databases to make them available in a clear and accessible manner. It also allows the end user—we are talking about over 5,000 administrators of public schools in Brazil—to focus on reports and act on them within the context of each specific school,” shares Ricardo.

With Tableau, managers can track student participation, attendance, and progress in areas of Portuguese language, math, and science for each school within the education network.

“The ability to monitor what happens on a day-to-day basis at each school allows us to make the best decisions,” says Ricardo.

Tableau allows the end user—we are talking about over 5,000 administrators of public schools in Brazil—to focus on reports and act on them within the context of each specific school

Secure, scalable collaboration with Tableau Server

Instituto Unibanco started their deployment within the statistics lab with just four Tableau Desktop licenses. Over time, they adopted Tableau Server due to interest from the IT department, project management team, and the communications department.

Today, the foundation uses Tableau Desktop and Server across various functions. Ricardo explains how Tableau Server helped increase data governance around sensitive data. “Tableau Server has helped us with controlling access and expanding the protection and confidentiality of our information,” explains Marcelo Pessoa, Statistics Lab Coordinator.

It has also led to faster, more accurate decision making and a single point of truth for the foundation. Marcelo says, “An important aspect is agility. Tableau Server allows us to share relevant information very fast. And this has improved the speed with which the delivery reaches the end user. With Tableau, I can analyze, standardize, and review the data in a single environment.”

“Tableau offers everything we wished for…For us, Tableau is clearly fundamental in decision-making, and for all the steps of the whole [reporting] cycle.”