I wasn't part of the decision making effort but I believe Qikview was also considered but the analysts preferred Tableau. It is used by the analysts as well our for our internal monitoring/charting/analysis purposes.
I see. I've also found myself in a situation where the company was using it and I had them drop it.
For reporting the idea of transforming & moving the data around really doesn't make much sense when compared to solutions which directly leverage your db or at least create an unique consistent datasource instead of many so-called extracts scattered around.
If it's for analysis why not use python or R, way more powerful and full of tools & libraries that give you speed you need?
If it's for reporting, why not to use chartio, looker or anything that connects directly to your db?
My opinion: If you know some python or R, you might still need chartio, looker and similar but Tableau doesn't make sense anymore.