Ana has recently joined a mid-size multi-brand retail organization. As the analytics head of the company, she has been asked to implement business analytics to gauge the performance of the firm. So, she has to include all the departments’ data to prepare an analytics strategy and look at how the business is doing when compared to the past.
Since Ana is overwhelmed with the choices, she is in a dilemma which business intelligence (BI) tools to use. To make sure of the right choice, Ana pulls various expert reports for the current year and the last. She also analyzes and compares the features and benefits of the top tools available in the market. From the bunch of 25+ available tools, the analyst filters 7 BI tools to suit the need of her company.
Here is a list of top 7 business intelligence tools to look at when considering implementing business analytics according to Ana’s scrutiny.
1. Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI offers excellent visualization by combining bulky data from disparate sources: websites, mail clients, excel sheets, a pdf or a traditional database to name a few. With customization through a library of templates, the tool can enhance the features in the reports and dashboards. Hence, complex calculations are now easy. Data modeling layer is the cream where often all the BI designers spend a major chunk of their time. This elevates the ease needed during visualization.
Leaving behind Tableau this year—a tough competitor—Power BI has snatched the crown after last year’s tie, which Ana considers as a plus.
Available in cloud (vendor-provided working platform like Azure by Microsoft) deployment mode, Power BI is extremely light on Ana’s pocket. Other than the free version, she can opt for a premium version at just $10/month/user basis.
2. Qlik
Falling under the leadership zone of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Qlik has retained its position, which drags Ana towards this BI platform. Being suitable for any size of the user base from one user to large enterprises, QlikSense by Qlik can handle massive data and generate analytics, which has prominent mobile viewing compatibility.
Designed to deliver agile analytics—faster and flexible BI—with data governance, QlikSense and QlikView are the two products, which are based on in-memory data analysis making the results quick. While the first product is a self-serving visualization platform, the latter—a pioneer when compared to the traditional platforms—is a data discovery tool and can deliver interactive dashboards fast.
With $15/user/month on the cloud, pricing is nominal. Enterprise version of QlikSense comes at a quotation.
3. Tableau
Tableau is sleek and clean with its visualization and surely a champion. Ana loves the fact it is made for non-coders and comes as an easy to learn the platform.
Usually available in both deployment versions, Tableau boasts of its strong customer base and ratings. Now that the tool offers integration with Natural Language Processing (NLP), this tool is a notch above among the competitors because of advanced analytics provisioning.
After a 14 day comprehensive trial, Tableau is priced at $70/month/user with full capabilities. In the lighter version, Price varies from $35 (on-premise i.e. company’s servers) to $42 (cloud) for self-service analytics capabilities—barring data cleansing features—making it suitable for executives.
4. MicroStrategy
This BI player allows a complex analysis over large data sets and suits best for the enterprise-level projects. Being an augmented analytics tool, it consumes the modern-day machine learning (ML) and NLP processes to enhance insights produced by the data.
Apart from the basic functionalities such as drag and drop, quick results, eye-catching visualization, and run-time functionalities, this tool also provides hyperintelligence. With this one-of-its-kind functionality, MicroStrategy promises to deliver insights with Zero-Click Intelligence™ anytime and anywhere. Ana is highly impressed with the matchless idea to see the knowledge about business on the run.
Having praised the offerings, this BI suite compels IT interventions. Additionally, the price is a big hurdle to cross as MicroStrategy is known for being high priced.
5. SAS
With Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning (PAML), Forrester report has termed SAS Viya as the leader. Predictive analytics answers ‘what will happen in the future’ using the past and current data analysis. SAS has an advantage among the peers by leveraging it masterfully. And all these in a unified ecosystem displaying the statistical data in the most visually appealing manner.
The tool can embed R and Python codes for highly advanced data scrutiny and text analytics—one among such vendors. But with the advanced features come the complexities that compel expert supervision. The limited ease of use has marred Viya’s wider adoption.
It’s high on pricing and revealed on request. Ana may skip it because of her limited resources.
6. Sisense
Sisense—now moving slowly towards the leadership band occupied by Tableau and Power BI—has attracted enterprise-level customers since 2018. With an amalgamation of ML, this visionary tool has its foundation set to consume bulky datasets and produce BI answers in a snap. After knowing this option, Ana is happy with the pricing provided by the nascent yet powerful BI platform.
Having a simple drag and drop DIY feature, Sisense is available in both cloud and on-premise modes. Sisense calls itself a single stack architecture for bringing needed services like an integrated database, data preparation, analyzing and representing aesthetic visuals under one tool. All of these while being able to churn a variety of data in bulk. With its unique design engine, it claims to process big data sets at the expense of fewer resources.
With a trademark of ‘no-surprise costing’, Sisense reveals its pricing via quotation only. Based on the number of users and scale of data and operations, they propose an enterprise-wide estimate.
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7. DOMO
Domo is a cloud-based BI tool designed for the executives providing real-time data anytime, anywhere and is compatible with all kinds of devices. It offers pre-designed dashboards with on-the-fly filtering and sorting facilities.
Being a cloud-based model, the clients can skip IT intervention. Moreover, Domo comes quick to setup if the organization’s other applications are already cloud-based. Domo is a valuable option for small and mid-scale organizations. On the flip side, Domo needs all the on-premise data to be uploaded in the cloud first for analysis, and charges aggressively. So, if the size of the datasets grows immensely, the cost can shoot skies being on the cloud.
Domo’s 30-day free trial is a stealer option to explore the tool, which is for a maximum of five users. With $83/month/user to $160/month with unlimited users, other plans feature consultation. At $190/month with unlimited users, the enterprise plan offers high-end features with advanced data governance and security.
What would Ana do now?
Keeping in mind the offering of each tool Ana is now looking at the firm’s requirement and dataset size. With determination to integrate departmental data, Ana wants to bring clients’ data too to produce a holistic view of the current business results. After vis-à-vis with BI tools now, Ana should be able to navigate through to reach her right BI partner.
What is that one tool you would be interested in which is cost-effective and delivers the requirements fast and accurate? Struggling in this due-diligence? Then reach out to Logesys for consultation.