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Business Intelligence (BI) tools are no more limited to data experts only. BI tools popular half a decade ago required specialists to get insights but the new age BI tools gaining momentum in the market are of self-service BI. The emerging crop of BI tools comes with the core motive to be used by anyone in the company for extracting information.
These tools allow users to create their own reports, queries and data visualizations through self-service models and share the same with the team members in real time on different devices. Most BI vendors are trying their best to develop their tool suites as ubiquitous and easy to use as Microsoft Office. There is still some time left for these vendors to gain popularity like that of Microsoft Offices’ but there are a few of the tool suites that are becoming popular with every passing day. Let’s take a look at some of the best Self-service BI tools that have created their own place in the business world:
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Tableau
Tableau is a self-service analytics tool that focuses on making data visualization in a really easy and effective way for the businesses. It has taken the game of data visualization to a next level by connecting a wide range of resources like Excel to the new additions like Amazon Aurora, Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, MapR Hadoop Hive Connectivity for Mac.
Tableau also offers data preparation product called Tableau Prep. It saves time and efforts of the casual users to prepare data through drag and drop interface. Not only this, but Tableau creator also enables users to create dashboards based on governed data sources, set up data-driven alerts and subscriptions and even provides a full suite of Tableau capabilities, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep and licenses for Tableau servers. This easy to implement self-service analytic tool makes the whole process of data visualization easy, quick and effective.
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Looker
Data is no longer used to only find solutions to a problem but is nowadays used to make decisions. Looker is a data-discovery app that provides new data exploration functionalities for businesses of every size with limited or no knowledge of SQL. It allows the users to access web-based interface to get real-time insights about a particular topic via data analytics.
Looker comes packed with open API integration blocks which make it easier to implement within an organization. With a little knowledge of SQL, Looker’s ML code enables you to produce and build your queries and your own analytic modules. For the generation of reports on the go and making it accessible to all the members of the team in order to collectively make smarter and informed decision, Looker is the best app.
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Qlik
Qlik is one of the favorite Self-service analytic tools among the companies that provide a portfolio of products for data visualization. It allows customers to choose from self-service solutions like Qlik Sense, Qlik View, a guided and embedded analytics option, Qlik Analytics Platforms or external data feeds through Qlik DataMarket.
The main feature that makes Qlik favorite is that it breaks up the project according to the support required. The Self-service tool Sense uses the drag and drop input method and is an intuitive visualization tool. This tool eliminates the use of SQL queries and enables users to track down key metrics quickly.
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SAS
SAS has a self-service analytics platform named Viya. Viya is a platform that enables users to create visual analytics for reports, dashboards and manage the complex models. Viya’s latest update includes embedded AI and automation, from data preparation to complex model building and deployment.
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Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft for the businesses that are existing Microsoft shops. It provides tools for aggregating, visualizing, analyzing and sharing data over different devices. Power BI integrates with many sources, SQL databases and Spark, stored either on-premise or in the cloud. Other benefits of the service platform include hybrid deployment support, Quick insights, Cortana integration, API for integrations and customization that allows you to import new tools into the platform.
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Domo
Domo eases the tiresome data cleansing process by allowing the data source to be plugged into the platform and enables the users to prepare data for analysis without having any knowledge of SQL. Domo brings all the data together and enables the employees to engage with real-time data collaboratively and increases the productivity.
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Teradata Analytics Platform
A bit complex to use and implement, this platform integrates a diverse set of analytics systems and data formats into a single environment. The Teradata platform includes SQL engine with embedded analytic functions, a graph engine and a machine learning engine. This engine provides more than 100 pre-built analytic functions and the graph engine discovers the relationship between people, products and processes. The platform also enables the users to switch between interfaces and tools allowing them to choose the way they want to analyze the data.
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Sisense
This analytics tool uses a unique in-chip technology at the backend that enables all its users even the non-technical ones to analyze a large set of data from multiple sources. The frontend offers really simple data visualization tools, dashboard tools and embedded analytics. The core feature that differentiates Sisence from other tools available in the market is the ability to get customers to work with complex data sets easily.
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Splunk
Splunk’s core feature is that it specializes in analytics from machine data. It connects machine data and gives you insights into the opportunities and risks involved in the business. Not only this, but it also provides real-time end-to-end visibility into business processes, products performances, marketing campaigns and customer experience.
These were some of the best self-service tools which are benefiting the businesses and witnessing a growth in the number of connectors on daily basis.
