Hello Folks,
The BI and Analytics market is currently going through a
major shift. More and more number of business users want to use interactive
methods for analysis. However, these users have very limited knowledge about IT
or data analysis. This blog compares the various tools available in the market
with the key points of comparison being ease of use and learning and dependence
on data analysis skills. By the end of this blog, you will have a fair idea as
to which tool best suits your skills and needs.
According to the Gartner report, following is the graphical
representation of products in the Business Intelligence and Analytics domain.
As we can see, some products are leading in the ability to
execute while some have great vision. Let’s select 5 products that combine the
best of both parameters.
1. Tableau:
Tableau is the leading tool with regards to its ease of use and providing
excellent visualizations. It has a large customer base and is growing
exponentially. However, it has made limited progress as far as integration with
other tools is concerned.
2. SAS:
The highlight of SAS tool is its ability to integrate with a wide range of BI
tools and its integrated products like SAS Office Analytics, SAS Visual
Analytics and SAS BI/Enterprise BI Server (EBI). Some concerns are its high
license cost, usability and business benefits.
3. SAP:
It is the enterprise standard as far as BI is concerned because of its product
capabilities. However, user experience and business understanding are some of
the areas where it can improve.
4. Qlik:
This tool has a highly interactive dashboard and is one of the top tools with
respect to ease of use. Qlik is comparatively a new platform and does not have
any production reporting as of now.
5. MicroStrategy:
It is an end-to-end platform majorly used for large and complex systems.
Another advantage is its mobile capabilities. The development environment is flexible
but it lacks behind in the ease of learning.
Now that we know some strengths and weaknesses of each of
the BI tools, let us compare them with each other based on the some key criteria
as follows:
1. Reports and
Data Visualization: The main function of any BI tool is to provide
efficient reporting through effective data visualizations that will make it
easy for the end user to understand it. Data visualizations are achieved
through a variety of ways including graphs, pie charts, histograms, scatter
plot, and more advanced features like plotting on map and a combination of any
features mentioned. Reporting involves making efficient use of the
visualization techniques.
2. Usability
and Dashboards: This is one of the most important features of any tool. The
ease of use is very important from the point of view of the end user,
especially for those who have little or no knowledge of data analytics. One of
the ways to achieve this is with the help of efficient dashboards.
3. Cost
benefit: Accept it or not, money always matters. One cannot intend to buy a
product at a high cost if it does not provide comparative business advantages. Cost
includes the initial cost for the license of the product and the maintenance
cost.
4. Integration
with other tools: Being able to use the features of some other tools
greatly impacts the reporting. Hence, integration with other tools is important
as we can combine the pros of both and this also helps the reporting to be
flexible.
5. Large Scale:
Whether a tool is designed for large scale use or not is also an important
factor. The choice of a tool is greatly influenced by this factor as we would
need to know beforehand if it is capable of processing large data sets.
Now, let’s do a weighted score analysis of all the selected tools against these features to better understand where they stand with respect to each other.
Metrics/Tools
|
Weight
|
Tableau
|
SAS
|
SAP
|
Qlik
|
MicroStrategy
|
Reports
and Data Visualization
|
30%
|
9
|
9
|
8
|
9
|
8
|
Usability
and Dashboards
|
25%
|
10
|
9
|
8
|
9
|
7
|
Cost
benefit
|
20%
|
9
|
8
|
8
|
9
|
9
|
Integration
|
15%
|
8
|
10
|
9
|
7
|
9
|
Large
Scale
|
10%
|
9
|
9
|
10
|
8
|
10
|
Total
points
|
100%
|
9.1
|
8.95
|
8.35
|
8.6
|
8.3
|
Rank
|
1
|
2
|
4
|
3
|
5
|
The weighted scoring model tells us a lot about the
efficiency of a tool with respect to any particular feature as compared to
other tools. Let’s have a closer look at these tools and the metrics they were
compared against and understand why a particular score is awarded to a tool.
1. Reports
and Data Visualization: Tableau, SAS and Qlik are leading in this section.
As seen from the Gartner’s quadrant, Tableau has a strong lead in the Ability
to Execute axis. Its reports are intuitive and easy to understand. SAS offers
innovative visualizations using powerful in-memory processing capabilities.
Furthermore, SAS Visual Analytics is a flagship product which delivers
interactive reports.
2. Usability
and Dashboards: Tableau ranks number one in this department. It has the
best and the easiest to use dashboard that can help people create effective
reports. Tableau is followed by SAS and Qlik with scores of 9 each. Qlik gives
the user to build their own dashboards while IT is given the ability to govern,
manage, scale and embed them.
3. Cost
benefit: Tableau is ranked among the top when the cost to business benefit
ratio is calculated. Qlik is comparatively new in the market and hence it is
low cost but provides great business benefits. MicroStrategy is an industry
benchmark for large BI deployments and hence its cost benefit ratio is quite
high.
4. Integration:
SAS, SAP and MicroStrategy are the leaders here. SAS has a wide range of
products within itself such as SAS Visual Analytics, SAS Office Analytics and
SAS BI. SAP products like SAP Lumira can be integrated SAP BusinessObjects
Enterprise. With the recent big data related enhancements, MicroStrategy has
come up with Prime, a scalable multiterabyte in-memory engine developed with
Facebook and direct Hadoop connectivity.
5. Large
Scale: MicroStrategy and SAP score full points here. MicroStrategy is an
end-to-end BI platform that is designed to handle large and complex data sets.
SAP BusinessObjects BI tool is chiefly used for large customer deployments.
Based on this analysis and the total score, Tableau comes at
the top and it is safe to assume that Tableau has the best mix of features
compared to the other BI tools as far as the above mentioned metrics are
concerned.
References:
6.
http://www.docurated.com/all-things-productivity/50-best-business-intelligence-tools
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