Comparing the top 5 Business Intelligence tools

BI? What's the fuss about?

Business Intelligence is a concept of utilizing and integrating useful information available to analyze and derive meaningful insights and trends to better prepare businesses to adapt to changing industry trends. It has been one of the most sought-after techniques used by multiple industries to improve their decision-making process. Some of the major reasons for companies to invest into building a strong business intelligence system within their organizations are to get meaningful insights into consumer behavior, to improve efficiency using data, to improve visibility into product performances, to make use of data and converting it into actionable information etc.

Evaluating BI Analytics tools

Each organization has their own set of requirements for adopting a Business Intelligence tool that better meets the organizational goals. These Business Intelligence tools help organizations retrieve, analyze, alter, and report data that could help them keep up with the changing trends and identify new opportunities. The market is filled with plenty of these BI tools that cater to the growing need for analytics in every industry, making it difficult for companies to select the right tool to meet their BI needs. This blog will help organizations evaluate major BI tools via a selection criterion to identify the right tool for their business needs.

Okay, I get it. Now how do I choose the right tool?

Each organization in every industry will have their own set of business goals to achieve. The robustness of Business Intelligence tools provides organizations various opportunities to explore their data and improve their decision-making process to achieve these goals. However, organizations must follow a certain criterion to identify the right tool that fits into organization’s data environment to meet their business needs. The following is some basic criteria and a framework that will help organizations narrow down while selecting the right BI tool.

CRITERIA	WEIGHTAGE	PROD1	PROD2	PROD3	PROD4	PROD5
Product Capabilities	40%
Data Sources Supported	10%
Pricing	15%
Integration & Deployment	25%
Support Services	10%
POINTS
RANK

1. Product Capabilities: This criterion looks deep into the various product features offered by the Business Intelligence software tool. The granularity of data analysis and visualization required to meet the business needs are evaluated from the product capabilities. Some of the product features commonly offered by most of the BI tools are Analytics dashboards, Data collaboration, Mobile exploration, Interactive visualization, ETL (Extraction, Transformation, and Loading), Data Storage, Ease of Use, Advanced Analytics, Data Preparation, Security, Cloud compatibility etc. Each of the products might vary on each of these features under Product capabilities. The key here would be to identify the product features more required to meet the business needs. Hence, the weight of 40%.

2. Data Sources supported: One of the most important criteria is to identify the number of data sources supported by the BI tool. Each organization has its own data environments, some of the data sources often used by organizations include Oracle DB, Salesforce, QuickBooks, SAP Sybase, Excel, Azure DB etc. Although the major BI tools support almost all the data sources, it is very important for the organizations to identify if their data environment is supported by the BI tool and so we assign a weight of 10%.

3. Pricing: Another major concern for most organizations is the cost associated with the BI tools. So, we assign a weight of 15%. Some of the tools have a very flexible pricing structure that ensures that the tools are in the budget range for the organization, while the others have fixed price structure that acts as a roadblock for adoption by few organizations.

4. Integration and Deployment: With the growing technological advancements, organizations now have the freedom to choose from among various data architectures an option that better suits their business needs. It is very important for the BI tools to adapt to these diverse data environments. It is of vital importance for organizations to identify a tool that better integrates with their data environment and is also relatively easier to deploy and maintain. We weigh it higher than the other criterion at 25%.

5. Support Services: One of the common problems faced by many organizations in the current world is the lack of support services from vendor companies for the technology products adopted. This is even more challenging if the technology is relatively new and the company does not have a strong skill set to maintain it. Hence, it is very important to identify a vendor that provide a comprehensive support services and we assign a 10% weightage for the same.

Product Analysis

The recent Gartner report identified the following BI tools as major players in the Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform arena

Microsoft Power BI
Tableau
Qlik
Sisense
Alteryx

POWER BI

Power BI is one the most familiar and easy to use tools among the current set of BI tools. It is quite like Excel with an ability to develop user-friendly visuals. Although it has an extensive set of product capabilities, it still lacks a bit of predictive analysis and automatic schedule reporting. The core product features revolve around Datasets, Dashboards, and Report generation with additional features such as Navigation panel, help and feedback options, Office 365 launcher that provides seamless integration with Office 365 suite.

Power BI is a cloud-based solution that is very easy to deploy in organizations. It also is quite robust in adopting and integrating with diverse data environments. It supports a comprehensive list of data sources that could input the data directly into Power BI for analysis. All the users must do is to download the software and signup with the product key. The pricing structure is quite flexible with three options to choose depending on the organization's structure and requirements. One of the perks of Power BI is the advantage of an extensive support service offered by Microsoft. The backing of the big company has ensured that the customers are well-taken care off on the service front.

However, Power BI is still in the development phase and the users have faced certain issues with several key features that are important to the organization’s BI initiatives. Few such features that need more updates are the sharing function, publishing reports and associated data etc.

TABLEAU

Tableau is one of the most powerful BI tools that has a robust drill down into organizational data and its comprehensive visualization tool ensures that data is decoded for all types of users. It also has the strongest product capabilities among all the other BI tools. The core products are offered via desktop, server, and online (cloud). It posses some key features such as embedded dashboards, drag and drops data, comprehensive list of data connectors, mobile-oriented design, secure collaboration etc. It also has one of the huge customer base spread across all the industries.

Tableau is relatively complicated when it comes to deployment as it has a four-phase deployment regime. However, the product backs up the complication by offering a very customer four level comprehensive support service that not only offers extensive product support but also provides a very explainable QuickStart guide that makes the installation relatively easier. Tableau has a relatively flexible pricing model aimed at addressing the budgetary constraints of clients. This is one of the key reason for the massive adoption of Tableau across many industries.

However, the users have often complained about the steep learning curve for executives. It is also a relatively expensive solution for very small businesses, making it difficult for adoption.

QLIK

Qlik is the third biggest company in terms of customer base after Tableau and Power BI. It offers a unique inference engine that maintains data associations automatically. It also provides a google type search option to find data, to combine data, and to avoid dependency on IT support. In comparison to other, Qlik does not offer a comprehensive set of capabilities for a BI tool. It lacks in providing automatic schedule reporting, trend indicators, and online analytical processing (OLAP). But it does provide predictive analytics, customized dashboards, ad hoc reporting etc.

Qlik has a relatively complex deployment plan that stretches to three phases namely discovery, execution, and deployment stages. Although the personal edition is free, Qlik has a different price structure and it varies for companies depending on the requirement and feature use, making it customer focused pricing. Also, Qlik has different levels of customer service, the pricing for which is shared up front. It also offers a very extensive list of data sources that the tool can support. However, the product is deemed to be difficult to learn for non-tech users.

SISENSE

Sisense is one of the powerful solutions in the market that has the reputation for being the most user-friendly BI tool. It has a very fast implementation timeline with even faster time to data insights, making it a very attractive tool for a lot of industries. The tool focuses primarily on providing Ad hoc analysis, profit analysis, trend indicators, reporting, customizable dashboards. But the tool lacks in providing predictive insights and Online analytical processing (OLAP). One of the USP of the tool is that it is designed to handle any type of data and at any scale.

One of the biggest advantages of Sisense is its shorted deployment timeline. It starts with a trial period during after which the implementation of actual products takes very less time. It also has a very good customer care support and is ranked among the top customer satisfactory BI tools in the market. Sisense has dedicated support pages for all types of issues and concerns with the product. Sisense also is flexible with the pricing and is based on the feature set and size of the company. However, the major flipside to the tool is that it does not offer 3D graphs that are more visually appealing.

ALTERYX

Alteryx is one of the upcoming BI tools that focuses heavily on the four pillars the product is designed to address: data blending, predictive analytics, spatial analytics, and sharing insights. The tool boasts to have a very powerful engine that has a very strong product capability in the above-mentioned areas. The key focus areas include Ad hoc analysis, predictive analysis, spatial analysis, reporting, trend indicators, and customizable dashboards. However, it does lack in providing automatically scheduled reports and online analytical processing (OLAP). The USP of the product is its ability to provide actionable insights by seamlessly integrating data from multiple sources.

One of the downsides to Alteryx is the long and complex deployment timeline. The deployment happens over six sessions that need proper training from the vendor company. Also, Alteryx offers limited support and does not have 24*7 support service. It also has a rigid pricing structure where the price slabs are paid over annually, causing more upfront costs. However, it does provide an option to input data from a wide variety of data sources.

CRITERIA	WEIGHTAGE	POWER BI	TABLEAU	QLIK	SISENSE	ALTERYX
Product Capabilities	40%	8	9	7	8	8
Data Sources Supported	10%	9	9	9	8	8
Pricing	15%	8	9	8	8	8
Integration & Deployment	25%	9	8	8	9	7
Support Services	10%	9	9	8	9	7
POINTS		8.45	8.6	7.7	8.35	7.65
RANK		2	1	4	3	5

FINAL VERDICT

Although all of the BI tools have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, we believe that Tableau is a more robust, feature intensive, price conservative, and user-friendly product. However, each organization will have their own set of requirements that define the weightage used in the above framework, which will decide the tool they select. Having said that, if you are clueless as to where to start, we would definitely recommend Tableau over the others as a starting point.