Not Familiar with the Term “Data Analytics?” After Reading This You Should Be

July 5, 2019 – Please welcome Nora Mork, a tech journalist who writes for Boom Essays and Australian help. This is her first contribution to 21st Century Tech Blog and focuses on the current state of data analytics and business intelligence tools available today and in the near future. You can read more of her writing at the Paper Fellows blog. 

In 2019 there are many data analytics or business intelligence (BI) software tools available for organizations, with many coming from companies that have been traditional information technology powerhouses. A number of new startups, however, are emerging to give these “old boys” a run for their money. So Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and SAP need to be looking in their rearview mirrors at the growing competition that offers in many cases free trials of software in a “try before you buy” strategy.

What does data analytics allow organizations to do? Mine the data they already have and the data they collect daily to create insights into how to improve their businesses. It means anyone working with data can become a problem solver by understanding what needs to be solved and finding the information already at his or her disposal.

The following briefly describes the newest movers and shakers in BI and data analytics and what they bring to the table. We call this group:

The Contenders

Use Alteryx for Data Cleaning

Data preparation, self-service, and data blending are three of the key competencies of Alteryx. One of the more commonly-used applications of the company is the software to clean data accessed from large data warehouses, spreadsheets, and the cloud. Alteryx provides a solution that is scalable and can be utilized on-premises or through the cloud. Its software is being used by financial services, healthcare providers, retail, logistics and transportation, oil and gas, and the public sector.

Use Birst for Adaptability

Birst provides a virtual BI presence that is interwoven with its clients’ actual data to rapidly unify different departments in an organization to produce useful insights and better data governance. Data from multiple database sources gets integrated quickly to create a single picture that can then be broken down to extract information and connect different pieces from on-premise or cloud sources to create the big picture.

Use Clicktale for Website-Interaction Data

If you are familiar with Google Analytics, then you can understand a little bit about what Clicktale does. Seen as Google Analytics key challenger, it uses behavioural analysis to create deep insights into key business activities. One such example is its path analysis, which in essence allows tracking of end-users’ paths to websites and what they do when on them.  

Use Domo for High-Level Interaction

Domo offers a real-time, holistic approach to data making an organization’s data sources accessible and useful for everyone within the business including partners and customers. Domo offers a mobile version compatible with both Android and iOS and comes with real-time alerts, drag-and-drop options, and interactive dashboards. It describes its offering in seven enterprise-scale systems for business decision making that include connecting, storing, preparing, visualizing, collaborating, predicting, and extending an organization’s data assets.

Use Looker for Advanced SQL Databases

Looker specializes in data discovery and has the ability to connect to relational SQL-built databases in order to extract relevant data for business needs. It enables employees to access data, ask relevant questions, and have the data presented in a fashion utilizing terms familiar and relevant to individual departments bypassing the need to have a data analytics specialist on the payroll. States Deepak Bloor, a marketing blogger at Bigassignments and Oxessays,  “This is an award-winning software solution and key components include advanced data scheduling and web integration.”

Use Oribi for Traffic

On its website, Oribi states, “Analytics is for analysts…Oribi is for everyone.” Described as another Google Analytics competitor, Oribi provides an array of analysis features to track information such as how existing and new users interact with the features of an organization’s website. It lets you know what is working and what is not. It tells you where your visitors arrive from, and what is driving their visit, providing behavioural analysis to help create high-level traffic and conversions from visitors to users or buyers.

Use Qlick for a Single Company View

Qlick is a long-established data analytics player most synonymously associated with its flagship Qlick Sense tool. The unique feature of this offering is its capability to round up all company data sources and deliver them in a single, easy-to-use dashboard. Qlick describes itself as providing users with a tool that allows them to get answers to the questions they ask, as well as explore the data to answer questions that have yet to come up. States Belinda Nightingale, a sales manager at Eliteassignmenthelp and Stateofwriting, “The associative engine uses in-memory to combine all of an organization’s library of data, ensuring that almost no stone is left unturned when a data search is run based on a query.”   

Use Sisense for Compelling Visualization

Sisense is an API (application program interface) tool that allows users to mashup their data and create their own analytics applications which they can embed anywhere in the organization. It uses Elasticubes, customizable data structures for data visualization, analysis, and dashboards. Its ecosystem is built upon multiple statistical tools which include regressions, correlation, and variance. There are also tools available as add-ons to upgrade and further customize dashboards depending on business needs.

Use Tableau for a Narrative

Tableau provides an offering that allows companies to collect data from multiple sources including Cloud Apps, Google Analytics, CRM (customer relationship management) tools like Salesforce, spreadsheets, SaaS, and SQL-style databases. Tableau focuses on creating a narrative story for all the data it collects, displaying it through interactive visualizations on a dashboard accessible by all departments, and by key business verticals in numerous industries. Available on-premises, or hosted in the cloud, Tableau includes mobile versions compatible with both Android and iOS systems. 

Use Yellowfin for Machine Learning Capabilities

If your objective is to allow key stakeholders to better understand the data your organization collects, then YellowFin is a great solution. The company was founded in 2003. Its end focus is knowledge that can be acted upon. It uses a host of features including machine learning. It is predictive to help with business strategy. And finally, it is fully integrated to allow for a host of data visualization options and includes customizable alerts configurable for select users.

And here are the offerings from the established information technology companies when it comes to BI and data analytics. We call this group:

The Establishment

Use IBM for Advanced Self-Service or Data Discovery

IBM unsurprisingly offers a comprehensive range of data analytics and BI tools, which can be broadly separated into two distinct solutions. Cognos Analytics is all about self-service and automation to create dashboards and reports, while Watson provides artificial intelligence (AI) to produce smart discovery data, which in effect allows users to collect data for analysis without the need for a data analytics specialist. It’s advanced data governance tools make perfect sense for deployment in large organizations where different employees are given different levels of access.

Use Microsoft for Cloud-Computing and Advanced Integration

Microsoft offers Power BI, a cloud-based data analytics tool. Truly multi-faceted, it combines self-service, integration and cloud-computing capabilities. Described by Microsoft as a business analytics service, it delivers insights to enable fast, informed decisions by transforming data into stunning visuals which can be shared on any device, a visual means of exploring and analyzing data, collaboration on shared, and customizable dashboards with interactive reports. Power BI can scale across any size organization and provides both built-in governance and security.

Use Oracle for Advanced Analytics

Established industry player Oracle offers two solutions: Business Intelligence 12c and Oracle Data Visualization. The former offers a more fundamental style of analytical tools. The latter provides a set of user-friendly applications such as drag-and-drop and familial graphs and other visual statistical tools. Oracle’s data discovery capabilities makes it suitable for big businesses operating in global markets.

Use SAP for Actionable Data

This SAP Business Intelligence Platform is available on the cloud or in-premises and specializes in gathering actionable data. With user-focused dashboards and data visualization tools, it offers a self-service solution and is an industry leader in providing easy-to-understand business data upon which to act for relevant departments and employees.

Conclusion

An impressive aspect of these BI and data analytics tools is their ability to end the need for many companies to hire specialists in the field. In bigger organizations, these are positions that add tremendous value but only where the budget allows for their hire. Smaller businesses often ask other employees to perform data analytics even though this is not an area of their expertise.

Fortunately, with these new software offerings providing incredible functionality, data and business intelligence analysis can now become something that is increasingly undertaken by non-experts and key stakeholders, allowing for an element of oversight of data which was previously unthinkable.

The tools are evolving and moving businesses into a new realm of data analysis with increasingly advanced options that are incorporating developments in AI and machine learning.