Are Qlik and Tableau really that much better?
Salesmanship, Sample Bias, or Just Great Solutions?
At Corsair’s Institute, we’ve been sponsoring an annual BI Madness competition for a while now. In 2016, we used the prior year’s Forrester Magic Quadrant. Our cover art is this year’s offering from Gartner, although we opted to go a slightly different route for 2017. But our experience seems to match what the big boys are saying — Qlik & Tableau are getting all the support.
You should checkout Gartner and/or Forrester to understand their process, but at Corsair’s we just promote some articles and listen to what our readers tell us. And what we hear seems to be in agreement. Note — Microsoft is among my favorite solutions as well, but their suite of products makes it difficult to point to a specific brand (we tried Power BI last year).
The Analyst In Me…
I have considered sampling bias and to some degree believe that Qlik aced Tableau last year because of the engagement of some of their evangelists. But that is just the thing, NONE of the other solutions we have tested were able to do that. And the crop of evangelists has been different from year to year — the solutions they like remain the same.
I have worked with Gartner and Forrester long enough to know that their process is not without its own bias (sorry guys). Arguably a strong user base and a solutions popularity should be part of any evaluation. If that base also creates powerful forums for additional education and support — well, it is hard to argue that is not a good thing, too. But I don’t doubt that popularity may overweight against actual value.
Even the community forums of both technologies spend time comparing them. There are some subtle differences in the language and timing, but each community is robust and responsive.
In fairness, other solutions have communities, too. Domo calls their’s the Dojo and gives people belts. Looker has Discourse. Many also support Google Groups (if you can dig past the job postings) and have content on Github and other resources.
Sales & Advertising
Type Business Intelligence into a search engine and you will join over a million people per month who are doing the same. You will also be inundated with advertising, expensive advertising. How expensive? Google Adwords bids typically run between $1–2, today’s starting bid for Business Intelligence $11.45 (that is per click). Worse still, there will be at least 6 paid ads on page one of the results!
All the major players will be represented, that (of course) is what is driving the price so high. So it is not online branding… per se.
Most of the big players also host mega-conferences. Domopalooza is next week. Qonnections is this May. And SAP’s was at the end of February, so you will need to wait until next year. Not all of our Top 8 or Gartner’s list for that matter have big conferences, but most do and so it is hard to say that is much of a driver.
Behavioral Bias
Maybe it is a question of free time? Lots of major companies have a Qlik or Tableau license (many have both). Whereas, my experience with Looker and Domo has come at tiny start-ups. Maybe Qlik & Tableau users just have more time to share? More time to provide feedback to 3rd parties like Forrester & Gartner? Or maybe that is a stretch?
Popularity or Value
Success in business comes at the intersection of popularity and value. Having a great product is not enough. Further, in a dynamic space like Business Intelligence, you can’t stay great unless you achieve enough popularity to reinvest in your offering.
By many views, anyone’s preferred BI tool is going to be a subjective function. So whether you opt to trust the crowd or blaze your own path is up to you. But if you want to get a sense of what others are saying or what to express your own view on which solution you prefer — come join the Madness.
We also explored this topic recently on Quora:
We’ll be waiting. And thanks for reading!
