What Analytics Platform is Best for You?
It’s been a while since tech companies understood that having a good data strategy is the biggest competitive advantage. We have seen how all those tech companies are leading today’s economy and now everybody else wants to join the party. Is a fact that being able to gather data and make data-driven decisions based on it is the way to go for every kind of business.
For you to get there, you need to have a good tech stack to take care of your analytics pipeline and talented data experts to make the best use of those platforms. One of the things you will need in your stack is a data analytics platform. These platforms come in every shape and color and have gone from just visualizing data to executing deeper statistical analysis. This time I’m focusing on platforms with user interfaces were coding is not required. Here are some recommendations based on platforms I had played with and how could they fit depending on your needs.
You are a marketer that wants to measure your digital marketing efforts
The main thing here probably is to find a platform that has as many pre-built API connectors as possible and that uses as low code as possible since that’s usually not the main skill for a regular marketer. One of the big challenges in marketing analytics is to be able to have a 360 view of a marketing effort active in multiple digital channels and be able to attribute those executions to both online and offline conversions.
Recommendation: Datorama or Domo
Salesforce bought Datorama last year while Domo shook the tech landscape by claiming unicorn status after a 2 billion valuation before its IPO last year as well. Both have a huge amount of pre-connectors that most likely will cover most of your digital marketing needs and have good ways to receive data coming from other sources via email or FTP export. What is also cool about these tools is that they include an internal data storage solution that simplifies creating an analytics pipeline if you don’t have a data storage solution or don’t feel like you need one. Both of them also focus on the non-coding life, where anybody can make a lot without using any code. I prefer Datorama because of its overall better user interface, better-looking visualizations, and features, including lots of help from machine learning algorithms for data mapping and AI for campaign insights. In addition, I believe the road looks brighter for Datorama since being acquired by Salesforce, and many upgrades are already taking form. Still, you should evaluate both based on your needs and budget and make the best decision.
You are a big corporation with lots of 1st party data and 3rd party tools
The main thing here is to use a tool that can process big amounts of data coming from all areas of a corporation with queries that won’t take forever to finish. Is important that the platform has good service support since any problem here could be big and spread through the whole corporation.
Recommendation: Tableau or Power BI
These two are the main players in the big corporate world. Tableau is probably the most popular visualization tool in the market, been running since 2003, a time when big data and analytics weren’t the main topic in every business. They won a big market share until Microsoft and other companies started to get aggressive and look for ways to get a piece of the pie. So far, Microsoft, and its product Power BI, have done pretty well even passing Tableau in Gartner’s famous Magic Quadrant for BI tools. Now, is Power BI better than Tableau? I prefer Tableau since it has a better interface, more integrations with 3rd party tools, and better-looking dashboard results. Now it comes with a price since Microsoft will almost give Power BI for free if you are an Office 365 user or have any kind of corporate relationship with them, something that is very common in legacy corporations. You could notice some legacy vs younger clients when you check each other list, where Tableau’s list includes Spotify and Netflix while Power BI clients include Dell and Coca-Cola. Yet both tools are great at managing big amounts of data and running difficult queries without taking that long of a time and are very tight in side-by-side feature comparison.
You are a low-budget business, freelancer or just learning:
Sometimes you need to keep it simple. Maybe you don’t have the budget, the clients, or a big database to work with. Maybe you are just curious about data science in general or its good job opportunities. Maybe you are just a data nerd who wants to build visualizations and share them with the community via blog or other web space. Whatever fits you, there are free tools that are good enough to learn and get ready for whenever you hit the big time.
Recommendation: Google’s Data Studio or Tableau Public
Tableau has its free version that you can download and work with most of the features available in the premium version. Also, they probably have the best community and data viz gallery in the business. Some awesome people got great jobs just by sharing their work in Tableau’s forums. On the other hand, who doesn’t love Google products? They are so easy to use, and usually have a lot of integrations, not limited to Google tools. Data Studio has been upgraded frequently to the point that it’s been used in some digital ad agencies and small businesses. My prediction was that at some point Google would promote a premium version of Data Studio but they surprised me with the announcement of acquiring Looker, another good analytics tool that I haven’t used yet.
So there are a bunch of other tools, both premium and free, but these are the ones I have experience with. They all are becoming more similar and the no-coding UX is becoming more prevalent, something that we see happening in all things related to data since more users want to get into it, and usually not having coding skills is the biggest obstacle. AI-driven recommendations and machine learning help to clean data are also in high demand. So more tools and more data to play with will keep us all entertained and most importantly employed for a while. All good news so far.
