BI platforms – Best providers / Usage

[Arthur]

Hi all,

I am looking for some recommendations regarding BI/Data visualization tools.

What is your recommendation considering features and price?

Also, how do you use it, what data? for which stakeholders?

Thank you

Arthur

Discussion

[Benoit]

Hi Arthur,

I have been using PowerBi (Microsoft), Data Studio (Google) and just starting with Quicksight (Amazon).

Power Bi is used for in-depth analysis of our sales (Millions of records and lot of information). PowerBi is very responsive, easy to load and very powerful when it comes to specific analysis. In one click all charts and tables update based on the information selected (eg. a portion of a pie chart, or …). It is easy to get started and can really do a lot. It is good to have someone in the team that knows DAX language to get the full potential of the tool. My team members learned it quickly. Alternatively there are lot of freelancers knowing how to create PowerBi reports.

PowerBi can also be used to access raw data as underlying data can be downloaded by the users in excel/CSV. This has proven very effective and it is how our team get access to raw data. Instead of asking finance/IT for different reports they can access very granular information directly from PowerBi, do there own filtering and download it (much cheaper than buying a new access to our ERP system).

Data studio is even easier to use. We use it mainly to display sales performance. From what I have seen it is more limited than PowerBi when it comes to dynamic analysis. As long as it is used for presentation and not analysis it will do the job. I personally don’t spend much time on our Datastudio reports as it is very slow (lagging during refresh). Datastudio connects easily with Gsheets. Ideal for basic presentation and beginners.

Both tools are inexpensive. I found a good comparison here: https://hevodata.com/learn/power-bi-vs-google-data-studio/#4

Regarding Amazon Quicksight it is a more sophisticated tool and it will be used to aggregate non homogenous data (lot more) from a lot of source. We will be using ETL tools. Engineer needed to implement.

Hope this helps,

Cheers