What is Business Analytics?
Business intelligence, or BI, is a field devoted to optimizing services and software to help find actionable insights within data. The insights gleaned from the data can then be used to help a company or business make important decisions about operations or future endeavors. Those working in BI optimize tools that allow them to transform the results of data analyses into reports, dashboards, graphs, charts, maps, or summaries that are designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of affairs at the company.
Business analytics is a subset of business intelligence. It is involved with using methods such as predictive analytics, statistical analysis, and data mining to find useful information in large datasets. This information is helpful for identifying and predicting trends and various outcomes, and provides business owners with a powerful tool for making better business decisions.
Most business analytic endeavors involve the use of descriptive analytics (looking at historical data to decide how to respond to variables), predictive analytics (using historical data to forecast the probability of various future outcomes), or prescriptive analytics (providing users with answers to what will happen, when it will happen, and why it will happen). By using cutting-edge business analytics software platforms and solutions, large datasets can be used to store, process, and analyze this information to help businesses operate more economically and efficiently.
Here are some of the ways companies leverage BI software, technologies, and tools to help with their data analytic needs:
- Predictions: Forecast engines enable those within a business to locate insights that will help them make predictions about future scenarios. These engines are a powerful tool that help an organization get the most out of its currently used strategies to yield the most helpful results.
- Streamlined data access: When all individuals in a company have access to the same data, this reduces the time spent waiting on the IT department to provide reports. By using self-service data analytics, those within an organization can cut down on the time spent on exchanging reports and devote their efforts to more important tasks.
- Automation: BI tools no longer rely on spreadsheets or static presentations. By introducing automation capabilities, those working with data don’t have to work with copious numbers of columns and rows. Automation eliminates manual tasks, which can help save valuable time, resources, and money for an organization.
- Cost reduction: When a company uses BI tools, they are able to perform many tasks much faster than they would without these tools. BI tools make it possible to execute faster analysis, planning, and reporting, all of which lead to a more efficient, profitable outcome.
This article will explore two leading BI tools, Qlik and Microsoft Power BI, to see which is the better option for your data analytic and visualization needs.
What is Qlik?
Qlik is a business intelligence tool and analytics platform that’s used for data analytics and integration, and the process of transforming raw data into valuable knowledge. It was founded in 1993 in Sweden but now operates out of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. This complete data analytics platform includes an associative analytics engine, a high-performing cloud platform, and cutting-edge AI capabilities. It allows users to transform raw data into actionable outcomes so that organizations can make better business decisions. In addition, Qlik’s ad hoc query tools provide quick decision-making options based on easily accessible information.
Qlik has many helpful features such as:
- Largely automated data association
- Fast speed of operation and implementation
- Data compression capabilities
- Secure workspace
- Consistent reporting
- Multiple kinds of data representations
Over 50,000 companies and educational providers around the world such as BP, PayPal, Deloitte, and the University of Virginia, use Qlik for data analysis and visualization.
Qlik Products
There are several Qlik products currently available:
- QlikView is a classic analytics solution with an associative engine that has transformed the way businesses manage data. It incorporates intuitive visual discovery so that more people can have access to business intelligence insights.
- Qlik Sense optimizes associative technology, which helps users to perform lightning-fast calculations, which are in context, at scale.
- Qlik Replicate (formerly Attunity Replicate) provides businesses with a way to speed up the data replication process. It allows users to securely, efficiently, and easily move data while causing minimal operating impact.
Pros & Cons of Using Qlik for Data Analytics
Pros:
- Because Qlik Sense is centrally managed, business logic solutions can be reused. When creating their own dashboards, users are able to draw from governed data and secure libraries.
- QlikView is easy to implement. The software doesn’t require a lot of technical supervision or maintenance.
- QlikView optimizes an in-memory system that is efficient enough to cater to as many clients as needed without slowing down.
- Those using QlikView are assured that their data is safe and will not be a part of a security breach.
- New source tables can be easily added to tasks in Qlik Replicate.
- Qlik Replicate is considered to be very stable; it does not suffer from many failures or alerts that require troubleshooting to solve.
Cons
- Because Qlik lacks some basic charts, it has limited visualization capabilities.
- Qlik Sense’s capability to extract data is inflexible.
- When working with extremely large datasets, data solutions can be sluggish.
- The pricing model in Qlik Sense involves tokens, and some users find this complicated.
- Working in the analysis mode of Qlik requires more memory space than is usual, which can slow down operations and cause the app to malfunction.
- Because QlikView has a distinct appearance, integrating or embedding it with other software may prove to be difficult.
What is Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is a collection of business analytics services that enables users to create data visualizations that can be shared within organizations or on websites. This suite of architectures, technologies, processes, reporting, and data visualization products can be used to extract meaningful information from raw data.
Power BI is simple to set up. It has a clear and easy-to-use interface with which users can design their own dashboards and reports. Those who wish to upload visualizations or reports can easily share them with others using the Power BI service, which has the added perk of refreshing their data each time there’s an update to the underlying dataset. Because Power BI was constructed using Microsoft Excel as a foundation, those who are familiar with Excel can easily transition to using Power BI.
Power BI has many cloud-based services and apps that are designed for managing, collating, and analyzing data. After data is processed in Power BI, insights can be gleaned, and charts and graphs of the information can be created to convey a visual snapshot of what is happening at a business.
In addition, those working with Power BI have access to powerful AI capacities. They can use image recognition, design machine learning models, perform text analytics, and even integrate with Azure machine learning. In addition, Power BI provides users with the ability to customize app navigation using the “app navigation experiences” feature, as well as to tailor security features to their needs to ensure their information is kept safe and private.
Power BI Products
There are currently three versions of Microsoft Power BI: Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro, and Power BI Premium:
- Power BI Desktop is a free service that can be installed onto a computer or local system, and then used to access the basic Power BI features. Power BI Desktop can connect to over 70 data sources, perform data analysis, publish results online, and export information to Excel.
- Power BI Pro is the full version of Power BI. It’s able to create and share data, reports, and dashboards with others who have a Power BI Pro license.
- Power BI Premium allows an organization to purchase a Premium Workshopace for various users, which can host datasets up to 50GB, in addition to a 100 TB in the cloud. There are three Premium capacity sizes; each offers a different memory size.
Pros & Cons of Using Power BI for Data Analytics
Pros:
- Real-time dashboard updates: Any dashboard or visual that was created using Power BI can update visuals and data in real-time and display it immediately.
- Fast deployment: Power BI deployment pipelines are a feature of Power BI Premium and enable users to quickly deliver updates to content, cut down on errors, and ultimately increase productivity.
- Secure environment: A reliable connection to data sources on-premises or in the cloud is provided.
- Hybrid configuration: This unique and helpful tool can be used to incorporate hybrid solutions for on-premises data structures while only report and dashboard definitions are deployed.
- Natural language query: Normal terms in a user’s language are used to explore data, which means that there’s no need for a special format or syntax.
- Built-in machine learning features: Dataflows that are hosted on Power BI and Premium include automated machine learning capabilities.
- Powerful visualization templates: Users can transform enterprise data into visual representations that can be used for more informed decision making.
- Sharing capacity: Power BI fosters collaboration. Users can share reports and dashboards with other Power BI users in their organization, as well as those outside their organization.
Cons
- Congested user interface
- Limited data sharing options
- Difficult to understand, even harder to master
- Inability to print from Power BI Desktop
- Rigid formulas
The Bottom Line
As this article indicates, both Qlik and Microsoft Power BI provide powerful, useful data analytics and visualization solutions. But when comparing Qlik Sense and Power BI head-on, which comes out ahead?
- Interactive dashboards: Because Qlik has an associative data engine that uses machine learning to improve over time, users are able to explore data from every angle and gain new ideas. On the other hand, Power BI’s SQL database requires that users adhere to specific paths and work with limited data. Therefore, in terms of dashboards, Qlik comes out ahead.
- Data visualizations: Power BI offers many options for interactive data visualizations, but their dashboards preselect query paths, which means exploring can be restricted. Qlik can compress huge datasets, indicate the data’s shape, spot outliers, and even offer AI assistance for chart creation and data preparation. It also allows users to explore data in a full suite of interactive visualizations. So, for data visualization, Qlik also comes out ahead.
- Cost: Although Power BI seems low-cost at first, it requires that users pay for upgrades even for moderate up-scales. Qlik does not have hidden or extra costs as users scale, which means that in terms of price point, Qlik’s total ownership cost is lower than Power BI.
Therefore, if you want a tool that can create stunning visualizations for a lower overall cost, Qlik is a better option than Power BI.
Hands-On Business Intelligence & Data Analytics Classes
For those who want to learn more about how to process and analyze big data, Noble Desktop’s data analytics classes are a great starting point. Courses are offered in New York City, as well as in the live online format in topics like Excel, Python, data science, and data analytics technologies, among others.
In addition, more than 130 live online data analytics courses are also available in data analytics and visualization from top providers. Topics offered include FinTech, Excel for Business, and Tableau, among others. Courses range from three hours to six months and cost from $219 to $27,500.
There are also live online Power BI classes currently available for those looking to specialize in this intelligence platform. These interactive classes are taught in real-time and provide all learners with access to an instructor who is teaching live (in-person and online) and is ready to provide feedback and answer questions.
For those who want to learn how to create dynamic data visualizations for business reports, Noble Desktop’s Power BI Bootcamp is for you. This class is available in-person in NYC, as well as in the live online format. It teaches participants such skills as how to use a single relational model when connecting to multiple data sources, how to create comprehensive time intelligence reports, and how to work with Power Query.
Additionally, Noble’s Data Analytics Classes Near Me tool provides an easy way to locate and browse approximately 400 data analytics classes currently offered in in-person and live online formats. Course lengths vary from three hours to 36 weeks and cost $119-$27,500.