#1 - Business Intelligence & Analysis Products Scan & Evaluation

This is the start of my blog for MIS 587 Business Intelligence course that I am taking at the Eller College of Management. This post will be the first of many others to follow every two weeks. This will certainly be different from my other blog (can be found at shiladityasahu.wordpress.com). It will be a fully technical blog and my biggest challenge will be to make it as easily understandable as I can to people who are not that familiar with Information Technology (IT). I will also be punctual with my posts (since my grades depend on it J).

In this post, I will be listing 5 Business Intelligence & Analysis products and do a weighted analysis based on 5 criteria.

So what actually is Business Intelligence?

So what is the meaning of this fancy term - 'Business Intelligence' or BI. Everyone talks about it but hardly anyone can define it. IBISWorld defines it as 'Computer-based techniques for identifying, extracting and analyzing business data, such as revenue by product or geography'. In more simpler terms, BI is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization's raw data. Raw data more often than not make no sense unless processed, analyzed and presented in a visual way (preferably). The processed data is called as information and can be viewed by senior management of an organization and help them make management decisions. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining (the process of extracting patterns from large data sets by combining methods from statistics, artificial intelligence and database management), online analytical processing, querying and reporting.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for BI & Analytics Platforms 2015

Gartner has made this Magic Quadrant for different Business Intelligence & Analytics Platforms. It has listed some core BI platforms and analyzed them based on 13 critical capabilities and use cases. Then, they have plotted each one of them on a graph where x-axis denotes completeness of vision and the y-axis denotes ability to execute. In doing so, Gartner has divided the entire graph into 4 quadrants namely Leaders, Challengers, Niche Players and Visionaries.

Magic Quadrant

As per the Magic Quadrant, Gartner recognizes the following as the best BI and Analytics Platforms available in the market - 

Tableau

Tableau Software produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence and analytics. Tableau's intuitive, visual-based data discovery capabilities have transformed business users' expectations about what they can discover in data and share without extensive skills or training with a BI platform. Users can use Tableau to create dashboards without much knowledge of BI or data warehousing.

Pros - 

• Ease of use
• High business benefits

Cons -

• Limited product line focused on data discovery
• Limited with very large scale enterprise data
• Limited advanced analytics capabilities

TIBCO Spotfire

TIBCO Software's BI platform cover a wide range of analytic capabilities. Spotfire is a leading data discovery and visualization tool which gives users the ability to access, combine, prepare and visualize data in the form of highly interactive analytic dashboards. 

Pros - 

• Cover a wide range of analytic use cases
• Ease of use

Cons - 

• Struggle with market positioning and sales execution
• Poor customer support

SAS

SAS Business Intelligence software provides the most comprehensive, integrated and easy-to-use reporting and analysis features. SAS visual analytics delivers interactive, self-service analytic capabilities at an enterprise level. SAS also leverages its range of platform components and expertise in various industries to offer a wide range of vertical- and domain-specific analytic applications.

Pros - 

• Excellent market understanding
• High functionality and product quality
• Meets the needs of a diverse set of use cases

Cons -

• High license cost
• Difficult in migration

Qlik

QlikView is a mature, self-contained, tightly integrated development platform used by IT or more technical users for building intuitive and interactive dashboard applications faster and easier than traditional BI platforms.

Pros -

• Ease of use
• Highly interactive dashboard development product

Cons-

• Dual product and pricing
• Does not offer production reporting

SAP

SAP delivers a wide range of BI and analytics tools. They mainly target large BI enterprises for decentralized data discovery deployments. SAP keeps on investing heavily on their BI products and that has enabled them to stay in the leaders quadrant.

Pros - 

• Continued investing in R&D
• Broad range of functionality

Cons -

• Poor customer service
• Predominantly used for large customer bases

Criteria for comparison

1. Ease of use - It is very important that a BI tool is easy to use and generate reports. There may be users who are not familiar with data warehousing and Business Intelligence and yest must be able to use the tool without much effort and trouble.
2. User support - The vendors must provide constant support to users. Often there are complex functionalities associated with these tools and if a user is unable to perform a function, he will need support. Good customer service is very important in deciding which is a better product over another.
3. Support for advanced analytics - Some BI tools support simple dashboards but others support advanced analytics and processing. This feature totally depends on the usage of the user but a very important factor for large enterprises.
4. Cloud support - With cloud storage being available in almost any technology solution, a product with ease of saving files into cloud storage will be more favorable among the users.
5. Cost - Cost goes a long way in deciding the BI product. It is always a balance between what features are needed and the cost associated with it. Its impossible to have all the features for the least cost but it is very important to provide competitive price in the market.

Weighted Analysis

Now we will do a weighted analysis on the above mentioned products based on the discussed criteria.

Criteria	Weight	Tableau	Spotfire	SAS	Qlik	SAP
Ease of Use	30%	10	9	7	10	7
User Support	12%	8	5	6	7	5
Advanced Analytics	20%	6	7	10	6	10
Cloud Support	15%	6	6	10	7	10
Cost	23%	9	8	5	7	5
Points	100%	8.13	7.44	7.47	7.7	7.35
Rank		1	4	3	2	5

As per the weighted analysis based on the above criteria, Tableau seems to be the best BI and Analytics tool mainly because of its easy to use, user-support and low cost. SAS and SAP though have Advanced Analytics support, they are also expensive and not easy to use. Most users will choose a product that is easier to use than which support advanced features and also costlier. Spotfire and Qlik are also easy to use tools but costlier than Tableau. In conclusion, Tableau is the best BI tool as per the above weighted criteria.

References

• IBISWorld - http://clients1.ibisworld.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/
• www.gartner.com
• Google
• Wikipedia
• Official websites of Tableau, TIBCO Spotfire, SAS, Qlik, SAP, etc.