Excelling Headaches

O.K. Grammar folks, before jumping all over my headline, take a second to read the post – spoiler alert (!) it’s a pun on the article.

For someone who has recently gotten into analytics and tracking metrics, Excel is a great platform for keeping track and illustrating this data. However, as many will quickly notice, Excel often accelerates headaches (excelling headaches – get it now?). While Excel holds its own, it has become quite pedestrian compared to its counterparts specifically developed to filter, track and help illustrate data.

Here are four great data analytics tools, defined by Boost Labs, self-proclaimed as “data analysts, innovative coders, and clever designers.”

1. MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop. “MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop is a fast and user-friendly software for visual data analytics. Quick to download and install, this visualization software allows you to get to work quickly. Included sample data and pre-built interactive dashboards further serve to lower the learning curve.”
2. Domo. “Domo offers an online business intelligence tool that has a sleek UI and is specifically designed to allow users to build sophisticated dashboards with no IT involvement. Because the software is accessible online, Domo and the dashboards it creates, are available to your entire organization.”
3. Tableau. “Tableau offers a suite of tools that include an online, desktop and server version. All of these versions provide an easy-to-use drag and drop interface that can help you quickly turn your data into business insights. The online and server versions allow your entire team to build and work with the visualization tool.”
4. QlikView. “The QlikView business discovery platform is one of a few visual analytics tools offered by Qlik. QlikView can’t create the same elegant visualizations that the other tools offer, but the software’s dynamic model means that you can quickly analyze your data in multiple dimensions. In addition, QlikView is able to work off of data in memory instead of off your disk, allowing for real-time operational BI environments (like monitoring financial transactions).”

These four analytics tools are certain to take your spreadsheets to the next level and eliminate much of the challenges presented by working on and with Excel.

Stay tuned for what I define as the best analytics tool in my upcoming post! To read the full article by Boost Labs, click here.