{"id":872,"date":"2020-01-03T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T16:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousetechgroup.com\/?p=872"},"modified":"2021-05-20T11:06:39","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T15:06:39","slug":"data-visualization-tools-our-top-5-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousetechgroup.com\/data-visualization-tools-our-top-5-picks\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Visualization Tools: Our Top 5 Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Data visualization tools or software play a vital role in enabling organizations to leverage the power of visual data and unlock value from the vast amount of data that\u2019s generated. While some data visualization tools are standalone, others are integrated into a Business Intelligence (BI) platform. If you require advanced BI functionalities such as predictive analytics or forecasting, then you may consider a BI solution. Such a solution will typically include data visualization, as well as analytics, reporting and other functionalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What should you look for when you evaluate data visualization tools? The following list will help you to define your own evaluation criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tool should have functionalities to represent all kinds of data effectively. A good data visualization tool is intuitive and powerful enough for many different use cases.
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Will the users in your organizations be data science experts or general business users? Will there be a small group of people who can go through a fair amount of training, or do you want the tool to be easily used by many people after just a little training? While some have steep learning curves, there are many other good data visualization tools that have sufficiently simplified interfaces so that users aren\u2019t required to have advanced technical skills.
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How will the data visualization tool integrate into your existing systems and workflows? How will it collect data from various sources, business systems and apps, and deliver visualizations to the stakeholders in the form and on the devices they need? Ideally, it should be possible to integrate the data visualization tool into your existing systems and workflows easily.
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A very important consideration today is whether you require reports for mobiles. Do you plan to work extensively with visualizations on mobile devices? If yes, then you need to evaluate how well your available choices deliver on this ability.
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If tracking trends is important for your business, then the data visualization tools should have strong trend tracking functionality.
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Security and access control capabilities, ensuring that your data is secure and only available to authorized persons, are extremely important as well.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
After reviewing some market-leading data visualization tools, we\u2019ve listed our 5 top choices below:
1. Tableau<\/strong>: The Tableau platform is a set of analysis and data visualization tools popular with medium to large enterprises. Tableau has 67 native data connectors that make it convenient to collect data from multiple sources — such as databases, spreadsheets, cloud apps like Google Analytics or Salesforce — and create your data set. Tableau enables the sharing of data between desktop and mobile devices very easily, as well as setting access rights for different collaborators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tableau allows users to select from several different approaches and create a unique data analysis system. The live visual analytics and interactive dashboard capabilities of Tableau enable users to slice and dice data and arrive at deeper insights. This means that a user can create or analyze a dashboard when in discovery mode, and unearth more insights from the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tableau helps to create interactive maps for analysis across regions and territories. Many users leverage the capabilities of Tableau to weave a data story or a sequence of visualizations. Organizations have customized Tableau to meet industry-specific requirements in banking, education, healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom Tableau.com, sample dashboard for PepsiCo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Tableau has been ranked as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for seven consecutive years. Salesforce acquired Tableau in 2019 in order to integrate its analytics and visualization offerings across the Salesforce suite. Some experts believe that Tableau is better suited for data analysts than general business users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Microsoft Power BI: <\/strong>Power BI from Microsoft is a web-based business analytics and data visualization platform that helps to easily analyze, transform, visualize and share data. Power BI is well suited to general business users looking to leverage analytics and data visualization. Power BI collates data from organizational systems and apps, and offers unlimited access to onsite as well as data on the cloud, enabling the creation of a centralized data hub. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Power BI is designed to create data visualizations faster, and it allows general business users to get powerful data analytics and discovery without prior technical knowledge. The real-time data access of Power BI enables users to respond to business changes coming from CRM, project management, sales, and financial tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSample visualization from <\/em>https:\/\/powerbi.microsoft.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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