Data analytics is an essential exercise as it helps businesses in several ways. For instance, by comprehending data analytics, companies can settle for informed decisions concerning where and how to allocate their resources and how to price their services and products. In addition, data analytics assist businesses in identifying trends and understanding their customer base. Data analytics software can analyze and track data, permitting one to create actionable dashboards and reports. They are software programs tailored to gather, organize and evaluate data. These tools are utilized in assessing business performance, and the outcomes are used in making decisions on improving business operations. This essay will compare and evaluate three main business analytic tools, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and IBM Watson and provide an incidence in which each can be used.
Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a business analytic tool tailored to assist a business in visualizing its data and getting insights that can improve the organization’s performance (What Is Power BI? What It Is, How It’s Used, and More, 2022). It is a collection of connectors, apps, and software services that operate together to turn business-unrelated data into visually immersive, interactive, and coherent insights. This tool offers an interactive dashboard and visual experience that allows the user to explore a data set more effectively. Power BI can utilize data in several forms including on-premises hybrid data warehouses, collection of cloud-based data and Excel spreadsheets. Microsoft Power BI also provides a set of tools for data preparation, for instance, data cleansing, transforming and merging, and data analysis and modeling. In addition, this tool, Microsoft Power BI provides several features for data visualization, for example, reports, maps and interactive visualization.
Microsoft Power BI is made up of several features which work together. Its three main parts include a Windows desktop app called Power BI Desktop, an onluine software called Power BI service and Power BI Moble apps for Android, iOS and Windows devices. This analytic tool is tailored to be used by business personnel with different levels of data knowledge.
IBM Watson
The second too, IBM Watson, is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform which offers a set of services for business analytics (What Is IBM Watson and Its Services, 2020). This tool utilises natural language processing to evaluate data and offer insights regarding market conditions, product trends and customer behavior. IBM Watson also provides tools for data preparation, for instance, data modelling and analysis. In addition, similar to the Power BI, Waatson gives a set of features for data visualization, such as reports maps, and interactive visualization.
Tableau
Tableau is a platform for data visualization that assists an organization to evaluate and understand its data (Ryan, 2019). This business analytic tool provides a set of features used for data preparation similar to the above-discussed tools. Tableau provides data analysis and modeling features, and data merging, transforming, and cleansing. The tool also offers a variety of analytic features for data visualization, such as reports, maps, and interactive visualizations.
When choosing a business analytic tool, one must consider the needs the organization has and the type of data that needs to be analyzed. Power BI is an effective tool for firms that are seeking insights into their data, as it offers a set of features for data visualization and data preparation. On the other hand, Watson is a great tool for a firm that need to evaluate customer behavior and market trends, as the articicial intelligence tool generates insights into such areas. Lastly, Tableau is a excellent tool for a firm that seeks to analyze and understand their data, as it offers a set of features for data visualization and preparation, just like Power BI.
IBM Watson is a powerful intelligence tool that can be used by businesses when they need to gain quick insights from a certain dataset (What Is IBM Watson and Its Services, 2020). This tool can also be used for predictive analytics, which enables an organization to identify patterns and trends in their data sets. In addition to that, the IBM Watson platform can be used when a firm wants to analyse unstructured data, for instance, images and text, to help making informed decisions. Watson is fit for that need ac complete control on what is essential to the firm and hence the foundation of the firm’s competitive advantage, data and models (Power BI Team, 2023). This tool can also be used in case the business wants to draw insight from less data, as the tool has a high learning power. IBM Watson is also fit for business incidences that need the discovery of new insights to predict the possible future outcomes. Although this tool is fast and does not require a lot of information to make predictions, Watson I only available in one language, English, a thing that limits its area of use. In addition to that, the tool does not process structured data directly and its maintenance is a big task.
Microsoft Power BI, being a tool of data visualization and analysis, it can be used to provide insights to a businesses’ components that do not require quick ones (What Is Power BI? What It Is, How It’s Used, and More, 2022). The tool can be utilized for both small and large datasets. The platform can be utilized in cases where a business needs to create dashboards and reports that represent data sets in several ways using visuals (Mihart, 2023). It can also be used in case where a business wants to connect various data resources, such as cloud-based data storage, onsite data warehouse, and Excel sheets and then converting them into business insights. The platform can also be used to turn business data into a broad range of different visuals, such as bar and column charts, decomposition trees, and KPIs. Additionally, the platform can be used to offer a business with wide access to data, data visualization tools and insight, so as to establish a data-driven work culture.
And lastly, Tableau can be a great choice for efficiently handling and storing large data sets (Ryan, 2019). The tool can also be utilized when the business wants to share quick insights with a group of people, as it accommodates a large number of users. This tool can be utilized in business cases which need insights to be drawn from multiple data sources and in a quick manner. This tool is also fit for sensitive data as it allows for user permissions, control data and dashboard in scalable and secure format both in the cloud and on-premise.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a number of business analytics tools, including Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and IBM Watson, are available to assist businesses in making knowledgeable decisions. Each of these tools has a special set of features that can be applied in various circumstances. Large data sets can be stored and handled effectively with Tableau, while dashboards and reports can be made with Microsoft Power BI. IBM Watson is a platform for artificial intelligence that can be used to analyze unstructured data or gain quick insights from a dataset. Each of these tools can be applied in various situations to assist businesses in making wiser decisions and learning from their data.
References
Mihart. (2023, February 22). What is Power BI? – Power BI. Microsoft.com. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/power-bi-overview
Power BI Team. (2023). Business analytics tools and why they matter. Microsoft.com; Microsoft. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/business-analytics-tools/
Ryan. (2019, March 4). Why Use Tableau? A Guide to Tableau Uses for Big Data Analysis and Viz. Datacrunchcorp.com. https://datacrunchcorp.com/tableau-uses-and-applications/#:~:text=Why%20Use%20Tableau%3F%201%20Bring%20multiple%20data%20sources,format%20both%20on-premise%20or%20in%20the%20cloud%20
What is IBM Watson and Its Services. (2020, July 2). GeeksforGeeks; GeeksforGeeks. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-ibm-watson-and-its-services/
What Is Power BI? What It Is, How It’s Used, and More. (2022). Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-power-bi