What is Qlik Sense?
What is Tableau?
13/08/2020
What is ThoughtSpot?
14/09/2020
Welcome back to our
BI-series!
Welcome back to our ABI-Tools series! This week we are excited to tell you a little about a veteran of the BI-tool Vendors. It was founded in Lund, Sweden over 26 years ago. We are talking about Qlik!
More specifically we will be talking about Qlik Sense, the product mentioned in the study, where Qlik was recognized by Gartner in its “Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms” as a leader-vendor.
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Let's start!
So what is Qlik Sense?
Qlik Sense is a complete data discovery and analytics platform. With its modern interface, users can model and manage data, create visualizations, layouts and stories. But, what is special about Qlik?
It has a one of a kind associative engine. According to Qlik: a query based approach to analysis (the one all the other vendors in this series use) limits the results to predefined and linear exploration within subsets of data. Its engine however, enables users to explore data in all directions.
That all sounds and is great, however, Gartner mentions the low market momentum in comparison to its competitors as something potential users should be cautious about.
QlikSense´s Dashboard
Let's go over some of its features to understand how it works.
- Connectors: In Qlik’s words:
“Connect and combine data from hundreds of data sources – from apps and databases to cloud services and more”.
Files, on-premise legacy and enterprise apps and all kinds of data sets are also on the Qlik’s repertoire of connectors. Some of these are for example SAS, Salesforce, Facebook insights, Snowflake, Oracle, JSON, SOAP, and XML. - Performance and data management: The drag and drop option speeds up the creation of visualizations and the AI that helps correlate and organize data sets saves a lot of time and effort. The associative insight feature prevents information to get lost, which could happen if only a query-based tool was available. Another advantage is that Qlik’s umbrella is wide and covers pretty much all the steps on the analytics life cycle, however, many of the products have to be purchased as stand-alone’s. Data literacy is also a big pro, helping non-analysts to get the most out of their data.
- Ease of learning: Qlik Sense’s learning curve is described as “slightly steeper” than Tableau’s ” (which, if you remember was also a bit more complicated than Power BI) in a direct comparison. The normal business person could probably start with the basics, however, the jump from there to the more advanced features that really make this tool great, is a long one. Nevertheless, It should be fairly easy to get a grasp of it for someone with a data science background.
- Price: There are two main products to choose from Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense Business Edition and Qlik Sense Enterprise. The first one costs $30 per user, per month (billed annually). It includes many of Qlik Sense’s features in addition to up to 5 shared spaces, associative and cognitive engines, and 250 GB cloud storage amongst other features. The version for enterprises is a multi-cloud edition, and it differentiates between Professional ($70 per user, per month) and Analyzer ( $40 per user, per month). The prices depend on the one you choose and are both billed annually.
We hope that you enjoyed, and that you can use this information while choosing the best BI-Tool for you and your business. Remember to always take what you read with a grain of salt and always consider your business's specific characteristics and needs!
Join us next week to find out about the last BI-Leader: ThoughtSpot!
Until the next time,
Your Statistance team!
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