As more business organisations transition from non-data-driven to data-driven, the importance of data analytics tools becomes more paramount. As a result, the last two years have seen increased growth in data literacy, adoption and business analytics tools. However, the need for business analytics tools predates recent times; it goes as far back as our cave ancestors; explore The evolution of business analytics tools.
The growth of business analytics tools has not been without pros and cons. There is an overwhelming variety to choose from and a lot of factors, such as functionality, ease of use, pricing, customer support, and skill level. Therefore, we evaluated five different business analytics tools based on these factors and more. Here are the tools we covered;
Methodology for evaluation
The ‘Support impression’ is based on the response time, resourcefulness and availability of support. While the ‘Skill Level Required’ is evaluated based on the skill level of a citizen data analyst. Finally, ‘Functionality’ is based on the number of features and how well they work for their intended purpose.
Databox
Support Impression: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐
Functionality: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Skill level required: Intermediate
Pros:
- Quick onboarding and implementation services
- Query builder - calculate metrics and ROI from multiple sources without coding
- Real-time live reporting
- 24/7 technical support via live chat
Cons:
- Formulas do not work universally. i.e. Timesheet doesn't calculate in hours or minutes.
- Its UI takes some getting used to
- No pre-processing of data on its platform
Databox offers a single platform that connects to 70+ integrations, SQL databases, and APIs with a single click, combing metrics from various data sources on a single real-time dashboard. So — for example, combining your Google Ads data with your deals data in HubSpot on a single table as a live report to track performance at a keyword or campaign level. Its key features include:
Databox also offers a free analytics course - Predictable Performance Training Course.
Google Data Studio
Support Impression: ⭐
Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Functionality: ⭐⭐⭐
Skill level required: Great for Beginners
Pros:
- Great user experience
- Beginner-friendly
- Easy-to-use web interface
- A lot of online resources for learning and technical issues
- It's FREE!
Cons:
- It's slow in rendering data - it's slow in displaying its visualisations
- Paid connectors that amount to extra expenses
- No HubSpot integration
- Limited, conditional formatting rules
- Limited platform capabilities
- Poor customer support
Google Data Studio evolved from ‘Dashboards’ in Google analytics to a stand-alone application with a broad array of templates and COMMUNITY CONNECTORS (community-developed connectors that enable access to various data sources); it's almost too good to be free.
Its BLEND feature lets you use a join operator to combine data from two or more sources. You can then use the combined data to perform calculations using one of its many FUNCTIONS - custom calculations such as Clicks to Deals Won, Cost Per Deals Won and more.
What's more, Its EXPLORER feature lets you get insights from your data using a single click without writing SQL queries. But it’s not without limitations; for example, it has no native HubSpot integration at the time of this writing.
Whatagraph
Support Impression: ⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Functionality: ⭐⭐
Skill level required: Great for beginners
Pros:
- Great UI/UX
- Real-time live reporting
- Responsive chat-based technical support
Cons:
- Design limitation that won't allow multi-channel formulas in a table.
- A limited number of integrations
- Slow data loading speed
Whatgraph embodies ease-of-use and an overall excellent user experience which translates to less time spent on creating reports. It's CROSS-CHANNEL REPORTING; let's create reports from various data sources, campaigns, or accounts in a single report. It also offers a variety of marketing report templates for different categories, such as analytics, paid advertising, search and more. Finally, take the hassle out of delivering your reports by using Whatgraph’s AUTOMATE YOUR REPORT feature to schedule your reports for different time intervals. However, it is not smooth sailing as Whatagraph is a growing tool. It doesn’t currently have a feature that lets you present custom metrics from various data sources on a single table - HubSpot deals + Google Ads custom metrics such as Clicks To Deal Opened, for example.
Domo
Support Impression: ⭐⭐⭐
Ease of Use: ⭐⭐
Functionality: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Skilled Level Required: SQL
Pros:
- Data pre-processing on the platform - allows for data cleaning and wrangling.
- Data flows between the data source and the platform, letting you write data back to source systems.
- Powerful drag-and-drop Extract Transform Load for extracting, processing data and loading into databases, warehouses and data lakes.
Cons:
- Requires some level of basic SQL for its calculations
- Google ads connector has been discontinued due to recent changes in Google’s API, and the other is in Beta.
- Google Ads via Google Bigquery service requires a ‘service account key JSON.’
- Buggy integration process.
Domo is a powerful business intelligence and analytics tool for creating real-time dashboards and reports. It is head and shoulders above the other tools in this article regarding features and functionality.
For example, its LOW-CODE APP PLATFORM enables citizen developers to create data applications for business solutions.
Another feature that stands out is its ability to pre-process data and also write it back to its source - an excellent feature for data processes like data enrichment. Lastly, its DRAG AND DROP ETL simplifies what can be a tedious task - a time-saving benefit.
But just like the other business analytics tools, Domo has drawbacks; for instance, it requires technical expertise for some of its essential functions, such as calculations.
Klipfolio
Functionality: ⭐⭐⭐
Skill level required: Great for beginners
Pros:
- PowerMetric makes importing your data and modifying it easy for anyone.
- Great UI/UX
- MetricHQ - a community focused on education and foundational knowledge that you can use to guide your data-driven decisions.
- Mobile app
Cons:
- The free account permits only five dimensions
- A data source limit of 10MB is a limitation for Excel/CSV files
- Restricted options for changing the elements on charts
Klipfolio is a lightweight business intelligence and dashboarding tool founded in 2001. Years of experience have inspired their clean design philosophy. This philosophy has translated to a product that has a great UI/UX, making it easier to create dashboards that guide business decisions.
Products like PowerMetrics and Klips offer great features and functionality.
PowerMetrics provides vital pre-built marketing, sales, finance metrics and more. First, making it easier to gain valuable insights from pre-processed data using its ADVANCED DATA PREP & MODELLING tools.
Then, delve deeper into your data using its powerful filters and segmentation tools and further explore your metrics using various clean design visualisations. Learn more about PowerMetrics here.
Klips offers the ability to harness the power of customisable visualisations entirely using the Klip Editor. Learn about Klips and how it can simplify your visualisation creating process here.
Conclusion
Choosing the right business analytics tool can be the difference between an increase in revenue growth, an increase in employee performance and efficiency, better customer acquisition and retention and more efficient decision making.
If getting all your data from various sources in one platform to see your performance at its most granular level is your priority, Databox should be your go-to tool.
For those familiar with the Google Workspace applications such as Google Docs and Sheets, Google Data Studio has a similar user experience, plus it's a FREE, very powerful business analytics tool. The RevOps Automated team can help you to build custom templates and automation to integrate GDS directly with your HubSpot instance.
A beginner-friendly easy-to-use business analytics tool that connects to most of the popular CRMs, paid ads platforms, and accounting software packages, Whatagraph and Klipfolio will be a good fit.
More advanced users with needs that involve on-platform data preprocessing, bi-directional data flow and other business analytics tool features to harness the power of Domo for dashboards and reports that will guide your data-backed business decisions. Get the best out of your data.
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