Power BI vs Sisense For Cloud Data Teams

Our researchers ranked products on a whole bunch of features. They include data management, querying and visualization, advanced and embedded analytics, mobile BI, and IoT and location analytics.In our rankings, Power BI scores 87 for connectivity, leaving behind Tableau, Oracle Analytics and Dundas BI. Robust Microsoft technology is one reason, for sure. Besides, intelligent techniques like DirectQuery and easy data modeling make it popular among users.In product reviews, some users mentioned a lag when sharing reports from the desktop to the cloud. For me, the platform was a tad slow to start, but otherwise, it stayed performant for my average-sized dataset.When dealing with sales data, total sales, the top-performing products, seasonality and period trends are common queries. Creating a sales KPI report in Power BI was an excellent way for me to answer them. My CSV files included sales, calendar, products and store data.Connecting to sources is straightforward with Get Data on the home screen and toolbar. Once I had pulled in the data, I clicked on Transform Data and opened the Power Query editor. It automatically detects the data type for strings and numbers but can get confused with dates and currency, which it marks as text. It involved some manual wrangling, but I had it sorted in no time. Read my article on KPI Reports to learn how I did it.But I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker as it’s not a tedious task. I had the same experience with Qlik Sense, but Tableau was way better as it recognizes seven data types — string, number, date, date and time, boolean, geographic and cluster values.Tracking sales over periods required a greater level of detail, so I added new columns to the calendar data — start of month and start of week. Column statistics were immensely helpful in identifying unique, distinct and null values and correcting incomplete records. Clicking on the number of products selling at a particular price allowed me to see which toys sold at that price.Creating a relational data model by defining primary keys is a manual process and seems dated once you’ve used Qlik Sense. Adding calculated measures is where DAX shows its magic. For data workers well-versed with SQL, DAX is a ready-to-go tool they’ll be glad to have in their corner.Creating visualizations wasn’t as intuitive as Tableau as it involved drag-and-drop onto the canvas, and frankly, I felt like I was flying blind. I didn’t feel that way with Tableau, and it’s slicker.Power BI offers a paintbrush tool that lets you define the layout, the card arrangement and the maximum number of cards. You can define the canvas settings, background and headers and determine the filter pane settings. It took me longer to create a dashboard from scratch than it took in Tableau.Some users found the pricing structure too complex. While using Azure data in Power BI for basic queries is free, costs can add up when you go for text and sentiment analysis. With Microsoft Fabric, the pricing complexity is set to rise. Though Power BI is available separately too, you’ll need to rely on Fabric to manage users, licenses and other administrative tasks.About 31% of the users mentioning cost complained about onboarding difficulties, possibly because DAX introduces the complexity of learning syntax. It can daunt non-technical users initially, but guided formulas can make the task easier. That said, I agree with the majority of user reviews that training will speed up onboarding and help your team maximize the investment.Overall, Power BI has many powerful features and will give you value for your money. If you’re not a Microsoft user yet, it’s worth checking out for the baked-in vendor technologies like Azure and SSAS. If you are an MS user, Power BI might be a no-brainer, though be prepared to shell out a little extra for advanced functionality and additional modules.

Sisense for Cloud Data Teams is a powerful BI tool that excels in the hands of data analysts with coding knowledge. These analysts will be able to model, manage, prepare, manipulate and analyze data with ease. As the platform supports SQL, Python and R programming languages, the sky's the limit when it comes to extensibility, development and coding support. The platform allows for strong collaboration within an organization, designed to alleviate the time-consuming burden of reporting and data visualization on IT teams while allowing business users to access insights on their own time. Most of the features are built around making the analytics team’s job easier, with reusable code, built-in collaboration and more. The support team earned universal praise from users who contacted them, citing their swift, in-depth and informative answers as immensely helpful in resolving any issues they had with the solution. In addition to hands-on support, a speedy implementation process ensures that customers can get the platform up and running in no time. We found that users’ opinions of the platform’s functionality and ease of use differed significantly based on their own roles; analysts generally praised its robust data visualization and data querying features, while decision-makers often found it hard to use, due to the SQL language barrier. SQL is necessary for most functions, and even though there is a visual query editor that attempts to make SQL more accessible, some users said that the platform doesn’t do enough in this regard. Overall, users did agree that the tool makes it easy to collaborate with each other to bridge that gap, with most of the analytics being done on the technical end, letting business users simply access those results. Still, it’s difficult to accurately call Sisense for Cloud Data Teams a self-service analytics tool, as it requires an IT or analyst team’s involvement to truly shine. Additionally, the cost can be prohibitive to smaller businesses. Overall, Sisense for Cloud Data Teams can be extremely powerful in the right hands - for those who know SQL and how to use it, it’s a dream for querying data and delivering analytics, but for those who don’t have the necessary IT resources, it could prove difficult to fully maximize the value of this data solution.