If updating and revising your fleet of business apps isn’t on your annual housekeeping schedule, it should be. Business apps are becoming increasingly important to most companies, and now, in an era of distributed teams, they are more vital than ever.
However, Work from Anywhere culture isn’t the only driver of the business apps category; sitting firmly alongside is data analytics. Today, every company that hopes to gain the upper hand over its competitors must take a data-first approach.
Yet, even though many business apps include analytics functions, companies must invest in a dedicated data analytics app to really gain a competitive advantage. This article will run through what I consider the best data analytics apps in 2022.
1. Zoho Analytics: Turn Raw Data into Insightful Analytics
Zoho is business app royalty. The company produces many high-quality apps for every aspect of business operations, from sales and marketing to word processing. And the platform’s analytics application is superb.
Zoho Analytics is a comprehensive platform that enables users to manage and analyze data at every stage. Users can ingest, catalog, and prepare data for analysis, ensuring quality before using it for any business decisions.
Beyond this, Zoho enables AI-powered data analysis, bespoke visualization tools, and easy sharing for collaborative study. Low-code architecture also makes embedding analytics straightforward.
2. Microsoft Power BI: Advanced Visualization Technology
Microsoft Power BI is a well-established analytics tool focusing on self-service and data visualization. The platform enables users to quickly and easily access company data and transform it into clear visualizations.
Microsoft Power BI securely pulls in data from all of a company’s data sources. The platform is scalable and recognizable, benefiting from the iconic design and UX you find in other Microsoft apps.
This familiarity translates to compatibility too. Why? Because the visualization and insights you develop in the platform are easily shared in other integrated apps, such as Microsft Teams and the Office suite.
3. Board: Best for Predictive Analytics
So, Board may not have the company-backed pedigree of the previous two platforms, but it’s hard to beat its predictive analytics. Board Enterprise Analytics Modelling (BEAM) is the platform’s automated predictive analytics feature. Businesses can quickly and easily create predictive models and forecast trends using this feature.
However, BEAM isn’t the only standout feature of Board. Ultimately, the app focuses on four core areas: self-service analytics, planning, forecasting, and predictive analytics. The platform enables users to combine these features using the same metrics, KPIs, data points, and more.
With Board, users can create custom apps that focus on one or more of the areas serviced by the platform. Easy to use and exceptionally fast, Board is a popular tool used by market-leading enterprise clients.
4. IBM Cognos Analytics: Robust Analytics Platform Powered by Watson
IBM’s Cognos Analytics has a competent partner, the Watson AI platform. Watson powers Cognos Analytics, and users benefit from the cutting-edge AI features that made the technology so well-known.
The core use case for AI in the platform is to pull out insights quickly and effectively. Beyond this, users benefit from customizable dashboards and intelligent reporting tools.
Cognos Analytics has impressive visualization options and enables sharing over multiple platforms, such as Slack. The platform is highly scalable and users can easily deploy it via the cloud or through on-prem architecture. Finally, Cognos Analytics facilitates flexible data imports from multiple sources, including cloud data stores, spreadsheets, on-prem servers, and more.
5. Domo: Best For Integrated Data Analytics
Domo stands out because it is optimized to draw in data from multiple external data platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Excel, and more. As well as standard layouts, users can choose to customize dashboards using a simple, no-code drag and drop mechanism.
Domo’s customizable apps are another powerful feature of the platform. They allow users to create applications focused on niche areas for use in or outside of their organization.
Furthermore, Domo enables embedded analytics. Again, this feature is useful both in and outside of an organization. While internal users can easily access analytics for business insights, customers and partners can edit and even create custom visualizations.
