The article will analyze four main types of software for performing data analysis that use various analysis methods to facilitate the work of an analyst. They will help analyze, structure, and visualize data and will be useful in project management.
What is data analysis?
Data analysis is at the heart of many areas of activity, including business and financial planning. An analyst cannot do without it when conducting analytical work, financial planning, and building a marketing strategy. With such multitasking, a specialist cannot do without specialized tools and services.
In a modern business environment, data analysis is the whole spectrum of organizing the collection, processing, and interpretation of information that will help clarify the marketing strategy, reinforce weaknesses and multiply strengths. Marketers cannot do without data analysis. It will help you build educated guesses rather than relying on guesswork. With it, you can identify trends, establish patterns, and find valuable information. This, in turn, will help optimize the workflow and advertising campaigns and increase the profitability of projects.
Various specialized services and analysis tools come to the aid of analysts. All of them differ in the levels of detail and methods of data interpretation. The number of such tools is quite large. Each specialist chooses the one that corresponds to the tasks and with whom it is more convenient to work.
The types of data analysis software
The growing demand for data analytics and its importance in the marketplace has resulted in many options to help do this worldwide. Previously, data analysis was available only to large market players, companies, and corporations. Analytics required a large budget and staff. But today, everything is changing: software solutions for simple and fast analytics, available to various businesses, are already widely represented on the market.
Big data analysis platforms are already a tool for predictive and dynamic analysis. They allow you to make forecasts for the development of any business area and make more accurate decisions based on them. So, there are the following four types of data analysis software:
- Plotly is a service for working with large amounts of data where detailed analysis is required. You can create real-time graphs, presentations, and charts and import data. Plotly has a set of parsing functions, including JavaScript, Python, R, Matlab, Jupyter, or Excel. There is access to the visualization library.
- Tableau Public is an online tool for creating analytic charts and infographics. The tool is free and has the function of importing data from various text formats and databases. It allows you to work with open data, and post created infographics on blogs, multiple sites, and social networks.
- Power BI is a platform from Microsoft for business intelligence, analysis, and visualization of data necessary for decision making. You can figure it out both independently and with the help of built-in artificial intelligence tools. More suitable for medium and large businesses.
- Visually is a simple visualization service. Suitable for any marketing purposes, as information can be collected from several sources. The tool creates not only infographics but also reports, presentations, illustrations, as well as animated videos, and graphics. The results can be shared on social networks.
In addition, BI systems, such as Tableau or PowerBI, have a wide range of visualization tools: from line charts and pie charts to heat maps and sled charts. Therefore, although BI systems and data science platforms are designed for different tasks, they can complement each other. For example, an existing BI system can conveniently present the results of the data analysis from the platform.