Google Looker vs Sisense: A Comparative Analysis
Introduction
Choosing the right business intelligence tool is critical for effective data analysis and informed decision-making. Google Looker and Sisense are both powerful platforms, each offering unique features and capabilities.
This comparison examines the strengths and limitations of Google Looker and Sisense to help you make an educated choice for your organization's needs. We will consider aspects such as data integration, customization, and ease of use.
Additionally, we'll explore how Sourcetable offers a modernized, spreadsheet-like interface that syncs with your data as an alternative to using Google Looker or Sisense for business intelligence tasks like reporting and data analytics.
What is Google Looker?
Google Looker is a business intelligence platform that provides comprehensive tools for data analysis and application development. As a product within the Google Cloud suite, it facilitates data access and analysis in a cloud environment, allowing users to interact with and derive insights from their data.
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Google Looker is a business intelligence platform that provides comprehensive tools for data analysis and application development. As a product within the Google Cloud suite, it facilitates data access and analysis in a cloud environment, allowing users to interact with and derive insights from their data.
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Key Features
- Enables users to access, analyze, and act on their data.
- Delivers data experiences through custom applications with trusted metrics.
- Features chat capabilities for interacting with business data.
- Incorporates generative AI for building data-powered applications.
- Supports self-service and governed BI, ensuring a balance between autonomy and control.
- Integrates with existing BI environments through Looker modeling.
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Deployment and Integration
Google Looker offers cloud-based deployment, promoting accessibility and scalability. Users can employ Looker modeling to enhance their existing BI systems, ensuring compatibility and extending functionality.
What is Sisense?
Sisense is an analytics platform that enables the transformation of data into actionable insights. It supports data integration, visualization, and analysis to assist businesses in decision-making processes. As an analytics tool, Sisense aids in simplifying complex data from multiple sources for various user levels within an organization.
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Sisense is an analytics platform that enables the transformation of data into actionable insights. It supports data integration, visualization, and analysis to assist businesses in decision-making processes. As an analytics tool, Sisense aids in simplifying complex data from multiple sources for various user levels within an organization.
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Google Looker Features
Business Intelligence Capabilities |
Looker is a comprehensive BI tool that delivers enterprise-class business intelligence. It facilitates the creation of reports and dashboards, simplifying data analysis and visualization processes. |
Data Management and Consistency |
Looker ensures a fresh, consistent, and governed real-time view of data. Analysts can centrally define and manage business rules and definitions using LookML, Looker's SQL-based modeling language. |
Integration and Accessibility |
Integrated with the Google Cloud console, Looker is a core Google Cloud product, available as a service within the Google Cloud portfolio. It provides insights directly in the work environment, enhancing productivity. |
Collaboration and Version Control |
The platform uses a Git version-controlled data model with LookML, enabling collaborative and consistent data modeling across teams. |
Connectivity and Exploration |
Looker enables users to access data from multiple clouds and analyze, explore, and visualize it with Looker Studio. Robust APIs and prebuilt integrations streamline data connectivity and extend functionality. |
Real-Time Insights and Proactivity |
With Looker, proactive insights are accessible, allowing for immediate and informed decision-making. |
Sisense Key Features
Fusion Platform |
Sisense Fusion Platform enables the integration of analytics across collaborative environments. |
Compose SDK |
The Compose SDK feature of Sisense allows for the customization of analytics applications. |
Advantages of Google Looker for Business Intelligence
Comprehensive Data Exploration
Looker Studio Pro enables in-depth data exploration, assisting businesses in answering complex questions. Its robust analytical capabilities facilitate insightful reporting and analytics.
Enhanced Visualization and Sharing
With Looker Studio Pro, users can craft interactive visualizations and construct dashboards for effective data communication and decision-making processes.
Enterprise-Level Features
The tool's enterprise capabilities ensure it is well-suited for medium to large organizations, offering advanced content management and enterprise-grade support.
Collaboration and Management
Looker Studio Pro fosters team collaboration and simplifies the management of team content, streamlining business intelligence workflows.
Support and Environment Compatibility
Users benefit from access to enterprise support and a product designed to perform optimally in medium and large scale enterprise environments.
Disadvantages of Using Google Looker
Learning and Onboarding
Google Looker presents a steep learning curve, making it challenging for new users to quickly adapt to its environment. The complexity of the platform's usability detracts from its intuitiveness. Additionally, the onboarding process is expensive, adding to the initial cost of adoption.
Performance Issues
Users experience performance drawbacks with Google Looker, such as slow load times and laggy interactions, especially when handling many graphs on a single page. This can significantly impede the efficiency of data analytics and reporting processes.
Connectivity and Integration
The platform lacks robust connectivity options, complicating the integration with certain data sources. Migrating data, particularly from AWS to BigQuery, has been reported as a painful process. These integration challenges can create bottlenecks in data flow and analysis.
Access and Security
Google Looker's security measures, while vital, can be restrictive as reported by security teams that have heavily tied down access. This may limit the agility needed in dynamic business intelligence scenarios.
Resource Availability
Training materials and documentation are not readily accessible, which can stifle user education and proficiency. Furthermore, the platform's sharing mechanisms are complex, hindering smooth collaboration and dissemination of insights among team members.
Frequently Asked Questions About Google Looker
What are the hours of operation for Looker Support in different languages?
Looker Support is available 24/7 in English. For Japanese language, support is available from 9:00 AM JST – 5:00 PM JST, Monday – Friday, and from 5:00 PM JST – 9:00 AM JST, Monday – Saturday, including weekends and holidays.
Can I receive support for any version of Looker?
Looker Support is available only on Looker instances running an officially supported Looker version. Instances hosted by Looker automatically update to supported releases, but customer-hosted instances must update to a supported Looker version to receive support.
What do I need to do to receive support for my Looker (original) instance?
For Looker (original) instances to receive support, you need to have the Google Cloud Project number filled in on the Admin General Settings page.
Who is eligible to receive Looker Support?
Looker Support is only available to users with the Tech Support Editor IAM role, as well as administrators and developers on instances using Legacy Support.
What should I expect when submitting a support request for Looker?
When submitting a support request, you may be prompted to choose from a product area.
Use Cases for Google Looker
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Reducing client report time
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Modernizing business intelligence
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Embedding analytics in a quote-to-revenue platform
Advantages of Sisense for Business Intelligence
Versatility and Integration
Sisense offers a versatile platform, enabling businesses to adapt to various reporting and analytical needs. It integrates dashboards for real-time feedback, ensuring that decision-makers have continuous access to critical data.
Performance and Efficiency
With Sisense, users experience fast insights and reduced report response times, streamlining business intelligence processes. The platform also minimizes development time, automating time-consuming reports and eliminating error-prone manual reporting.
Data Management
Sisense excels in data management by creating a centralized data warehouse, which simplifies the process of tracking key performance indicators and answering complex questions about datasets.
User Experience
Support and Implementation
Implementation of Sisense is straightforward, supported by an excellent customer service team, which aids in maximizing the cost-effectiveness of the platform for businesses of all sizes.
Disadvantages of Using Sisense for Business Intelligence
User Experience Challenges
Sisense may present a steeper learning curve compared to other BI tools, potentially leading to reduced user adoption and increased training requirements.
Technical Issues
Users may encounter difficulties with dashboard functionality, widget configurations, and filter implementation, which can impede data analysis effectiveness.
Cost Considerations
The expense of Sisense can be a significant factor for businesses, making it less accessible for small to medium-sized enterprises.
Licensing Limitations
There are reported issues with Sisense's licensing structure that may affect scalability and cost-efficiency for growing businesses.
Reliability Concerns
Compared to its competitors, Sisense may fall short in terms of reliability, which is critical for consistent business intelligence operations.
Performance
In terms of speed, Sisense may not match the performance of other BI tools, potentially leading to longer wait times for data processing and analysis.
Data Visualization Capabilities
With fewer data visualization options available, Sisense might not satisfy organizations that require advanced or varied visual representation of data.
Cube Management Efficiency
Cube management within Sisense is not as efficient as in other BI tools, which could result in more time spent on data organization and less on analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sisense
What are the system requirements for Sisense?
Sisense requires that JavaScript is installed and enabled, and that cookies are enabled in your browser.
Does Sisense offer any community support platforms?
Yes, Sisense has a community forum with 5546 members and 6915 posts, a software developers forum, and a Discord server.
Is there a place to find detailed information and guides on how to use Sisense?
Sisense has a knowledge base that provides detailed information and guides.
Use Cases for Sisense
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Data Visualization
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Performance Monitoring
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Data Analysis and Reporting
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Predictive Analytics
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Collaborative BI
Why Sourcetable is a Superior Business Intelligence Tool
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Streamlined Data Integration
Sourcetable offers a unified solution for syncing data across various services. This simplicity in data integration surpasses the capabilities of Google Looker and Sisense, which may not consolidate data as efficiently into a user-friendly spreadsheet interface.
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Enhanced Reporting Efficiency
The spreadsheet-like interface of Sourcetable facilitates easier reporting compared to Google Looker and Sisense. This approach to reporting is streamlined, making it more accessible to users who are familiar with traditional spreadsheet tools.
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User-Friendly Analytics
With Sourcetable, the analytics process is simplified. Unlike the more complex platforms like Google Looker and Sisense, Sourcetable's interface allows for intuitive data analysis without the steep learning curve.
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Optimized Self-Service BI
While Google Looker and Sisense offer self-service BI, Sourcetable optimizes this feature by providing a more straightforward way for users to engage with their data, fostering autonomy and efficiency in business intelligence tasks.
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Comparison Between Google Looker and Sisense
Business Intelligence Capabilities
Both Google Looker and Sisense are platforms designed for business intelligence. They provide tools for organizations to access, analyze, and visualize data to support decision-making processes.
Self-Service and Governed BI
Google Looker and Sisense offer self-service BI, enabling users with varying technical skills to generate insights. They also support governed BI, ensuring data governance and security within the platform.
Data-Powered Applications
Both platforms allow the building of data-powered applications, which can be integrated into business workflows to enhance productivity and offer data-driven functionalities.
Embedded Analytics
Google Looker and Sisense can be used for embedded analytics, providing the capability to integrate analytics within other applications for seamless user experiences.
Data Accessibility and Analysis
Users can leverage both platforms to access and analyze data from various sources, transforming raw data into actionable insights and enabling data-driven actions within organizations.
Google Looker vs. Sisense
Business Intelligence Capabilities
Google Looker is a platform that supports both organizational and self-service business intelligence. It facilitates the creation of data-powered applications and workflows, with an emphasis on self-service and governed BI. In contrast, Sisense's capabilities may vary in the realm of self-service and governed BI.
Embedded Analytics and Data Modeling
Looker offers robust options for embedded analytics and data modeling, which can be tailored to fit the specific needs of a business. While Sisense also provides embedded analytics solutions, the specifics of its embedded data modeling capabilities are not mentioned in the provided facts.
Generative AI Feature
Google Looker includes a generative AI feature, which is not a noted feature of Sisense in the provided facts. This feature can enhance data exploration and automated insights in Looker.
Data Access and Interaction
Both Google Looker and Sisense enable data access and analysis. However, Looker uniquely offers the ability to chat with business data, allowing for an interactive and conversational approach to data analysis.
Data Experiences
Google Looker is designed to deliver trusted data experiences, ensuring data reliability and accuracy. While Sisense aims to provide insights, the concept of 'trusted data experiences' is specific to Looker in the given facts.
Application Development
Looker can be used to build a variety of data-powered applications, enhancing business workflows. The information provided does not detail Sisense's capabilities in application development.
Comparison of Google Looker, Sisense, and Sourcetable
Google Looker
Google Looker is a business intelligence platform that emphasizes both self-service and governed BI. It enables users to build data-powered applications and offers a generative AI feature. Looker facilitates access to data, providing the tools to analyze and act upon it. Trusted data experiences and embedded analytics are key features, along with capabilities for embedded data modeling. It supports organizational and self-service business intelligence, workflow creation, and even chatting with business data.
Sisense
Sisense is a business intelligence tool that specializes in providing analytics for complex data. It's known for its ability to handle large volumes of data and its drag-and-drop interface that simplifies the creation of interactive dashboards. Sisense also offers AI-driven analytics, allowing for predictive and prescriptive insights. It supports embedded analytics, similar to Looker, but with a focus on scalability for large datasets and non-technical users.
Sourcetable
Sourcetable is a spreadsheet-based tool designed for business analytics and data collaboration. It combines the familiarity of spreadsheets with powerful data integration features. Sourcetable is particularly user-friendly for those accustomed to working in spreadsheet environments. However, it may not offer the same depth of BI capabilities or AI features as Looker or Sisense.
Contrasts
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Frequently Asked Questions About Sourcetable
What is Sourcetable and who is it for?
Sourcetable is a spreadsheet application that replaces traditional workflows in Excel, Google Sheets, and Business Intelligence tools. It is used by growth teams and business operations teams, ideal for anyone needing to centralize, analyze, and model data that updates over time.
How does Sourcetable integrate with third-party applications?
Sourcetable allows users to access and sync data from over 100 applications and most databases. Data integrations update every 15 minutes on the regular plan and every 5 minutes on the pro plan.
Do I need coding skills to use Sourcetable?
No, Sourcetable does not require any coding skills. Users can query data and build live models that update automatically without the need to write code.
How much does Sourcetable cost?
Sourcetable costs $50 per month on the starter plan and $250 per month on the pro plan. Each additional seat costs $20 per month after the first 5 users included in the pro plan.
Is there a trial period for Sourcetable?
Yes, all Sourcetable plans have a 14-day free trial period. This allows users to test the service before committing to a paid plan.
Google Looker Pricing Overview
Google Looker's pricing structure consists of two primary components: platform pricing and user pricing. Platform pricing refers to the cost associated with running a Looker instance, which encompasses administration, integrations, and semantic modeling features. User pricing relates to the licensing fees for individuals to access the Looker platform. Costs are influenced by the user's type and level of permissions.
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Google Looker's pricing structure consists of two primary components: platform pricing and user pricing. Platform pricing refers to the cost associated with running a Looker instance, which encompasses administration, integrations, and semantic modeling features. User pricing relates to the licensing fees for individuals to access the Looker platform. Costs are influenced by the user's type and level of permissions.
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Platform Pricing
Platform pricing is mandatory for operating a Looker instance. This cost includes essential services such as platform administration, integrations with other systems, and the ability to perform semantic modeling. The platform pricing is billed to the billing account linked to the Looker instance.
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User Pricing
User pricing varies depending on the type of license and the user's permissions. Looker offers three types of licenses: Developer User, Standard User, and Viewer User—each with different access levels and associated costs.
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Platform Editions
Looker provides three platform editions: Standard, Enterprise, and Embed. The editions are tailored to meet different organizational needs and vary in cost based on the user types and permissions.
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Billing and Subscription Terms
Every instance has an attached billing account where all charges, such as creating new instances or adding users, are billed. Looker offers annual subscriptions with one, two, or three-year terms, providing flexibility in commitment length.
Sisense Pricing Overview
Sisense offers a range of pricing options tailored to different hosting preferences and user requirements. The cost varies based on the chosen deployment method and the tier of service.
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Sisense offers a range of pricing options tailored to different hosting preferences and user requirements. The cost varies based on the chosen deployment method and the tier of service.
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Self-Hosted Solution Costs
The self-hosted version of Sisense is available at an approximate annual cost of $10,000. This option is suitable for organizations preferring to manage their own infrastructure.
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Cloud-Based Solution Costs
For a cloud-hosted solution, Sisense pricing starts at approximately $21,000 per year for a package accommodating up to 5 users. This includes the advantages of a cloud deployment without the need for internal hosting.
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Sisense Tiers
- Basic
- Business
- Business+
Each tier offers different features and capabilities to meet diverse business intelligence needs, with pricing reflecting the level of service provided.
User Reviews of Google Looker
Google Looker is recognized as a business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform.
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Google Looker is recognized as a business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform.
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Critical Feedback
Reviews from users indicate dissatisfaction with Google Looker. Common complaints point to the platform being slow, buggy, and unintuitive. Moreover, some users consider it the worst reporting tool available.
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Comparative Performance
When compared to other products in the market, Google Looker appears to lag behind. Users express a preference for both free and paid alternatives, such as Data Studio and Tableau, stating that these options outperform Looker.
User Reviews of Sisense
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Strength in Embedded Analytics
Users frequently highlight Sisense's capabilities in embedded analytics, recognizing it as a strong point of the platform.
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Comparisons with Competitors
Sisense is often compared with other analytics tools such as Tableau and Power BI, indicating its relevance in the market.
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Implementation Success Stories
There are accounts of successful implementations of Sisense by some users, suggesting that the platform can be effectively integrated into their operations.
Note: The sources of the reviews and ratings are not provided.
Conclusion
In comparing Google Looker and Sisense, it's clear that both platforms offer robust business intelligence solutions, each with their unique strengths. Looker excels with its integration within the Google ecosystem, while Sisense shines with its analytical capabilities and customizable dashboards.
For those seeking a more streamlined approach, Sourcetable offers an alternative by synchronizing data in real-time across various services into an easy-to-use spreadsheet interface. This simplification can be particularly beneficial for users who prefer a familiar environment without the complexity of traditional BI tools.
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