Evaluating self-service Bi and analytics tools for SMEs

Abstract

In the vast Data Science domain, Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Analytics are two of the most relevant topics nowadays. Regardless of the data type an end-user needs to work on, data visualization and/or analytics can be a valuable support for a successful decision-making process in management. For that, free and open-source business intelligence and analytics solutions are on the market as an indispensable opportunity for companies to start benefiting from data analytics at no cost. In addition, that task has been currently eased by a group of BI and Analytics tools named as “Self-service”, which is an Advanced Analytics topic and designed to enable users with no IT background to perform analyses of data and find business opportunities themselves with minimal or no assistance from IT technicians. Considering that, to help Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) decide on a free self-service data tool according to their needs, we compare in this paper, on a functionality basis, 5 popular Self-Service BI and Analytics tools: Metabase, Pentaho Community, Power BI Free, QlikView, and Tableau Public.