Data is important to businesses because it helps businesses make informed decisions to stay competitive over their competitors. Without data, businesses would be operating blindly, unable to measure their progress or identify areas for improvement.
Imagine you have a big dataset and want to make decisions from it. It’s time you need a data visualization tool to analyze this dataset, but you don’t know which data visualization tool suits your business’s needs.
Now you are in the right place. This blog post will gather the best data visualization tools for small businesses. In addition, we’ll show you everything about data visualization platforms, which factors you need from that tool, and the 5 best data visualization tools you should try.
Before we jump into the list of best data visualization tools, spend some seconds glancing through what data visualization is
In short, a data visualization tool is a software application that allows users to create visual representations of data, such as charts, graphs, maps, and infographics. There are many data visualization tools out there, and not all are the same. Some have features that are easy to use and support non-technical users, while others require steep learning curves, ideally for technical users.
Generally speaking, these tools help to simplify complex data sets, making it easier to identify patterns, trends, and outliers. Data visualization tools are commonly used in business, science, and academia to communicate insights and findings to stakeholders in a visually appealing and easily digestible format.
For small businesses, the tools should be versatile, easy to use, and integrated with data ops workflow to ease your work. Moreover, price is what small business owners think about when deciding to deploy it in their organization.
Using various visual elements like charts, graphs, heat maps, and other graphical elements helps present data in a meaningful and easily understandable way. Therefore, this makes it easier for stakeholders, including CxOs, managers, and analysts, to promptly identify patterns and trends in the data that may not be immediately apparent in a raw data format.
For example, a chart may show a clear upward or downward trend in sales over a specific period, making it easier to make decisions and take action based on this information. Similarly, a heat map may highlight regions where customer engagement is particularly high or low, allowing businesses to target their marketing efforts more effectively.
Data is presented in a way that is both instructive and simply understandable, enabling organizations to acquire better insights. By doing so, businesses can determine important metrics that are essential to their performance and monitor progress over time. For instance, a business can track customer churn rates to pinpoint areas where customer service or product offers need to be improved.
By obtaining clear and actionable insights into critical business metrics, businesses can quickly and efficiently make informed decisions that help them drive growth and success.
With the help of data visualization technologies, businesses can present complicated information and insights understandably to stakeholders and aesthetically engaging.
Businesses can convey their findings that are easy to understand to a variety of audiences. They can be executives, managers, employees, clients and so on. Hence, this encourages improved teamwork and engagement, allowing organizations to work more successfully and efficiently toward shared objectives.
These tools can also be used to build interactive dashboards that let users examine the data and make their inferences, increasing engagement and comprehension.
Data visualization tools give businesses a clear insight into their performance, strengths, and limitations. This helps them stay competitive, including monitoring vital KPIs and indicators, for example, sales, customer happiness, and operational effectiveness. As a result, they are better able to decide what has to be changed, identify those areas, and optimize their growth and profit-oriented initiatives.
Data sources: This is where data is stored. It can be databases, spreadsheets, and cloud storage. Data is then used for visualization purposes.
Visualization types: The ability to create various types of visualizations, including charts, graphs, maps, infographics, animated visuals, etc. Customization options: To better tell your data stories, the capability to customize graphs and charts is crucial. Applying colors, labels, and formatting options will help enhance readability and convey insights effectively.
Interactive features: Interactive charts should be input into dashboards, but it can be overwhelming if we don't know how to use them properly. By adding interactive features such as tooltips, filters, and drill-downs, audiences can quickly explore data and draw their insights.
Collaboration capabilities: Best data visualization should have this feature to foster collaboration among team members. Sharing visualizations with your teammates or stakeholders enables real-time collaboration and feedback.
Real-time data processing: Outdated data may lead to inaccurate analysis and potentially misleading insights. As a result, decision-makers may make the wrong decisions and ineffective strategies. Therefore, you should consider when choosing the best data visualization tools that can process and display real-time data and update visualizations automatically to reflect changes.
Data analytics capabilities: There's a need for a set of functionalities that allows users to delve deeper into their data. For example, they can perform basic data analytics tasks such as filtering, sorting, and aggregating data within the tool.
Export options: The ability to export visualizations to different formats, including images or PDFs. Furthermore, the export options extend to interactive web pages for sharing or embedding in dashboards and presentations.
Data security and privacy: Your business handles sensitive and confidential information, so a good data visualization platform should have the ability to ensure data security and privacy, including access control, encryption, and compliance with regulatory requirements.
There are a lot of options for choosing the right data visualization tools for your business, depending on your purposes. Below are the top 5 best data visualization tools we researched and filtered for small businesses.
Dataflake is a highly customizable data visualization and embedded analytics platform that helps data analysts quickly create interactive visualizations with so many styling options. Furthermore, securely integrate dashboards to any websites or applications with advanced embedded configuration
With highly customizable data visualization capabilities, you can create highly insightful and easily digestible dashboards quickly and efficiently, even without technical expertise. Dataflake offers a wide range of custom charts and design elements that can be tailored to fit your business needs and branding requirements.
Email delivery is a convenient and time-saving feature of Dataflake. It allows you to optimize your recurring heavy tasks with built-in features such as report scheduling. This feature helps free up more of your working time, so you can focus on other important aspects of your business.
The embedded Analytics feature enables you to securely embed analytics charts or dashboards to any website or application. This feature empowers your partners or customers with quality insights without having to share your login credentials or data with them.
Real-time collaboration that allows you to edit your queries, communicate, and add reviews with your teammates to track the health of queries. Additionally, you can quickly see all query changes to get work done faster. More importantly, all of these capabilities are in one place.
The Data Catalog feature, which is coming soon, automatically detects and tells you which data of the column has changed. You can eliminate the need to manually document your data when there are any column or table changes. This feature saves time and ensures data accuracy.
Signals Monitoring, another upcoming feature of Dataflake, allows you to select and automatically monitor your metrics. You can get alerted via multiple channels if your selected metrics exceed data thresholds. This feature ensures that you stay informed of any significant changes in your data, allowing you to take prompt action when needed.
Data Quality Monitoring is a forthcoming feature that allows you to constantly monitor your data to ensure fewer data downtime and errors. You can keep posted on Data Freshness and Data Volume, and Dataflake will alert users to any data quality problem. This feature helps you maintain data accuracy and reliability.
DataflakeBOT is an automated feature of Dataflake that answers your questions right away based on the condition setting. The BOT eliminates the need to jump across multiple dashboards, providing quick and accurate answers to your queries. This feature helps level up your business insights and saves you time.
Dataflake is for anyone who needs to create data visualizations using SQL
Ideally, Dataflake is for startups, small-medium-sized businesses, and freelancers who face many challenges in today's competitive business landscape. Having access to a powerful and affordable data visualization tool like Dataflake can be a game-changer.
With highly customizable data visualization capabilities, businesses can tailor the tool to meet their unique needs, which is crucial for achieving success in any industry. Furthermore, with Dataflake's affordable pricing, businesses of all sizes can now leverage the power of data and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
We offer a free plan
For the Pro plan, just $15/per month
Premium: $30/ month
And if you want a custom plan, which is ideal for enterprise, you can contact Dataflake.
The BI platform Microsoft Power BI enables people to work together with data and monitor objectives. To assist users in making knowledgeable decisions, it offers real-time analytics and trend analysis. Microsoft Power BI is a flexible corporate solution because it interfaces with various Microsoft goods and cloud services.
To safeguard user data, it provides data security measures. Building interactive, immersive dashboards and reports with Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool that enables you to take action.
Power BI is suitable for a wide range of users and organizations. Anyone who needs to analyze and gain insights from their data can benefit from using Power BI, from individual professionals to small businesses and large enterprises.
Pros
Cons
Free: includes data visualization and exploration tools, as well as the ability to share reports and dashboards with others.
Pro version costs $9.99 per user per month and includes additional features such as collaboration, data governance, and data modeling.
Power BI Premium Pricing varies based on the number of users and the amount of data being processed.
Tableau allows users to explore data and share ideas with drag-and-drop visualization creation, AI-driven statistical modeling, and natural language inquiries are all available to users.
Regardless of technical proficiency or position, anyone who wants to analyze and visualize data may use Tableau. However, it is especially well suited for business analysts, data scientists, and other professionals. They have to work with big amounts of data and produce interesting visualizations and dashboards to communicate their insights to others.
Pros
Cons
Creator: Pricing starts at $70 per user per month (billed annually).
Explorer: Pricing starts at $35 per user per month (billed annually).
Viewer: Pricing starts at $12 per user per month (billed annually).
Tableau Public: This is a free version that allows users to create and share visualizations with the public. However, data is limited to publicly available sources.
Looker Studio gives users the ability to see data in a variety of ways. You can discover a list of several visualizations, including spider visualization, cartoons, calendar heat maps, bar gauges, and liquid fill gauges.
Additionally, It features built-in analytical blocks that users may use as templates for particular datasets or analyses, which speeds up analytics. Making data-driven decisions more quickly is made simple with Looker's at-a-glance visualization features.
Organizations that need to scale their operations require a variety of data visualization capabilities.
Pros
Cons
Looker Studio pricing is based on a few factors, including the number of users, the amount of data being processed, and the level of support required.
In general, Looker Studio pricing starts at $3,000 per month, which includes up to 10 users and 100 GB of data storage. For larger businesses with more users or larger datasets, Looker Studio offers custom pricing plans with more features and functionality.
Klipfolio is a cloud-based business intelligence and data analytics platform that helps businesses to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics in real time. It offers more than 100 pre-built data connectors, so businesses can easily connect to their data sources without any technical expertise. It also provides a drag-and-drop dashboard builder, which allows users to create custom visualizations, charts, and graphs to represent their data in a visually appealing and easily understandable way.
Klipfolio is suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries that need to track and analyze their data in real time.
Pros
Cons
Limited customization options compared to other data visualization tools.
$49/ month for the "Team" plan (5 users and up to 50 data sources)
$199/ month for a "Professional" plan (10 users and up to 100 data sources). $599/ month for the "Business" (larger teams and starts at 20 users and up to 250 data sources)
All the best data visualization tools on the above list to meet your data visualization needs, but which one does fit your needs
The best solution is an all-in-one tool like Dataflake - which appears 1st on the list.
Dataflake not only allows you to create customizable visualizations but also a platform where you can seamlessly manage, communicate and collaborate with your team members. Now, save your time and let Dataflake automatically do the remaining work.
Want to create your first dashboard? Sign up and get started with Dataflake!
