The data being generated on a daily basis has increased massively over the years, with close to 2.5 quintillion bytes generated on a daily basis. This data is extremely helpful in making important business decisions, gathering insights, and providing data-based solutions. Data Analysts are making use of this data on a regular basis and thus the advent of Data Analytics. It is everywhere, Data analytics in Finance, eCommerce, Media, and what not. To solve the purpose of converting or transforming raw data into valuable information and to work on data analysis projects, there exist multiple Data Analytics tools in today’s world. The information could be vital in making data-driven business decisions. A data analyst’s key responsibility is to gather insights from data and to do so, they must make use of the various data analytics tools available to them.
How do we decide which data analytics tool to choose? This blog talks about the top data analysis tools that one can use to increase efficiency. The data analytics tools listed below are in no particular order.
Top 9 Data Analytics Tools
1. R Programming Language
R is one of the most popular languages for statistical modelling, visualization, and data analysis. It is an open-source programming language. With the help of R, it is easy to perform data manipulation with packages such as plyr, dplyr, and tidy. It is excellent when it comes to data visualization and analysis with packages such as ggplot2, lattice, plotly etc. And it also has a huge community of developers for support. R is free to download from it’s official website.
Created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, R is freely available under the GNU General Public License. It is currently developed by the R Development Core Team. The R programming language was named after the two founders, both of whose names start with the letter R.
Companies using R –
A few of the multinational companies such as Google, ANZ, and Firefox are making use of R as their programming language.
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2. Python
Python is one of the most powerful Data Analytics tools that is available to the user. It comes with a wide set of package/libraries. Python is a free, open-source software that can be used for a high level of visualisation and comes with packages such as Matplotlib, Seaborn. Pandas is one of the widely used data analytics library that comes with Python. Most programming prefer to learn Python as their first programming language due to its ease and versatility. It is a high-level, object-oriented programming language.
There are many applications of Python across various platforms. Whether we’re browsing through Google, Instagram, or YouTube, each of these applications has made use of Python for its programming needs. Python is useful for web development as it is less time consuming and has a simple syntax. Python supports several frameworks such as Flask, Django, Falcon, Web2Py, Sanic, Pyramid, and more. Take up a free online python for beginners course and upskill today.
Companies using Python –
A few of the multinational companies such as Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook are making use of Python as their programming language.
Also Read: Python Tutorial For Beginners
3. Excel
Microsoft Excel is a simple yet powerful tool for data collection and analysis. It is a part of the Microsoft Office tool suite, and is readily available, widely used and easy to learn. Microsoft Excel can be considered as a great starting point for data analysis. The Data Analytics Tool pack in Excel offers a variety of options to perform statistical analysis of your data. The charts and graphs in Excel give a clear interpretation and visualization of your data.
Excel is one the easiest ways to store data, create data visualizations, perform calculations based on data, clean data, and report data in an understandable manner. It is a great skill to add on your resume. Excel for beginners is a free online course that you can take up to enhance your knowledge about this data analysis tool.
It offers products for three main categories, namely:
- For Home
- For Business
- For Enterprises
Companies using Excel –
Every major organization makes use of Excel in some form or the other. Be it a small organization or an MNC. McDonald’s, Marriot, IKEA are a few of the organizations making use of Excel. Check out data analytics excel course.
Lookinh to improve your excel skill and knowledge, check out Excel tips and tricks.
4. Tableau
Tableau is a Business Intelligence Tool developed for data analysts where one can visualize, analyze, and understand their data. Tableau provides fast analytics, can explore wide types of data like spreadsheets, databases, data on Hadoop and cloud services. It is easy to use, as it has a powerful GUI. It can build effective interactive dashboards with less effort. Tableau is a market leader, and lets you work on live-data rather than spending too much effort on data wrangling.
Tableau is always looking to improve their services and has come up with updates to provide users with smart dashboards, explore data, ease of use, fast analytics, update automatically, and publish a dashboard to share it live on mobile devices or the web. You can take up a free online course on tableau to enhance your skills about this data analysis tool.
The products that are included under Tableau are as follows- Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Public. Another plus point of using Tableau is that it is free.
Companies using Tableau –
Citibank, Skype, Deloitte, and Audi are a few of the companies that are making use of Tableau for their Data Analytics needs.
Also Read: Top 15 Tableau Interview Questions with Answers for 2021
5. QlikView
QlikView is a Self-Service Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, and Data Analytics tool. It aims to accelerate business value through data by providing features such as Data Integration, Data Literacy, and Data Analytics. It offers a variety of products for its users, out of which, a few of them are available for a free 30-day trial period. QlikView is trusted by over 50,000 customers worldwide.
It facilitates quick decision making and different features for ad hoc queries. It has an immediate response time and also has no limits to the amount of data. QlikView is also beneficial for identifying trends and information to make the most effective business decisions. It is cost effective and economical.
Companies using QlikView –
A few of the companies that are using QlikView are NHS, CISCO, and SAMSUNG.
6. Power BI
Power BI is yet another powerful business analytics solution by Microsoft. You can visualize your data, connect to many data sources and share the outcomes across your organization. With Power BI, you can and bring your data to life with live dashboards and reports. Power BI can be integrated with other Data Analytics Tools, including Microsoft Excel.
It offers solutions such as Azure + Power BI and Office 365 + Power BI. This can be extremely helpful to allow users to perform data analysis, protect data across several office platforms and to connect data as well.
You can take up these free power bi courses to help you learn more about this data analysis tool and enhance your knowledge.
Some of the products under Power BI are as follows-
- Power BI Desktop
- Power BI Premium
- Power BI Pro
- Power BI Embedded
- Power BI Mobile
- Power BI Report Server
Companies using Power BI –
A few of the widely known companies that are using Power BI are Heathrow, Adobe, and GE Healthcare.
7. SAS
SAS is a statistical software suite widely used for data management and predictive analysis. SAS is proprietary software, and companies need to pay to use it. A free university edition has been introduced for students to learn and use SAS. It has a simple GUI. Hence, it is easy to learn. However, a good knowledge of the SAS programming knowledge is an added advantage to use the tool. SAS’s DATA step (The data step is where data is created, imported, modified, merged, or calculated) helps inefficient data handling and manipulation.
To learn more, you can also take up a free Analytics on SAS course that will give you a head-start to become a SAS analyst. The course will walk you through several other topics such as experimenting with SAS programs, the installation process, operators and functions of SAS, arrays, and more.
You can also learn more with the help of this SAS tutorial.
Companies using SAS –
Commonly known companies that are using SAS are Google, Twitter, Accenture, and Genpact.
8. KNIME
KNIME or Konstanz Information Miner is an open-source, free data analytics, reporting, and integration platform. It is built for analytics on a GUI workflow and helps in gathering data as well as creating models used for deployment and production. You can learn more about KNIME with the help of the following free online courses.
KNIME provides two softwares. Namely, KNIME analytics program and KNIME server. The first one is useful for cleaning and gathering data, making workflows, and making reusable components. Whereas, knime server is used for the deployment of workflows, automation, and team collaboration.
Companies using KNIME-
Various companies are using KNIME. Some of them are – Deutsche Telekom, Continental, Siemens, and Novartis.
9. Apache Spark
Apache Spark is one of the most active apache projects. It is open-source, and has an interface that ensures implicit data parallelism. Spark is a framework that supports applications while maintaining MapReduce’s scalability and fault tolerance. Resilient distributed datasets (RDDs), a read-only set of items partitioned over a set of devices to suit user needs, are provided by Spark technologies. You can learn more about Spark with the help of free online courses.
Companies using Apache Spark –
Some of the well-known companies using Apache Spark are Verizon, Visa, Oracle, and Hortonworks.
Contributed by: Lalit Pavan
This brings us to the end of the blog on top Data Analytics Tools in 2021. We hope that you found this helpful. Do you wish to be a successful data analyst? There are many free data analytics courses available online which will help you in your journey. If you wish to learn more such concepts, you can upskill with Great Learning Academy’s free online courses today!
