What Makes Qlik Sense Different From Other BI Platforms?

We often get asked, ‘What makes Qlik Sense different?’ and it’s a fair question, so we wanted to try and breakdown why we use Qlik Sense in our latest blog.

We all know the Qlik suite of software is not the only available option when it comes to data analytics – there are a lot of data analytics tools out there to help you understand more about your business data. So, what makes Qlik our first and only choice of software for unlocking the power of your business data? By answering the following questions, we’re going to show you…

What can you do in Qlik Sense?
One of the most compelling arguments for using Qlik Sense is that the platform doesn’t just answer the questions you ask. Most Business Intelligence (BI) products will help you answer questions that have already been posed but we want to know about the follow-up questions as well, the ones that arise once someone’s seen a report or visualisation. Thanks to its associative model, this is where Qlik Sense shines as it answers query after query as you move along your own path to insight. Qlik Sense allows you to truly explore your data freely, while learning at each step along your journey and enabling you to come up with the next steps based on your findings.

How does Qlik Sense Work?
Qlik’s secret sauce is its associative (and patented) QIX engine. This in-memory engine allows Qlik Sense to respond immediately as you work without the need for predefined and static reports, meaning you do not need to depend on others. Just click and learn while Qlik Sense updates each visualisation in the app instantly, with the newly calculated set of data you just defined.

What is Qlik Sense Enterprise?
Qlik Sense Enterprise and its underlying platform supports a wide variety of use cases, including; self-service data visualisation to empower users to explore their business data; guided analytics to align users to a standard dashboard, business process or workflow; and mobile analytics to allow users to uncover insights at any time, on any device.

What is Qlik Analytics Platform?
The Qlik Analytics Platform is a package that provides customers, developers and OEM partners with the ability to embed Qlik’s visual analytics capabilities into any application through web mashups or by embedding into custom applications. It includes the QIX analytics engine and the full suite of product APIs and SDKs.

What is Qlik Sense Cloud? 
Qlik Sense Cloud is an online, hosted version of Qlik Sense that allows users to create and share basic Qlik Sense apps swiftly and efficiently. You can collaborate with other users to make data discoveries together while accessing the cloud and apps from any device, including mobiles. Qlik Sense Cloud has free-to-use and paid-for tiers of access.

What is Qlik Sense Desktop?
Qlik Sense Desktop is a Windows application that gives individuals the opportunity to use Qlik Sense and create personalised, interactive data visualisations, reports and dashboards from multiple data sources. This is done in the most user-friendly, drag-and-drop fashion, meaning even the most inexperienced users can utilise the power of Qlik. To use it requires Qlik Sense Enterprise server credentials or a QlikID, which comes from your Qlik Cloud account.

What is Qlik Sense Mobile?
The Qlik Sense Mobile app is an application that can be installed on an iOS device. When connected to a Qlik Sense Enterprise server, individuals can download Qlik Sense apps and then view those apps offline.

How do you collaborate in Qlik Sense?
Qlik Sense has been developed with collaboration in mind and provides tools to help create a common understanding to support decisions and influence others.

Once you have shared an app with other users, they can explore your app on a range of devices. They can make their own selections in the data visualisations in the app and ultimately create their own sheets and visualisations to make further discoveries.

You can use the data storytelling feature to build a narrative around the data and emphasise elements of it to create convincing arguments that support you and your stakeholders in your decisions. You can add stylistic elements and comments to the slides and snapshots and organise them into a story for communication with others. The snapshots in your story retains the data from the date and time the story was created but you are not limited to history; you can quickly get to the live versions for further analysis before exporting and printing functions let you share sheets and visualisations in different common formats.

Everything about Qlik Sense has been designed to enable swift and efficient collaboration, allowing its users to react quickly to new discoveries and distribute their discoveries among business teams. This reactive approach is the best way to gain a competitive edge.

This is a very brief breakdown of some of Qlik’s unique capabilities but we hope it helps you understand a little more about the platform and why it’s our first and only choice for BI.

As always, if you have any questions about the Qlik suite of software then please don’t hesitate to get in touch by calling 0330 363 9900. Alternatively, you can ask us over our social channels on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Topic: Data analytics