Why Looker Studio is the preferred go-to data visualization platform

In my time working in the field of Marketing Analytics, I’ve had the great opportunity to work directly with different BI & analytics tools including Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Apache Superset, Google Looker studio, Domo, and QlikView. While all of these tools have their own pros and cons as a BI and analytics tool, the one tool that I have found in most situations as the preferred go-to platform when it comes to a data visualization and BI tool is Looker Studio. Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, is an online tool for converting data into customizable informative reports and dashboards introduced by Google back in 2016.?

Here are 5 features of Data Looker Studio that makes this tool unique as a data visualization tool, helping teams get unified access to the answers they need to help drive successful outcomes:

(1) NATURAL PATH FROM FREE TO PAID- Looker Studio is offered for free while still being equipped with all the necessities needed to support small to medium sized businesses as a data visualization tool. However, as businesses grow and their data dependency becomes more complex, users can have a natural transition to paid subscriptions with Looker Studio Pro or Looker.?

This natural path of monetization that Google has created as its business model allows businesses and its teams to adopt a data visualization tool into their day-to-day decision making processes very quickly without any roadblocks or limitations related to user fees, account registrations, or payment approvals. Further, as their data analytics maturity scales, businesses would be able to upgrade to a paid subscriptions for Looker Studio Pro or Looker to take advantage of more advanced features such as a team work spaces to manage mass amounts of reports or LookerML, an easy interface for making complex SQL queries into an easy and fast drag and drop play.?

?(2) CLOUD BASED - Looker Studio lives only on the cloud, meaning there is no separate desktop software that needs to be installed on a personal computer or a server, thus providing greater accessibility and scalability control in managing data analytics projects.?

In Looker Studio, analysts and report viewers all work off of the same cloud based file using their google account credentials. A simple internet access means very easy access to reports, allowing teams to easily inject data driven reports into their decision making process. Being only in the cloud also adds the capability to manage and merge changes made to the data model by different team members in a very efficient and collaborative process, helping to constantly drive iterative improvements for BI and analytics projects.?

(3) REUSABLE DATA SOURCE SHARING - Looker Studio has the capability to make data sources reusable without actually granting additional access to the underlying data set creating more security as well as providing more efficiency and accuracy in creating new reports.?

In Looker Studio, only ‘data source owners’ can make changes to a data source connection which means sharing of data set credentials can be kept limited, minimizing any risks related to changes or leakes to the underlying data set. However, by granting a ‘edit permission’ to different users, other people can still have the ability to edit the source schema for common desired data analyst related tasks such as renaming fields, creating new calculated fields, changing data types, setting default aggregations or adding descriptions. Further, the same data sources with all of its added fields/edits can be added to other reports. This minimizes a vast amount of duplicated efforts in creating new reports while also helps to ensure a ‘single point of truth’ or better, a KPI reporting consistency when referencing business KPIs.?

[To make an example, imagine that in your data source you have created a calculated field for conversion rate or CAC (customer acquisition costs). When the data source is shared with another user, the other user has access to the same calculated fields for conversion rate and CAC rather than having to recreate the calculated fields once again using a formula. This avoids doing duplicated efforts while also ensuring KPI consistency since everyone will be using the same exact formula].?

(4) CONNECTOR MARKETPLACE -? Looker Studio’s connector marketplace allows users to easily connect to a variety of data sources and share insights with their team or the world without the need of more complicated/time consuming API integrations. With the use of “connectors,” pulling data from Google’s native applications such as YouTube, Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Sheets or even third party websites such as Facebook, Bing, and Salesforce are made easy with just a few clicks of a button. With over 860 different connectors currently available and a growing developer community for creating more connectors, this is a promising landscape for building reporting automations around the needed data at the right time and right place, without having to write any code.?

(5) BUILD IN FUNCTIONALITY FOR CALENDAR & DATA BLENDING - Looker Studio’s functionalities are in general highlighted by being very user friendly made possible with useful features such as a ‘built-in calendar’ and ‘data blending’ functionality.?

With a built- in calendar functionality, selecting a particular timeframe to analyze the data or to set pre-configured report time frames are made very easy. Unlike many of the competitor tools, rather than selecting dates through outdated customized filtrations functionalities, analysts and report viewers can choose the built-in calendar tool to configure a report to showcase desired reporting dates such as for ‘last week’, ‘this week’, ‘last month’, ‘this month’, ‘last year’ or ‘this year to date’ to have named a few. As a matter of fact, with the advanced data selector functionality included in the build-in calendar, any combination of custom time frames can be created to meet reporting needs.?

While the built-in calendar makes selecting time frames easy in reports, ‘data blending’ gives the ability to ‘mix’ or ‘combine’ multiple data sources into a chart or graph. For example, if your number of unit sales and your costs are provided from two different sources, you can blend the sources together to be able to visualize your unit sales and costs in the same graph, making it a lot easier to consume the data.?

To conclude….

It's an exciting time for the analytics and BI industry as more and more companies of all sizes recognize the critical need to have data drive their decision making. In choosing the right data visualization tool, Google’s Looker Studio is highly recommended as it is a powerful tool in helping businesses create real-time dashboards to analyze key business data and to give teams access to consistent data to help drive successful outcomes.?