Looker Software

It is great if you really need to dive into data visualization and data analytics. However, if you only need a tool for small projects with little use, it may not be worth the investment and time.

Pros

Looker can do a lot! It has tons of features and you can really go in depth if you'd like. You can connect it with many integrators, or just use it as is. Regardless of what you do, it will be able to accomplish what you set out to do.

Cons

It is very difficult to set up, especially without an overly technical background. There is a lot of thought that must go into laying everything out.

Looker is great but you need to have power users who are able to set everything up in the background.

Pros

Once set up, Looker makes it super simple for business users to manipulate and analyze data. It creates all the joins int he background and allows a drag and drop interface.

Cons

Visualizations are not very dynamic. It is difficult to change the order in which chart series appear, for example. It's also difficult to always get the chart to look exactly how you want it.

Looker has allowed us to integrate all of our different data sources and explore them with ease to find valuable insights that help the entire organization; it also allows us to seamlessly share and implement said results.

Looker allows me to visualize data from my paid marketing programs. It is easy and simple to use both in nature and for use on a daily basis. It is easy to draw conclusions, visualize trends, and create formulas and filters without the needed background/degree as a data analyst (I do not have an SQL background).

Pros

Ease of use.

Cons

On the left-hand side, it can be difficult to see what the selections are at a quick glance in order to uncheck a field (when you cannot visualize a query)

Advice to Others

Make sure you have a data analyst explain how the field information is pulled from your product.

I tried this product out a while back and was very dissatisfied. Recently, however I have come back to it and could not be more pleased. For my small real estate business it is very to easy to use but I wouldn't say it is the most intuitive. Large scale use would definitely require probably individualized training. It has so many features it is not quite as streamlined as some other software I have used. I found I used their customer support a lot!

Looker requires some set up upfront from the tech team, but once it's up and running it creates easy access to data in user-friendly format. Visualizations and tables are both easy, and the SQL option makes it possible for more technical users to dig deep into the data.

Likes Best

As someone who does not know SQL, Looker allows me to visualize all the data coming from my paid marketing programs in the simplest way possible on a daily basis. I am able to draw conclusions, visualize trends, and create IFTT formulas and filters without a data analyst background.

Likes Least

When you can't visualize a query, it's difficult to tell what the selections are on the left hand side at a quick glance to uncheck a field.

Recommendations

Make sure you have a data analyst explain how the field information is pulled from your product.

Likes Best

So many things are done right:
- The simplicity of creating a meta schema using lookml, the learning curve is lightning fast
- The flexibility of the system, making data available to intern customer has never been so easy
- The support team is really knowledgeable and fast to answer
- The roadmap is clear and moving forward as a great speed. Most missing features that we have in mind are usually in development when we ask
- A really fun team, every meeting with looker is always a pleasure

Likes Least

Even if the team is moving fast and offering more and more features, they still lack on some of them. Mainly on dashboards.
It went a long way since the early days and now I'd say that 95% of our needs are covered.

On the other hand, their releases are so fast it's hard to keep track with all that was already implemented, the documentation is always a bit behind and searching for something precise on the discourse page can be a nightmare.

Recommendations

- Have some data ready that you want to analyze.
Don't just jump on any tool without having a fair understanding of your own database tables.
A demo on fake data will never tell you is the tool is good or not.

- Don't hesitate to try other tools to see how looker utterly destroyed the complexity of doing reports

Likes Best

When I first saw Looker (during a long BI evaluation process where we demo'd perhaps 5-10 tools) I knew it was what I had been hoping for in a BI vendor. The ease of dragging dimensions and metrics onto a canvas, the fluid way that you could generate reports, and the simplicity of drilling down into the source data all suggested this was a tool that had been built well from the ground up.

Other vendors seemed to trap you into a narrow view of your metrics, but with Looker the only restrictions were the ones built into your data model. It could easily flex to accommodate whatever data you wanted to look at.

The LookML language and the way Looker is designed to interact with your data is pretty brilliant. Even a non-data scientist and non-SQL user like me could get the hang of the basics ;)

The range of options, the configurability, the flexibility...all aces. Really you only get stuck by your imagination, the tool is powerful enough that you can solve most problems if you have the know-how.

The team is also great. Awesome culture, friendly support.

They have a continual flow of new features and improvements.

Likes Least

You do need a good BI person or ETL developer to really get the most out of this tool.

Setting up your data model really well and going to the outer limits to solve some particularly difficult queries are all things I would have had a hard time doing without technical resources on the team.

Of course it's possible Looker helps with a lot of this during implementation; we pretty much controlled our own because we had the folks in house to do it.

Recommendations

Envision your day to day reporting and the ad hoc queries you might need to answer. Put them to your sales team and see how Looker might solve them. Get a good understanding of what you'll need to both set up and maintain to suit your ongoing needs.

Likes Best

It's a great product for giving people in all departments of your company access to data and allow them to explore what your data can provide. Rather than having to always go to the Business Intelligence or Analytics team, people of any level can query data without any SQL knowledge or understanding and yield results that are either directly actionable or ask more questions that can be answered using Looker. We ran an initial 30 days trial with a view that only our analysts and BI team members would use it. By the end of the 30 days, everyone from the COO down to the account teams were using it. It's amazing.

Furthermore, the vendor is smart, responsive and constantly improving the product, delivering a new version approximately every month. Their customer service is second-to-none and they are always happy to hear about new features that you need in the product. Very pleased overall with their service, strategy and plan to expand our use of them to our clients over the next few months.

Likes Least

Looker are still very heavily US based. They have just started an EU office, but support is still largely limited to US West Coast hours (although they seem to wake up at stupid o'clock to deal with some of our issues and plan to have support in the EU soon).

Recommendations

Try it! To be fair, if you have a terrible underlying data warehouse, then all Looker will do is expose that. Make sure your data house is in reasonable order first, although a trial may show you think you need to fix that you didn't realise before. That said, Looker also makes you want to fix the problems in your underlying data so often the best way of making sure these fixes take place is to implement it and see what happens.

Likes Best

They take product feedback and implement it; the product has improved dramatically in a short period of time

Likes Least

Its hard to organize the data and keep a company of 60+ on the same page. For example, if I create a column for "total" it's hard to share with a new employee what that means and when they should use it without executing one on one training.

Additionally, there are so many features it's hard to know the best circumstance for each.

Recommendations

Provide feedback and ask questions to the support, Looker's biggest asset is the responsive and helpful support team. The more you ask & respond the more you see your recommendations implemented.

Likes Best

Very accessible to developers and makes it possible to develop a strong data model on top of existing relational data sets. Make time-based analysis very easy to do.

Likes Least

Difficult to edit model once in place. Data visualization and dashboard features are not strong. Lacking global filtering and templated dashboards. Setting up interim data caching to prevent load on core database is difficult.

Recommendations

If you're looking for a data exploration and ad-hoc analysis tools, Looker has a lot to offer. Report sharing, API-based integration with your own applications, and data visualization, though, is not its strong suit.

Likes Best

Everything.
Looker made it sexy for BI developers, and intuitive easy to use for business user.

Their support is extremely knowledgeable and always available if you need any help.
Their engineers are brilliant and their hard work is allowing frequent releases that are going in the right directions.
Looker is customer driven and will deliver what makes sense for every user.

We love the creativity and flexibility this tool is offering us, as we are able to manipulate LookML to create anything, from data extract to Process automation.

Their growth is EXPONENTIAL.
Their Doc is well maintained so you are never lost.
Their community became part of their offering, you cannot find this elsewhere.

Likes Least

We have been satisfied since day 1!

I dislike the fact that our internal users are not curious enough (or don't get it) to explore data on their own. Maybe a different UI would help people discover on their own.

Recommendations

Do you want to host the solution or having it hosted?
Are there any implementation costs associated?
Training cost?
Do you get support?
Time to implement ?
Can you use this tool for yourself? for your clients?
Do they have permissions levels?
make sure that you gather all of your internal requirements and that which ever solution pleases everyone not only marketing or engineering.