The perfect solution for our stage business

I could not be happier with Looker. My one hesitation in recommending it is that other tools seemed to be able to provide 80% of the value at 20% of the cost, but I've only demoed those tools and not actually used them so I'm not sure if they could actually deliver.

Pros

Looker is incredibly easy to use for a casual user, which most of our users are. As soon as your email is activated, you have access to the product and new users need very little direction to start getting value out of it.

Cons

Relative to other BI tools, the advanced charting functionality is somewhat limited, but frankly that's not the main reason we bought Looker. Data scientists can use another tool of their choice, we have Looker for people who aren't data scientists.

Looker Review

Pros

Easy to create dashboards without engineers needing to write code.

Cons

Still not very good yet for a multi-tenant embedded environment. Needs a lot of work to set up and the API is slow.

Data manager as a factor to improve decision making

Looker has helped us by collecting, visualizing and analyzing our data to be more organized as a company, which has been a fundamental milestone for our growth as an organization based on our decision making. Another point to highlight and from which we have benefited is the availability and quick response of Looker's customer service team. It is a tool based on data management ideal for any organization that through the generation of analysis and reports will facilitate decision making in favor of business growth.

Pros

Looker is a tool that has allowed us, through the collection and representation, in a very comfortable control panel where the data is shown, helping the analysis and making the appropriate decisions for the growth of our business. I like how easy it is to understand Looker's operation to start taking advantage of its features, in addition to having a very attentive customer service team.

Cons

So far we haven't had any problems or inconveniences with Looker, it has given us what we needed.

Controlled Analytics Exploration

Like I said, it's a great tool for analysts that don't need a lot of flexibility or maybe just aren't used to working with a lot of data. To get the full value out of this software, you'll need a core group of experienced Data Analysts that can learn fast (to learn Lookers Table Calculation code which is similar to SQL) who can build a bunch of dashboards and views. You really don't want people who aren't savvy with data doing a lot of the creating because measures are always aggregated based on the dimensions you pull into each table...if a user forgets to add a specific dimension then measures could show the wrong value. This could be offset by having really good developers who architect the data in a way that doesn't allow this to happen.

Pros

It's a great data exploration tool for users who normally would get anxious when given a large dataset in something like Excel. It's generally simple to use and there can be unlimited Viewers (users at the lowest permissions level) through the enterprise product. Data Visualization is essentially done for you and Exploers (users at the second level of permissions) can build new visualizations & turn them into interactive dashboards. On the Looker platform, Explorers can locate a view (called an Explore) and then are given a list of dimensions and measures they can pull into a table. Users can create new dimensions using calculated fields and then save their views so any users with Viewer permissions (and up) can see what was put together.

Cons

With simplicity comes lack of flexibility. More skilled data analysts will want more flexibility than Looker can provide but at the same time you need to have highly skilled Data Analysts to be the Developers (high level of permissions) to set up the data so that less skilled analysts (the users who benefit from Looker most) who are Explorers don't build views that grossly misrepresent the data. My biggest pet peeve with this software as an Explorer is that you cannot make calculations on the base data...only the data that you pull into your table (called table calculations). That is a major feature that Tableau has that Looker does not have at the Explorer permission level. Of course developers can use LookML (Lookers data language) to create a new column...but a Developer license is more expensive and creating the fields take time and it's something you constantly will need.

Great tool for building customized dashboard and KPI tracking reports

I use Looker every week to track the performance of different channels for user acquisition. It allows me to quickly understand which channels are over or underperforming so that we can adjust the strategy accordingly. I really enjoy my experience with this tool.

Pros

Looker is a very complete tool that allows you to build customized dashboard and KPI tracking reports. I really enjoy the level of customization it allows (different type of charts, tables, etc.) as well as how easy it is to share it with your team. I recommend this tool!

Cons

Looker requires a bit of technical knowledge about data analytics in order to customize some of the tables and reports. If you don't have much knowledge in this field, it might be a bit hard to create the reports and tables with the data you're looking for.