Looker Product Overview

Looker, acquired by Google in 2019, is a business intelligence (BI) platform that enables businesses to explore, analyze, and visualize their data. With self-service and governed BI capabilities, Looker supports users in making data-driven decisions, enhancing efficiency, and improving customer experiences.

The platform's integration with other Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, including BigQuery and Data Studio, expands its capabilities and accessibility. Looker's user-friendly interface makes it straightforward for users, regardless of their prior experience with BI solutions, to initiate their data analytics initiatives.

Looker delivers a comprehensive range of features, such as self-service analytics, embedded applications, and modern business intelligence environments. It is an ideal choice for businesses looking to leverage their data for informed decision-making and better outcomes.

Looker Pros

Looker’s data model provides a steady and governed real-time data view on multiple clouds for the entire organization.
It enables organizations to embed proactive insights within business applications, facilitating better business decisions.
The software automates data analysis tasks, such as data preparation and reporting, resulting in time and resource savings, as well as more accurate data analysis.
Looker offers enterprise-grade security with features like role-based access control, data encryption, and audit logging. It ensures data security and compliance with security policies.
With Looker’s unified semantic layer, data professionals can simplify complex data for end users by codifying business logic and metrics within centralized data models.

Looker Cons

The software can only connect to a limited number of data sources, which may be a problem for businesses that use a large number of data sources.
Currently, Looker does not have a mobile app.

Looker Key Features

Embedded analytics

Looker's embedded dashboards enable businesses to extend their data insights and give users advanced data exploration within their preferred applications or websites. This feature enhances data accessibility and visibility, allowing a wider audience to make data-driven decisions. Embedded analytics also lets businesses reach users who may not be familiar with traditional BI platforms.

Single source of truth

The software provides organizations with a single source of truth for their data for consistency and accuracy. This centralized approach facilitates reliable data analysis and informed decision-making. By allowing everyone to access and work with the same data, Looker fosters collaboration and optimizes the decision-making process. Teams can collaborate, utilizing a unified dataset to reach correct conclusions. Looker eliminates discrepancies and variations in data interpretation, creating a shared understanding and alignment across the organization.

Self-service BI

Users can build their dashboards and reports without IT assistance with Looker. With self-service BI, employees can access and analyze data on their own. This frees up IT teams, letting them focus on other tasks.

Collaborative dashboards

Looker dashboards are sharable with other users, streamlining data analysis collaboration. Collaborative dashboards get everyone on the same page and ensure that everyone is using the same data.

Automation

Users can automate data cleaning, formatting, report generation, and data analysis with Looker, letting organizations maximize the value of their data assets. Businesses benefit from time and resource savings while maintaining data quality and integrity. Looker allows organizations to identify trends, patterns, and actionable insights within their data.