Have you heard of ThoughtSpot?
ThoughtSpot is an analytics platform that allows customers to use natural language search and AI to identify data insights and take advantage of the cloud data ecosystem's most cutting-edge advancements.
It’s a hot topic in the world of BI and embedded analytics. But is it worth the investment?
In this article, we’ll explore exactly what ThoughtSpot is, its pros and cons, whether or not it should be used for business intelligence and reporting, and how DashboardFox complements the platform beautifully.
What is ThoughtSpot?
ThoughtSpot is a relatively new analytics software that allows customers to use natural language search capabilities and artificial intelligence to identify data and take advantage of the cloud data ecosystem's most cutting-edge advancements. According to the vendor, businesses can empower every person with the power of their contemporary data stack, expand the value of their data to partners and consumers, and automate entire business processes.
Customers may use ThoughtSpot's web and mobile applications to help employees make better decisions. Customers may also integrate consumer-grade analytics into their SaaS products or create brand-new interactive data apps that engage consumers and keep them coming back for more using ThoughtSpot's low-code development platform. According to the vendor, Walmart, Hulu, and Metromile use ThoughtSpot to alter how their employees and consumers use data.
Everyone can use ThoughtSpot to develop, consume, and operationalize data-driven insights. Their developer-friendly platform, ThoughtSpot Everywhere, makes it simple to build interactive data apps that interface with your existing cloud infrastructure, while their consumer-grade search and AI technology provide genuine self-service analytics that anybody can use.
ThoughtSpot is built to give everyone a familiar consumer-grade search experience to detect anomalies and trends instantly and everyday chances to enhance your bottom line by creating new insights on-demand and auto-analyzing billions of rows of data.
Users can turn billions of rows of data into granular insights that can be accessed from anywhere with a single tap and produce personalized, interactive, and actionable insights from your cloud data in seconds. Users can integrate ThoughtSpot with their cloud-based data lake and begin live-querying their data in minutes. No matter where they are, users can efficiently scale in any direction to match business needs and gain access to insights.
Why Pick ThoughtSpot Over Other Technologies?
Most businesses have some data management system in place. Unfortunately, many people aren't aware of the company's BI technologies. Changing how you approach strategic business intelligence could be advantageous, and ThoughtSpot can undoubtedly assist.
To begin with, it is quite efficient. ThoughtSpot's Relational Search Engine allows users to type their queries the same way on any other internet search engine. It generates a data visualization model based on the results in seconds.
Because users can do it themselves, there is no "middle man" in this arrangement. This method also avoids the requirement for time-consuming and expensive BI training. Users need not be fluent in SQL to develop insights and reports successfully. The Relational Search Engine helps people find what they're looking for by making suggestions.
ThoughtSpot also has a great collaboration feature. It's no secret that data insights don't just appear out of nowhere. Users require a method for disseminating BI throughout their team, department, company, and ecosystem. Embedded BI allows them to do so. ThoughtSpot, for example, integrates directly into corporate apps and workflows in various ways, enabling quick collaboration.
ThoughtSpot also has a high level of profitability. Performance management and business intelligence are inextricably linked. Leaders may use the greatest BI to track performance at all levels, answering ad hoc queries and uncovering insights buried in data. The SpotIQ AI Engine uses artificial intelligence to reveal actionable insights in seconds, completing what a team of human analysts would take hours to complete.
Leaders can then use applicable patterns, anomalies, or indicators to inform their business decisions. Thanks to AI-powered BI, firms can make data-driven decisions that help them cut costs and increase revenue. Furthermore, machine-learning algorithms aid in the refinement of this technology over time, ensuring that insight becomes more valuable over time.
ThoughtSpot has a lot of advantages over similar technologies. Unfortunately, no one tool is perfect. Thoughtspot is notably lacking when it comes to customization. Many of the font, color, size, and other cosmetic customizations for visualized charts you would expect from a BI tool like this is not included with ThoughtSpot.
This could change in the future, but as it currently stands– you can’t customize charts the way you should with this tool. Just as well, customers of ThoughtSpot have noted that AI thresholding is less than ideal.
While this description is glowing, ThoughtSpot has some glaring flaws. Let's break those down, in addition to the benefits of ThoughtSpot.
What are the Benefits?
There are many benefits to using ThoughtSpot:
- It’s highly intuitive.
- It’s swift and proactive.
- The user interface is very clean and modern.
- The filters and ability to create filters is very useful.
- The visualizations are quite beautiful and clean.
- The querying functionality is quite intelligent.
- Embedding is very useful and smooth.
- Offers last-mile capabilities and excellent search analytics.
- Is very business user-friendly.
- TMT is speedy.
What are the Disadvantages?
Unfortunately, ThoughtSpot does have its downsides:
- Chart recommendations are often lackluster.
- Visualizations aren’t as compelling as other embedded analytics tools.
- Doesn’t offer color-coding heatmaps like other platforms.
- Dashboard drill down could be significantly improved.
- Lacks chart size options.
- AI thresholding is lackluster.
- Is lacking in terms of overall cosmetic visualizations and customizations.
Should ThoughtSpot Be Used for Business Intelligence, Reports, and Dashboards?
To put it simply, ThoughtSpot is a popular tool, but it is niche-oriented. This tool is better suited for being more complimentary to BI tools rather than standing as a solid tool. When used with other BI tools, ThoughtSpot can shine.
How Can DashboardFox Help with ThoughtSpot-Based Dashboards and Reports?
DashboardFox is a self-service BI tool that can provide the perfect compliment to ThoughtSpot in your environment.
DashboardFox shines when it comes to securely sharing dashboards/reports to the masses. To be able to enable your team with self-service, ad-hoc report creation and simple and powerful slicing and dicing of dashboard data.
Unlike our mainstream competitors, DashboardFox is a fraction of the upfront cost and, even better, more long-term savings in operations, maintenance, and renewals. This money can go back into your people resources (and tools like ThoughtSpot) to build a robust data analytics capability.
Reach out to us by scheduling a meeting, taking things up a notch, and booking a free live demo session. We will be waiting!