Power BI vs QlikView: Which One is Right for Your Business Intelligence Strategy?

According to 70% of companies agree that data visualization is essential for easily identifying trends, patterns, and other key insights to make informed decisions. While there are several business intelligence tools available, Power BI and Qlik have emerged as two of the most influential players in the industry.

Given that both tools provide powerful features, selecting the right one for your needs can be a bit tricky. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, offering a thorough comparison of QlikView vs Power BI to help guide your decision.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a powerful and flexible business intelligence tool that streamlines the connection, modeling, and visualization of data. It allows users to create detailed reports and insights based on key performance indicators (KPIs), helping businesses make data-driven decisions with confidence. Power BI also makes it easy to share analytics and insights across teams, ensuring collaboration. The platform guarantees accurate data processing and analysis while maintaining strong security and consistency. With Power BI, users can generate pixel-perfect reports, create semantic models, and design fixed layouts – all within a single platform.

What is QlikView?

Like Power BI, QlikView is a robust business intelligence platform that provides a comprehensive suite of data visualization tools, such as graphs, charts, tables, maps, dashboards, and gauges. Its in-memory technology allows users to quickly load and manipulate data from various sources effortlessly. A key strength of QlikView is its associative analysis, which uncovers relationships and patterns across different dimensions and filters, offering users deeper and more meaningful insights.

Power BI vs QlikView – Key Differences

Here are some key differences between Power BI and QlikView that highlight how these two powerful business intelligence tools differ in their features and capabilities:

• Data Analysis: Power BI is known for its flexibility and user-friendly interface, but it can encounter difficulties when working with large or complex datasets. In contrast, QlikView is designed to efficiently handle large datasets and perform calculations quickly. It also excels in visualization performance, which is crucial for making data-driven decisions.
• Customization: Power BI offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to tailor dashboards and reports to their specific needs. QlikView, while customizable, provides fewer options for personalization and flexibility compared to Power BI.
• Performance: Power BI generally delivers solid performance, though its efficiency can depend on hardware and dataset size. On the other hand, QlikView is known for strong performance, especially with large and complex datasets, though it may face challenges when dealing with extremely large volumes of data.

Qlikview vs Power BI: Comparison

It’s important to highlight that two of the top four analytics and business intelligence platforms in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant are QlikView (within the broader Qlik platform) and Microsoft Power BI. While both are highly ranked, Power BI (Microsoft) significantly outpaces its competitors.

1. Data Sources:

QlikView consolidates all your data sources into a single platform, making it easier to access and combine both internal and external data for a complete view. Similarly, Power BI allows you to connect multiple data sources into one simplified platform, streamlining the process of accessing and analyzing data. This makes it easier to uncover trends and make informed business decisions. Additionally, Microsoft Power BI offers seamless integration with Azure databases and goes further by allowing you to connect third-party services like Salesforce and Google Analytics, expanding its versatility. 

2. Data Visualization: 

To make data viewing easier, QlikView uses color-coded customization, where irrelevant data is colored gray instead of being removed. This approach not only saves time but also allows for the possibility of revisiting and analyzing that data later to see if it holds any value. However, beginners might find navigating QlikView’s self-service features challenging, especially if they lack technical expertise. Creating visuals could be tricky due to the complexity of its filtering system.

In contrast, Power BI offers a much more user-friendly interface, making it accessible even for those with no technical background. It includes interactive reports, scalable dashboards, and embedded visuals that enhance the user experience. The interactive panels feature tiles that display individual data sets, which are linked for easy comparison and analysis. The reports are designed to focus on the most important information, preventing users from feeling overwhelmed or confused. 

3. Ease of Operation:

Power BI offers straightforward dashboards and reports that are easy to understand and use, similar to the familiar layout of MS Excel. These reports and dashboards can be accessed from any device, including both mobile and desktop computers. On the other hand, QlikView can be more challenging to grasp due to its wide range of features and display options, which may be overwhelming for those without a background in data analysis.  

4. Accessibility and UI:

Due to its steeper learning curve and advanced functionality, QlikView is better suited for data scientists or developers. Its highly customizable and flexible user interface allows analysts to tailor the setup to their specific requirements. In contrast, Power BI is generally more user-friendly, with a variety of intuitive, visual features that make it accessible to users across all levels of an organization. 

5. Ease of learning:

QlikView is well-suited for individuals with a Data Science background, as its advanced features are more easily navigable by those with technical expertise. However, for others, it may feel overly complex. In contrast, Power BI offers a more approachable learning curve thanks to its user-friendly interface, making it easier for a wider range of users to get up to speed.

6. Mobility and Sharing: 

QlikView is designed with a focus on desktop use, requiring a large screen to fully consume reports. It also doesn’t allow report users to create their own visualizations. In contrast, Power BI was developed with a strong emphasis on cloud-based access, optimized for mobile and tablet devices. Power BI offers its own mobile app (Power BI Mobile), enabling users to create reports directly from a mobile view. Additionally, Power BI makes it easy to collaborate by generating and sharing visuals based on underlying datasets.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the decision between QlikView and Power BI depends on an organization’s specific needs and preferences. For businesses already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, Power BI is a standout choice, offering seamless integration with Microsoft tools, a wide range of visualization options, and an intuitive interface. Its user-friendly design also makes it ideal for those who want to achieve efficiency without needing extensive technical knowledge.

In contrast, QlikView’s unique associative data model offers a flexible and interconnected approach to data exploration, allowing organizations to uncover insights in more dynamic and customized ways. While QlikView excels in offering flexibility for advanced data analysis, Power BI’s simplicity, powerful visualizations, and strong Microsoft integration make it a solid option for a broad range of business needs. To help companies assess the potential of Power BI, Techcronus offers a free Power BI assessment, allowing businesses to evaluate the platform’s capabilities and how it can address their specific requirements.