Looker Overview
What is Looker?
Looker’s intuitive approach to data exploration makes the spread of a curiosity-driven culture both efficient and effective. An intuitive, web-based interface enables business users to tap into the genius of your data analytics team. They can build and share reports on the fly, so other functional groups can benefit from the questions they’re asking and the knowledge they’ve created. And since the whole Looker experience delivers such satisfying results, they start looking to the data to drive their business decisions and activities.
At the heart of Looker data discovery is a new way to create these web-based experiences. Using a flexible easy-to-learn language called LookML, your data analysts can create mini-applications that add power and efficiencies to data exploration. The LookML syntax simplifies the development of robust models for any organization, while enhancing the capabilities of SQL. There’s no need to expend time and resources coding queries on an ad hoc basis or setting up complex business intelligence (BI) software platforms. This language-based approach results in faster query execution, optimizing performance along the way.
Looker Overview
Pricing
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Contact Looker for pricing information.
Looker Features
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Looker Reviews
Looker Reviews
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The perfect solution for our stage business
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.
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Looker Pricing
Looker Pricing
Contact Looker for pricing information.
Contact Looker for pricing information.
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Looker Features
Looker Features
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Categories
Categories
Additional information for Looker
Additional information for Looker
Key features of Looker
- APIs for integration into custom or third-party applications
- Browser-based interface & customizable dashboards
- Easy to build dashboards that work on any device.
- Extensible modeling language defines measures & dimensions
- Fully customizable charts, reports and graphs.
- In-database architecture, so transformations happen at query
- Live connection to any SQL database, on any infrastructure
- Modern IDE for agile development & embellishment
- Powerful tools for realtime data exploration & collaboration
Benefits
With Looker, it's not necessary to ETL or cube data. Because we operate 100% in-database, data is transformed at query time, so drill-paths are unlimited and infinite, leading to true data discovery.
Looker FAQs
Looker FAQs
Below are some frequently asked questions for Looker.
Q. What type of pricing plans does Looker offer?
Looker offers the following pricing plans:
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Not Available
Contact Looker for pricing information.
Q. What are the main features of Looker?
Looker offers the following features:
- APIs for integration into custom or third-party applications
- Browser-based interface & customizable dashboards
- Easy to build dashboards that work on any device.
- Extensible modeling language defines measures & dimensions
- Fully customizable charts, reports and graphs.
- In-database architecture, so transformations happen at query
- Live connection to any SQL database, on any infrastructure
- Modern IDE for agile development & embellishment
- Powerful tools for realtime data exploration & collaboration
Q. Who are the typical users of Looker?
Looker has the following typical customers:
Small Business, Large Enterprises, Non Profit, Mid Size Business
Q. What languages does Looker support?
Looker supports the following languages:
English
Q. Does Looker support mobile devices?
We do not have any information about what devices Looker supports
Q. What other apps does Looker integrate with?
Looker integrates with the following applications:
Alooma, Dropbox Business, Improvado, Kustomer, LoginRadius, Panoply, Rippling, Workable, Workpuls, Xplenty
Q. What level of support does Looker offer?
Looker offers the following support options:
Knowledge Base, Online Support, FAQs, Forum, Video Tutorials
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.