Top 10 Data Science Tools for Small Businesses

Data Science has emerged out as a strong contender for the most influential technologies of the 21st century. The abundance of data has enabled companies to fuel their business with it. But how does a small-scale industry differ in its usage of data from a large-scale one?

In this article, we will walk you through some of the most powerful data science tools for small businesses required to make them better and reach their market potential.

Best Data Science Tools for Small Businesses

Data Science for Small Businesses

Companies are competing for a larger sphere of influence using various data-related technologies. In order to keep up with the competition, there are various tools that can help you to keep your business on top of the curve. However, the usage of tools depends on the size of your industry.

Based on the amount of data consumption, event handling and size of the venture, we classify businesses into Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) and large scale enterprise.

In this article, we will focus on the former and discuss various tools utilized by SMEs to improve their data-driven performance.

We will discuss various commercial tools utilized for a variety of applications like sales management and forecasting, website traffic analytics, audience segmentation, business intelligence etc.

We will list down ten tools that SMEs can use to their advantage. So, let’s learn data science tools for small businesses.

Best Data Science Tools for Small Businesses

So, here is the list of top data science tools for small business. These tools prove helpful for the growth of small businesses. Let’s discuss them –

1. Google Analytics

For companies requiring Search Engine Optimization to validate their websites, Google Analytics offers statistical and analytical tools. Its free analytics platform provides companies with various insights about user traffic visiting their websites. The features of Google Analytics are:

• Google Analytics informs you about the traffic reports. This gives you the ability to track user trends and understand
• It helps you to track conversion points on your website and check to see referrals that directed the traffic to your website.
• With Google Analytics you can analyze the keywords that the user typed in order to search for your website.

Google Analytics embeds tracking codes in websites to help you know about the visitors on your page and use statistical analysis to create important insights.

Learn more about Google Analytics in detail

2. Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is a data analytics tool geared towards Business Intelligence. It helps you to combine all of your data sources in one place and gives you the power to analyze it in one go. You can avail interactive visualizations and drag & drop properties.

It also gives you a cloud-based alternative over the local application of your OS. Using this tool will help you to create smarter business decisions and will provide you with all the essential features in one place. Also, you can create custom apps for your specific BI needs.

Qlik Sense provides a free service for up to five users. However, you can upgrade it to a paid service for more users and to allow collaboration across users.

Learn more about Qlik Sense

3. Excel

Probably one of the most widely used tools for small-scale analytics, Microsoft Excel has been in usage for a long time. Various features of Microsoft Excel include calculations, spreadsheets, graphing, pivot tables, etc.

Using Excel you can use pre-built formulae or you can customize your own. Recently, Excel has gained traction in the field of Data Science.

Excel lags behind more advanced tools that can handle a large amount of data but for small business that do not cater to such volume of data, Excel is an ideal choice. It is also a powerful tool for data cleaning as it provides a GUI environment for the users that enable them to preprocess information.

4. InsightSquared

InsightSquared is an analytical tool for sales management. It takes away the mundane task of analyzing spreadsheets and develops an automatic tool to gather data.

It provides sales intelligence for companies to improve their sales performance. InsightSquared also provides tools for lead generation, profit analysis, activity monitoring, etc.

Overall, Insightsquared can be an excellent tool for business intelligence related tasks. Its ability to combine all the powerful features of BI into one single space makes it a compact tool for all small business solutions.

Since small businesses require a more comprehensive package for the lesser price, InsightSquared can prove to be a very useful tool for it. It offers a free trial while its paid services are scalable.

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5. Birst

Birst is a cloud-based Business Intelligence Platform. It focuses on development BI as well as the end user based querying and data-visualization. Birst is handy when it comes to data-preprocessing prior to data analysis.

It does so by running the data through ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) Platform and proceeding to create a data warehouse for final analysis of data.

It offers a user-friendly exploration of data and gives the user the control to regulate the data. Birst embeds all the analytics and graphs in dashboards. Perhaps the most important aspect of using this tool is the quote based pricing and customization of packages to suit smaller businesses.

6. Tableau

Tableau is a specialized tool dedicated to data visualization. It also focuses on business intelligence. Tableau is capable of querying relational databases, spreadsheets, OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cubes, cloud database, etc.

It basically converts these form of databases into interactive dashboards. Tableau for people without any programming expertise.

Tableau is fast, capable of analyzing millions of rows in few seconds. Since it requires no previous programming experience. It relies on drag and drops to visualize data. Tableau has a free variant called Tableau Public which allows you to share your visualizations on a public platform.

7. CrazyEgg

For SMEs running websites, it is necessary to keep track of the traffic visiting website and understand trends of users interacting with it.

A/B testing is the most popular methodology to analyze the performance of websites and the traffic it attracts. CrazyEGG allows you to embed these features on your website to boost its performance.

It allows you to take snapshots of webpages and creates reports that reflect the user’s click behavior. Furthermore, its recording feature allows you to live track users as they navigate your website. CrazyEgg comes with several price ranges that can suit your small scale company requirements.

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8. Tibco Spotfire

Tibco offers products and tools that focus on Data Visualization, Analytics and Data Management. It facilitates easier access for beginners in analytics and provides deep insights to veterans. Tibco Spotfire offers a simple intuitive experience for users through its AI powered insights.

It also allows your business to reach a competitive edge with its powerful streaming analytics system. Its state of the art geo-analytics and predictive modeling makes data science a much easier task for your firm.

It also consists of advanced data wrangling solutions that can automatically spot data deficiencies and inconsistencies for you to transform it easily. It comes with a 30-day free trial so that you can ascertain it for your company.

9. Kissmetrics

If your company is looking to maximize the return of investment in marketing, Kissmetrics can prove to be an ideal tool. It allows you to identify potential and loyal customer segments. It also provides active support on social media marketing campaigns for you to analyze active customers participating in it.

Kissmetric users can participate in web-based training to improve their marketing campaigns, articles and infographics. Just like other tools, Kissmetrics offers a limited free trial period during which you can decide if the product best fits your company requirements.

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10. ClearStory Data

ClearStory Data specializes in data mining and advanced analytics for presenting data to the user in simple terms. Small businesses can avail the benefit of ClearStory Data by combining the business-related data with external data to create interactive dashboards called StoryBoard.

It also facilitates team discussions through open collaborations and you can interact with StoryBoards like social media.

In general, ClearStory provides AI powered analytics platform that is capable of taking smart decisions to boost the performance of your company.

So, this was all in Data Science tools for small businesses. Hope you liked our explanation.

Summary

So, in this article of data science tools for small businesses, we saw data science has created opportunities for companies to grow their businesses. Depending on the size of the company and its data consumption, the tools required also vary.

There are several tools tailored by keeping in mind the customers who utilize the product. In the end, it depends on the company to decide the utility of the tool and use it for their business requirements.

Still, if you want to ask anything related to data science tools for small businesses ask in the comment section. We will definitely help you.

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