Data analysis tool
We need a data analysis tool that can be updated everyday and handle large data sets with hundreds of rows of information. Currently we use Excel for our sales reports. It has basic info like sku, dates, notes, inventory and other basic formulas. The problems is that it's a large file and Excel starts up super slow. We can't eliminate the formulas or delete past data. I was thinking Microsoft access might help us. Any other suggestions? Thanks! 🙏🏽
You could use a mix of Excel Power Pivot and store the source data in an Access Database. Secondly, Microsoft has it's own business intelligence tool called Power BI. It has a free tier for you to test out on your data set before deploying it to other users.
I don't fully understand Microsoft access. Care to explain like I'm 5? Lol
Access is a Microsoft software application that gently introduces users to rational databases. Rational databases allow users to join like identities across multiple data sets. It is not a hard application to learn but it is hard to master because it can scale to millions of records, a user can make forms/user interfaces to collect data, it can connect to many types of data sources (Excel Sheets, CSV files etc.) Access also has reporting capabilities but reporting is not as easy to utilize in comparison to Power BI or Excel.
Import the files into a cloud data warehouse solution like BigQuery or the equivalent of that your company can use. You can sync it to Tableau or DataStudio to make dashboards. There are solutions across the board that would be faster than the setup you describe.
We use looker but I am not proficient with it. Much less SQL.
PowerBI obviously
This. This is the best kind of solution which is poweful and still within the Microsoft ecosystem. It's barely peanuts in price compared to tableau , and stakeholders like using it since it's very similar to excel.
Qubole
Hey so, excel is doing two things for you right now: 1. Transform: you’re putting your data set here. It changes it, summarized it, and let’s you control things... 2. Display: it takes your transformed data and displays it in graphs. I recommend the following: 1. Use a tool like excel, alteryx, or knime (free alteryx) to transform your data 2. Take your transformed data set and visualize it in anything else (it’ll be faster if you split it up) - tableau, power bi, looker...
From my experience, Power BI/Tableau have the capability to clean/transform data
Tableau / Domo