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MicroStrategy Tutorial for Beginners

Microstrategy for Beginners

Introduction:

In this MicroStrategy tutorial you will learn MicroStrategy from the basics to help you learn this top Business Intelligence tool. MicroStrategy is a Business Intelligence(BI) and On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) software which allows reporting and analysis of data from a variety of sources, including data warehouses, Excel files, and Hadoop distributions. Using this tool, users can easily transform big data into instinctive dashboards and reports for greater analytical insights to make informed.

Recommended audience:

Software Architects, ETL Developers, Data Specialists, Business Reporting Professionals, Entry-level developers and advanced data professionals eager to build career in Visualization and Analytics can learn MicroStrategy from this tutorial.

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Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to learn MicroStrategy from this MicroStrategy Tutorial. But having a basic IT and OS knowledge is beneficial. If you have a prior knowledge of data analytics and reporting tools then it is definitely an added advantage.

What is MicroStrategy?

Criteria How MicroStrategy Excels?
Types of data Can work with any type of data
Self-sustaining features Offers a complete ecosystem of BI tools
Speed and scalability Excellent
Mobile analytics yes

MicroStrategy is a business intelligence tool that is widely used for deriving valuable insights from data in the form of visually insightful reports, graphs and charts. MicroStrategy can connect to any type of data including big data, flat files, social media data and so on. MicroStrategy offers an intuitive way to create and modify business intelligence reports and dashboards using the MicroStrategy Desktop.

Why is MicroStrategy so widely used?

MicroStrategy is a powerful business intelligence tool that helps organizations to stay on top of the data and convert it into valuable business insights. Some of the reasons that makes MicroStrategy such a widespread tool are as follows:

  • It can easily connect with existing enterprise apps and systems
  • It is completely scalable, reusable and offers centralized administration
  • It offers a complete BI ecosystem thus eliminating need for other tools
  • It is extremely user-friendly thus removing the need for IT support
  • It leverages direct database access and in-memory processing offering high-speed response
  • It offers unmatched mobile analytics features thus putting the power at your fingertips.

Features of MicroStrategy

Data Discovery
MicroStrategy has an excellent data discovery feature. Data discovery is a part of business intelligence process wherein you connect to data from disparate sources and data in the form of data silos and so on. MicroStrategy can help you connect to data which is in formats like big data, flat files and so on. When the data discovery is done the right way it paves the way for data drilling and so on in a seamless manner.

Data Wrangling
Data wrangling is the process of cleaning and transforming data in a format that is easily deployed for extracting business insights out of it. MicroStrategy has excellent features for cleansing, structuring and enriching data in order to aid the process of business intelligence reporting.

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Data Mining and Predictive Analysis
You can deploy a wider range of data mining and data modeling tools along with MicroStrategy to augment its native analytical capabilities. Anybody can use these data mining features like report designers, business users and analysts. You can then build predictive analytics reports on top of it and distribute it to any device.

Library of Analytics Functions
MicroStrategy offers a comprehensive library that has a great set of data mining, mathematical and financial functionalities which helps to understand the connection between data, gauge performance metrics and statistical analysis reports.

Extensible Visualization Library
When it comes to visualization MicroStrategy has a great set of tools. You can use hundreds of open source tools for visualizing the data along with the built-in tools. You can also deploy the visualization builder, or you can also create a new visualization from scratch.

Real-time Dashboards
MicroStrategy also lets you work with real-time data through the deployment of real-time dashboards. This will help businesses stay on top of the business by monitoring information in real-time. You can also get scheduled updates thus ensuring that you get the latest data.

Embedded BI
You can also benefit from embedded business intelligence thanks to MicroStrategy out of the box tools that can be seamlessly embedded into other tools and platforms like SharePoint, WebSphere, NetWeaver and so on. MicroStrategy offers a simple integration kit that includes sample coding and documentation.

Applications of MicroStrategy

There are a huge number of industries that are using MicroStrategy. Some of the most important applications of MicroStrategy are as below:

  • Predictive analytics in the banking and insurance domain
  • Customer feedback reports through social media analysis
  • Providing an omni-channel experience using various customer touchpoints
  • New products launch using various market and customer data
  • Converting big data into reports and then filtering down business insights

Why should you learn MicroStrategy?

This MicroStrategy tutorial will show you why you should learn MicroStrategy. The world’s foremost research firm Gartner recognizes MicroStrategy as a top challenger to the incumbents in the business intelligence and analytics segment. Thus. in the near future the chances that MicroStrategy will land in the leader’s quadrant of Gartner Magic Quadrant are very much true. Thus if you are able to work with this tool and show your expertise then your skills would be demanded by the enterprises that are already deploying or will soon deploy MicroStrategy as a business intelligence tool.

What are the strengths of MicroStrategy?

Here in this part of the MicroStrategy tutorial we will learn about some of the unique strengths of MicroStrategy.
So, here are some of the strong points of MicroStrategy:

  • It offers advanced and predictive analytics features
  • It is deployed in the cloud saving you infrastructure costs
  • It is very easy to use and maintain
  • It is a high-performance, self-service analytics tool
  • It can be extensively used for solving big data problems.

About the Author

Data Analyst & Machine Learning Associate

As a Data Analyst and machine learning associate, Nishtha combines her analytical skills and machine learning knowledge to interpret complicated datasets. She is also a passionate storyteller who transforms crucial findings into gripping tales that further influence data-driven decision-making in the business frontier.