Item: Looker
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Looker is being used across our entire organization and by every single department. We generally use Looker to address business-related metrics like health checks, MRR, C$R. It is a single source for us to determine how our business is progressing. It is a great tool to get cross-functional data and use that to provide feedback or make changes to our structure or initiatives.

Pros and Cons

SQL Capabilities
Pivots and calculations
Easy filtering

The visualization isn't the best
The left sidebar coloring makes it hard to see what is selected (bad for accessibility)

Return on Investment

Connecting our various data sources into our C$R, revenue retention, and other SaaS economic metrics

Alternatives Considered

MySQL and Mixpanel

I used Mixpanel a bit a while ago at the same company and our set-up of the program wasn't good so it was impossible to find what I needed to do my reporting. Now with Looker the setup is generally solid and if you have SQL Runner access in Looker you can get anything you need.

Data Integration

With SQL Runner and the proper SQL skills and access you can merge data easily. The built-in merges are not great so for a general marketer or sales person it may be tough to get what you need if it hasn't already been built-in by your BI or product teams.

Collaboration and Sharing

I find it very easy to share reports with people (especially because of the temporary URL's when editing a query). The dashboards are a nice feature, especially since you can send them out automatically. This is beneficial for waterfalls and other notifications.

Key Insights

Do you think Looker delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Looker's feature set?

Yes

Did Looker live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Looker go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Looker again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Zoom, Slack, Airtable

Usability

You do need to have two things in order to effectively use Looker:

You need to know how your internal data systems and naming is set up
You also need to understand in general data visualization. Some SQL and some Excel

If you have those things then you can use it no problem. I do know that those skills aren't exactly some that everyone has though which is why I gave it a 6.

Support Rating

N/A I have never had to contact support

Likelihood to Recommend

I love Looker and it helps on the "money" side of the business to see where you stand. I generally don't like using it for product data because the visualization isn't great. If you are comfortable and familiar with excel and SQL, Looker is an easy transition and you will pick it up quite quickly.

Looker helps us organize our business data

Overall Satisfaction with Looker