Data analytics at a click 

Qlik is leveraging Talend, a recently acquired data transformation firm, to assist customers in data management, integration, and analysis. 

“Qlik is a data integration and analytics platform that helps enterprise companies to take the raw data from multiple systems, to integrate that data in real time, and to pass it on to the business users so they get the best business outcome decisions, as fast as possible and as accurate as possible”, said Tuna Yemisci  Qlik regional director for Middle East, Africa & East Med, at a recent event in Johannesburg. 

“Qlik has 40,000 customers across the globe and the majority are not enterprise customers. Over 500 are found in Africa, many of which are SMEs and small customers. The business version can be a few dollars a month, depending on the use case for the business. 

“Qlik had to prove itself over 15 years, and has come from a small customer enterprise, as a bottom-to-up company. Today the top 10 banking organisations and top 7 pharmaceutical organisations use the platform.”

Principal solution architect Noman Latiff and senior solution architect Giacomo Brioschi, demonstrated the latest innovations in the Qlik portfolio to help one manage, integrate, analyse and act on one’s data. Attendees of the event gasped when it was shown that typing in a text command resulted in Qlik generating the necessary code to display required information. 

Yemisci says: “From a data analytics perspective, it is fascinating to see the integration of AI tools, and how they have simplified the process to retrieve underlying data”.

The presentation which demonstrated ChatGPT’s ability to learn from Qlik’s resources, demonstrated how little coding knowledge is necessary for data analysis.

 “Technology like ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting coding. Qlik is a drag-and-drop platform, but showcases possible future technology integration possibilities.”

“Coding used to be highly IT-orientated, but business users can now ask the platform a question, and it will complete the data analysis for them. Coding won’t go away; there is still an important place for it.

“Cloud is changing the way companies reach out to analytics. Talend did not invest in the African market, but Qlik will be heavily invested in the region. Driving the adoption to hopefully triple our customer base, especially on the data integration side in South Africa.”