It is true that in order to acquire the knowledge you require from your data, you will have to map data from many platforms together and get a comprehensive picture. The purpose of data preparation tools is to map data together. There are multiple data preparation technologies available to assist businesses in gathering various types of data from various sources and analyze data.

Here is a list of the top tools that will help you gather data from several platforms and get insights from them altogether.

1. Alteryx

Alteryx is a single solution that combines data preparation, combining, and analysis capabilities. It employs a repeatable workflow, produces deployable insights, and then shares the resulting analytics in order to provide deep data insights in a matter of hours. This platform is popular among data analysts and scientists since it allows for rapid and easy data connectivity and cleansing from database systems, spreadsheets, cloud platforms, and other sources.

Key Features:

• It quickly integrates the data and then does predictive, statistical, and geographical analysis without any need for additional coding.

• It provides scalable analytics, which can contribute to your company's success.

• It employs a comparable user-friendly interface.

• It helps democratize data, automate analysis, and cultivate a data-driven workforce

Cost:

Contact Sales

2. Improvado

Improvado was created with the goal of addressing the problem of marketing data. It can link to almost every platform that marketers will use in the future. Furthermore, the integrations are extensive, allowing you to access statistics at the campaign, keyword levels, as well as view ad creative across multiple channels, all from one dashboard.

Key Features:

• It allows you to quickly identify performance outliers and optimize campaigns and channels more quickly.

• Customer service representatives are included with complete assistance.

• Data mapping between platforms and the ability to define custom metrics

• You can access data at the keyword and ad level with precise and deep marketing integrations.

• Reduces the time it takes to report manually by up to 90%

Cost:

Contact Sales

3. Tye

Tye is a data cleansing and refinement program created with small businesses in mind. Their easy-to-use system can automatically combine and clean big datasets, easing the burden on your personnel. To acquire the best results, tye uses a combination of databases and machine learning to provide you with clear and enhanced data.

Key Features:

• It optimizes your email marketing and sales channel automation by removing incorrect and inaccurate email accounts and enriching your contacts.

• The significance of email hygiene for the efficacy of your campaigns is recognised by tye, and the software has been optimized accordingly.

• The guided data quality as a service lets you make the most of your consumer data, from deduplication to standardization.

Cost:

Contact Sales

4. Data Ladder

Data Ladder is a data cleansing and quality assurance program that simplifies the data preparation procedure. You don't have to be a data analyst to reap the benefits of the software's features because it doesn't require extensive training.

Key Features:

• Machine learning is enabled in Data Ladder, and the more information you input, the more it understands.

• It can quickly and accurately integrate datasets from nearly any source.

• Data Ladder's powerful matching algorithms are the result of years of research and development

• It improves the quality of data dispersed across multiple sources by identifying missed or ignored matches.

Cost:

Contact Sales

5. Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a corporate analytics tool that enables you to evaluate, visualize, and share data. It uses sophisticated real-time user dashboards for each and every device to offer effective business monitoring for fast and informed corporate decision making. Microsoft Power BI allows users to turn data into visually appealing reports that can be shared with group members across multiple devices.

Key Features:

• It provides for visual data exploration and analysis both on-premises and in the cloud.

• With interactive data reporting, users may collaborate on insights and create customized dashboards.

• It has built-in security and control capabilities that are scalable across your organization

• It helps businesses get actionable insights.

Cost:

Starts at $13.70

6. Infogix Data360

Infogix Data360 is a set of data governance tools designed to help with data preparation. Data categorization, metadata management, and advanced automation are all part of the suite, and they can help you get your complex information into a business-ready shape. Infogix is used by many enterprises for risk, regulatory, and data value management.

Key Features:

• The software provides a 3D lineage visual graph that lets customers obtain the most value out of their information, regardless of whether or not they are skilled.

• They use automated data quality checks at every touchpoint to assure consistency and reliability.

• It integrates strong workflow automation straight into your app without requiring any coding.

• It gives you access to a plethora of well-known apps and services.

Cost:

Free

7. Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep is a popular data preparation program that assists you in shaping, combining, and refining your data in preparation for final analysis. It simplifies and intuitively organizes your information. Tableau comes with 3 built-in coordinated views that enable you to see row-level data, column descriptions, and your whole data preparation process.

Key Features:

• Tableau Prep is a user-friendly data preparation tool that quickly combines, shapes, and refines data so that analysis may be performed.

• While working, you can construct your data extract and post its origin on the Tableau server, online, or the Tableau Desktop app.

• The data is visible always and you can repair value errors directly from the dashboard, and see the results of any modification you make.

• It allows you to automate monotonous processes with a single click.

• The smart function allows you to swiftly resolve common data preparation concerns.

Cost:

Starts at $70

8. IBM SPSS

IBM SPSS is a thorough and well-integrated application for data preparation. It uses modern approaches to expedite the data preparation stage, resulting in faster and accurate data analysis and outputs. The program automates the data preparation process, eliminating the need for time-consuming and complex manual data preparation.

Key Features:

• You won't have to undertake manual data validation checks, which means you'll get better results with more accurate data.

• To achieve excellent data accuracy, it immediately discovers any discrepancies and anomalies in data.

• This data preparation program has different tabs for displaying variables and doing basic tests on them.

• Individual variables can have standard and custom rules applied to them to help identify invalid or incomplete data.

• It has a three-binning option that allows you to select cut-off points/bins for different scale variables.

Cost:

Contact Sales

9. Trifacta

Trifacta is essentially a data wrangling software that is aimed to improve the productivity of the process of data analysis or to undertake analytics projects using new data sources. It is a powerful piece of software that allows individuals and organizations to explore, change, and integrate a wide range of data for analysis.

Key Features:

• Whether you have data files on your desktop, data strewn throughout the Cloud, or data spread across large-scale data environments, Trifacta can help you.

• This software converts raw data inputs into ordered and arranged outputs that may be used for data analysis and other business applications.

• It finds patterns in data, cleans, enhances, validates, and publishes it for analysis.

Cost:

Starts at $80

10. Tamr Unify

Tamr Unify is a data preparation software that uses machine learning. It's designed for large-scale data blending and manipulation. It allows businesses to connect data in any tabular format and broadcast it to any location. SQL and Spark can be used to normalize and standardize data formats, making it more suitable for business intelligence.

Key Features:

• Tamr Unify can catalog and integrate thousands of data sources, such as external and internal records

• To curate data, it employs powerful machine learning techniques.

• Access control and high-level security

• Unification of large amounts of data

• Analytical feedback system with a patent

Cost:

Contact Sales

11. Qlik

Qlik is a business intelligence solution that offers a comprehensive set of sophisticated analyses for BI purposes. Qlik Sense is the company's most efficient and sophisticated multi-cloud solution for modern business intelligence. It is a strong next-generation platform for data analytics that swiftly merges various data sources, regardless of their size or number.

Key Features:

• It has a variety of interactive options as well as a global search option.

• You can produce aesthetically pleasing and precise data outcomes with its intelligent visualization and AI-integrated suggestions.

• You can consolidate all data sources into an integrated view, irrespective of volume or number.

• Qlik's association engine indexes every potential data relationship, allowing for rapid insights.

Cost:

Contact Sales

12. Talend

Talend is a self-service data preparation solution based on machine learning. It's a great way for engineers, data analysts, and industry experts to work on data cleaning and enrichment. Multiple groups can reuse the same guidelines across datasets, reducing the time required for data analysis by identifying the most common errors. The software provides users with automatic suggestions to assist them during the data preparation process.

Key Features:

• Users can quickly distribute or insert their prepared datasets into real-time data connections with Talend.

• It works with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, as well as Microsoft Office programs and data warehouses.

• To swiftly discover data mistakes, Talend employs advanced machine-based learning and sampling techniques.

• Talend allows data to be prepared as a team, which reduces the time it takes to develop insights.

Cost:

Contact Sales

13. ClearStory Data

ClearStory Data, an automated analytics software, provides data preparation as part of a whole data discovery and visualization pipeline. It is using AI and machine learning to change enterprise-scale business analytics so that enterprises can power their business users and leaders to gain faster insights and find more from their fragmented data assets.

Key Features:

• Data stories allow for flexible modeling of source data.

• BI dashboards provide for quick data investigation.

• Data inference that is intelligently automated and derives semantics from the data.

• Data unification that is automated and identifies connections across all aspects of data.

• Data quantities, patterns, and correlations are automatically discovered across different sources.

Cost:

Free

14. Altair Monarch

Altair Monarch is a data preparation solution that helps data-driven enterprises lessen their reliance on manual data entry. To combine, clean, and prepare unstructured sources of data such as PDFs, excel sheets, text files, and more, the application may connect to them. It also works with big data and cloud-based data sources.

Key Features:

• Because the software's click-based UI is code-free, you don't need to be a data analyst or have much expertise to utilize it efficiently.

• About 80 pre-built data preparation functions are available to assist you improve and error-proof your datasets.

• Has an intuitive interface

• It includes processes that are automated and repeatable and are executed at predetermined periods and intervals.

Cost:

Contact Sales

15. Quest

Quest is a cloud-based predictive business data preparation solution that was created to suit the demands of the Cloud era. Quest assists with data management and protection while allowing you to manage hybrid settings. It also enables for the tracking of all networked devices and the management of every account across the organization's network.

Key Features:

• It enables you to reduce your data storage footprints while also facilitating data management, analysis, transfer, replication, and security.

• It allows for access control both on and off the premises.

• It improves productivity, efficiency, and ensures top-notch code while lowering expenses through automated data development.

• It develops and administers the software that enables people and data to reap the benefits of new technology.

Cost:

Contact Sales

16. DataRobot

DataRobot is a data preparation tool for business strategists and IT professionals. The program has three layers, one of which is the data management layer that allows it to keep data in HDFS. It's especially effective for enterprise-level businesses that need large-scale data analysis, transformation, and cleaning.

Key Features:

• To turn unorganized and semi-structured data into information that can be used for analytics, marketing, and promotion, the program uses AI applications.

• Users can get AI help from embedded algorithms during the data preparation process.

• DatRobot is an adaptive framework that transforms data into accurate knowledge at incredible speeds.

• It allows business analysts to quickly collect data, study it, alter it, and integrate it.

Cost:

Contact Sales

17. DataMeer

DataMeer is a SaaS-based data analytics platform that is especially suited for departmental installations.The exclusive DataMeer characteristics lead to Hadoop Altiscale and BigStep cloud service providers. It simplifies the big data analytics infrastructure into a single platform.

Key Features:

• DataMeer combines integrated self-service data with insights and visualization capabilities to create a strong solution.

• It delivers the quickest data insights.

• It includes over 70 pre-built data connections that can link any type, size, or source of data

• It has over 270 pre-built analysis points and click operations.

Cost:

Free

18. SAP

SAP is a flexible data preparation platform that allows for effective analytics, data migration, and MDM projects. It is a self-service data preparation solution that may be used both on-premise and in the cloud. It swiftly converts data into information that is both understandable and actionable. It makes data access considerably more productive and agile by simplifying the way data is accessible.

Key Features:

• Coordination and sharing among SAP users is rapid, straightforward, and intuitive.

• It gives quick insights by importing several datasets from various sources with a single click.

• It also has an interactive interface that makes data curating easier for greater insights.

• It offers operational data sets by automatically purifying and duplicating data.

Cost:

Contact Sales

19. TIBCO Software

TIBCO is a data wrangling tool that lets you access, clean, combine, and wrangle data from a variety of origins, especially your big data storage. TIBCO Software provides customers with rapid and simple in-line data wrangling, allowing them to make changes as needed. It comes with full API support and allows users to build their own functions to gain deeper insights.

Key Features:

• You don't have to manually record the changes when data wrangling. The changes to the papers are automatically documented.

• It contains a built-in suggestions engine for data organization and relationships that provides automatic options to help you save time.

• Its integrated connectors make it simple to link and blend data from a variety of databases and sources into cloud apps.

• Connectors that are tailored to your specifications can also be made.

Cost:

Contact Sales

20. Microstrategy

Microstrategy is a comprehensive data exploration and analytics tool for the desktop that lets you explore and analyze data. It distinguishes itself from other similar solutions on the market by providing complete analytics features. Microstrategy has a user-friendly interface and a range of tools with pre-built templates.

Key Features:

• It features a robust analytical function that is tailored to the needs of small business owners.

• It helps you to quickly and easily construct appealing infographics using interactive dossiers in simple steps.

• Microstrategy's ability to create dossiers provides for easy and quick organizing of dashboards, data analyses, and visualizations.

• You can turn your reports into an understandable chapter and page structure that allows your data to tell better and more interesting stories.

Cost:

Contact Sales

21. SAS Data Preparation

SAS Data Preparation, premised on the Viya platform, provides an easy interface for accessing, profiling, cleansing, and transforming data. It offers a visual interface for all activities, requiring no programming or SQL experience.

Key Features:

• Advanced users can modify SAS data quality processes or write Python code.

• Pre-built conversion and purification tools automate data preparation procedures.

• Creates code that users may share with IT and have it run during data updates.

• Allows team members to collaborate on duties and project activities.

• In-memory data processing with excellent performance.

Cost:

Free

22. LavaStorm

LavaStorm specializes in enterprise-level data preprocessing. It's a flexible ETL platform with excellent analytics and in-depth insights. LavaStorm is designed specifically for data preparation at the corporate level. It boasts a straightforward and user-friendly interface. It encompasses a wide range of duties that are necessary for linking, shaping, preparing, analyzing, and providing corporate business data in the shortest time possible.

Key Features:

• LavaStorm empowers IT professionals to collaborate in real-time.

• It uses the fastest waterfall methodologies for data preparation, as well as an incremental and iterative approach.

• It integrates complicated automation and coordination models to scheduling with its easy UI and APIs.

• It develops and controls data access and also analytical reasoning using the ETL process.

Cost:

Contact Sales

23. Oracle

Oracle is yet another effective self-service data preparation solution that assists in the rapid unlocking of big data's potential. It provides a uniform cloud-based solution for data wrangling that enables for easy data import, enrichment, and publishing. It driven by Apache Spark that is simple to use and fully integrated.

Key Features:

• It provides a simple, intuitive, and interactive solution to prepare complicated business data for processing.

• It also includes complete automation, including natural language processing and accurate categorization.

• For downstream processing, this tool turns complicated data into an organized and easy-to-understand structure.

• It's a business-oriented platform that's quick and easy to use.

Cost:

Contact Sales

24. Zaloni

Zaloni is a unified data preparation tool for data administration, categorization, and management. It generates data that is scalable and actionable. It is a self-service data preparation platform that may be utilized on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. It takes an enterprise-scale DataOps strategy, unites data stakeholders, and balances governance for improved collaboration and faster data insights.

Key Features:

• It allows data to be incorporated into everyday business activities.

• Repeat management duties and business operations can be automated with Zaloni.

• It enables enterprises to centrally manage all data sources, regardless of their location.

• It lowers the total cost of ownership for IT infrastructure, data processing, and manpower.

Cost:

Contact Sales

25. UNIFI

Unifi, now known as Boomi, is a self-service data identification and preparation program that provides business users with a uniform data interface. Unifi helps to break down the boundaries that exist in operational data silos. It also enables information accessibility across the organization simple and quick.

Key Features:

• Machine learning, powerful artificial intelligence systems, and cloud optimization are all used by Unifi.

• It makes recommendations based on AI about what business users want to visualize.

• It combines the resultant data with the BI tool directly for fast and accurate results.

• It cuts the time it takes to extract insights from months to minutes.

Cost:

Contact Sales

26. EasyMorph

EasyMorph makes it simple to automate and change complex data as well as other everyday operations. It does not necessitate any advanced coding or programming skills. It provides 100% visual design with increased productivity. This data transformation software was intended for the quick and reliable creation of visually stunning data.

Key Features:

• It generates aesthetically beautiful complicated data analysis and reporting without the need for coding.

• It automates the entire daily schedule procedure, freeing up more time for in-depth data study and analyses.

• Even if you aren't an IT specialist, you can retrieve files from anywhere and automate sophisticated data conversions.

• There's no need to know SQL or programming because everything is done visually.

Cost:

Starts at $900 per year

27. Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara is a data preparation tool that simplifies data integration, combining, preparation, and monitoring. All of these functions can be applied to data collected from any location and of any size. It provides immediate access to priceless data insights. Hitachi Vandara uses a dynamic data pipeline to obtain the best data value.

Key Features:

• It facilitates the deployment of big data technologies that interact smoothly with your current technical infrastructure.

• This big data organization and management software organizes and manages both structured and unstructured data.

• It eliminates IT operations' complexity and delays.

• For creative data-driven results, it produces dynamic data analysis, visual reports, and dashboards.

Cost:

Contact Sales

28. Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a well-known and commonly utilized data preparation platform. It's an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform that's simple to get started with. Amazon Web Services is a highly flexible platform with a wide range of Amazon Cloud Services and third-party integration options.

Key Features:

• There are a variety of APIs available.

• It supports a wide selection of Windows and Linux servers for a lower initial investment.

Cost:

Pay as you go

Things to Consider While Choosing Data Preparation Tools

While each company's data preparation requirements are unique, there are a few crucial qualities to look for when selecting data preparation software.

Data discovery and accessibility to any dataset

Data accessibility is one of the most essential aspects to look for when selecting your ideal data preparation solution. You want to be capable of pulling data from any source with no restrictions, irrespective of where your data is stored. You probably have employees that operate in distinct processes, and they may have been keeping their data separately up until now.

Because data is stored in a variety of formats, it's critical that your data preparation tool can access:

• Sheets in Excel

• CSV files

• Documents created in Word

• Warehouses of data

• Apps for the cloud

• CRMs

Features for data enrichment

Integrating internal data with data generated from extra internal and external sources is known as data enrichment. Data enrichment features can let you classify your lists even more effectively and tailor your marketing efforts even further! The more data you have on your sources, the better. Customization is the key to success of both your advertising & distribution operations.

Features for data cleansing

Seek data cleansing features in data preparation tools. Cleansing your data sources is an important component of data management and preserving the accuracy of your database. The following are some of the data purification steps:

• Getting rid of empty spots

• Check your spelling

• Case standardization

• Blank cells marked

• Numbers recorded as text are converted to numbers

• Dates must be converted to the same format

• Duplicates are removed or merged

Functions for export

You must export your data in the format that is most appropriate for you after utilizing a data preparation software. Your datasets will need to be in a certain file format based on what you use to store and maintain your data. Look for options that allow you to export to file formats that are relevant to your company.

Conclusion

So, these were the top 28 data preparation tools to help you manage your data. Every one of the data preparation tools listed above has its own set of features. Examine them thoroughly to discover which tool is most suited to your marketing requirements.

FAQs

What are data preparation tools?

Data preparation software assists companies in consolidating, processing, standardizing, and enriching their data. They enable you to turn your jumbled, unorganized information into something usable. Your findings will be inaccurate if you try to examine a contact database without first prepping it. Use data preparation software before analyzing data or using it in marketing efforts to ensure that your data is in the best possible shape.

What are the things to consider while choosing data preparation tools?

To be considered a good data protection software, a product must meet the following criteria:

• It should be sold as a standalone data preparation application or as part of a larger data product that includes data preparation features.

• Users should be able to easily integrate, merge, and modify datasets for convenient data analysis and integration.

• It should improve the data quality by providing a higher level of sophistication and augmentation.

• Integration with big data and integration solutions should be available.

Which data preparation tool is the most effective?

When it comes to data preparation, each business has a distinct goal in mind. Some companies require optimized datasets for reliable data analysis, while others wish to use their data for internet marketing or sales.

While most data preparation applications have similar functions, each is designed for a certain user. Business analysts and data researchers that seek a more efficient approach to organize, clean, and enhance their datasets should use some data prep tools. Others are incredibly intuitive or fully hands-off, making them ideal for SMBs with no prior data analysis skills.

What are the uses of data preparation tools?

Experienced data analysts, IT departments, software engineers, and ordinary business owners can all benefit from the latest data preparation techniques. These solutions enable the quick and easy integration of multiple data sources into a single location.Preparing, integrating, and refining data results in a much better and more fluid data analysis experience. This aids firms in gaining useful information into how to enhance their operations.

The majority of data preparation software includes metadata governance, control, and administration, as well as machine learning capabilities. These characteristics assist in the general functionality of the software.

Which steps are important in the data preparation process?

The steps in the data preparation process are as follows:

Getting access to the information

Within any company, there are numerous sources of business data. Endpoint data, customer information, market information, and all of their associated repositories are examples. Finding the relevant data and its sources is the first and most important stage in data preparation. This isn't just a matter of listing all potential data sources and repositories; it's also a matter of listing all that are relevant to the desired analysis.

Ingest

Once the data has been recognized, it must be entered into the analysis software. The data will most likely be a mix of organized and semi-structured data from several repositories. Importing everything into a single repository is required for the pipeline's next steps. Access and ingest are often manual operations with a wide range of what has to be done.

Cleanse

When the data is cleaned, it assures that the data set can produce valid responses when analyzed. For tiny data sets, this phase can be done manually, but for most substantially sized data sets, automation is required. This processing can be done with software tools.

Format

The data set must be formatted after it has been cleared. This stage entails fixing difficulties such as data with numerous date formats or acronyms that are incorrect. It's also likely that some data variables aren't required for the analysis and should be removed from the data set for analysis.

Integrate

The data set can be modified after it has been cleansed and prepared by merging, separating, or combining the input sets. After the data has been combined, it is ready to be transferred to the data warehouse staging point.

Analyze

Modifications to the data set should be done only after great consideration has been given. Algorithms are frequently modified and compared to other results during the analysis. Modifications to the data can distort analysis results, making it impossible to tell whether the differences are due to data or algorithm changes.