Yandex DataLens, PIX BI and other domestic BI systems

Western companies that previously promoted their BI systems in Russia do not officially work with domestic businesses. Those who need them know how to bypass the bans. But there are companies that need Russian services. How did our market react? Is 1C: Analytics competitive? We have prepared an overview of various solutions with dashboard examples.

Russian companies are still implementing foreign Qlik Sense, Power BI and Tableau. Of course, there are other options, but these three have proven themselves the best in recent years.

Foreign BI systems win primarily due to time. They have had 20+ years to build up their functionality. Today, this is probably one of the main arguments for those choosing a solution. Cost and efficiency should also not be discounted.

At the same time, import substitution also affected services. And in January of this year, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media recommended that Russian companies switch to domestic software. To a greater extent, this concerns state-owned companies or brands that work with CII (Critical Information Infrastructure) facilities. From January 1, 2025, such companies must use Russian operating systems, office suites, antivirus programs and virtualization systems. Another year is given to switch to domestic database management systems.

All this is an argument to think about BI analytics offered by Russian developers.

Three domestically produced solutions

In fact, there are many more than three solutions. It is even difficult to count the total number – already more than 40. However, not everything can be considered as a finished product that any company can use. In most cases, this is still an individual development for the purposes of a specific brand.

Visiology are the founders of the Russian BI industry. Back in 2014, when the idea of ​​import substitution was just emerging, the Visiology team took the opportunity and launched the development of dashboards for government agencies, drawing inspiration from Microsoft's Power BI. They are currently completing the third version, which will support DAX, one of the most advanced languages ​​for working with data.

Yandex DataLens is a service for data processing and visualization. It was initially created for internal use in the company. For example, it can be found in the charts of the Kinopoisk service.

The service has almost unlimited potential for growth and servicing a huge number of users. And what's great is that its infrastructure is free, you don't have to pay for it. However, it's worth noting that the product's functionality is quite simple. Yandex recently introduced open-source software, but it's not yet known whether there are already successful projects that have implemented the product.

PIX BI — this data analysis system was developed by PIX Robotics. PIX BI features an adaptive interface, custom filters, and the ability to create individual reports. The system is simple, so even a person without technical education can easily figure it out in a couple of hours. By the way, another popular system, Qlik Sense, was used as a model.

Russian BI systems cannot yet compare with Western ones in terms of their functionality. The main advantage remains the possibility of official licensing in Russia. However, implementation usually costs about 20-30% more due to the need for additional configuration of functions. This requires additional knowledge and time spent on configuration. To help choose the right system for a specific business, we monitor the release of new versions of other Russian BI systems.

What about 1C:Analytics?

A real case from our practice: a company tried to implement “1C:Analytics”, but encountered technical difficulties. They were related to the product architecture.

“1C:Analytics” occupies a separate place and is actually an add-on to the 1C base. Data for analysis must be loaded into 1C. At the same time, until recently, all data had to be kept in one base. But this is not always possible for technical reasons.

Let's take a profitability analysis with a breakdown down to receipts. In this case, the report cannot be made in one database: receipts are usually in “1C: Retail”, cost price – in “1C: Trade Management”. You will need data from at least two databases. In large companies, financial and/or product accounting is often maintained in several databases.

Literally in December 2023, a new version of 1C:Analytics was released with support for several 1C databases as sources for analysis. Now the product can be considered a serious competitor to other BI systems.

In addition, when using other BI solutions, the so-called ETL allows you to clear data from various fictitious operations, such as internal turnovers, which should not affect the indicators, during the data preparation process. When implementing 1C: Analytics, the preparation stage is absent, which means that the data will be displayed directly from the accounting registers with all the distortions. The absence of a separate process for forming a data layer for BI, on the one hand, simplifies a simple project, but, on the other hand, complicates the development and further support of a complex project with multiple sources and transformations.

Conclusion

Russian BI systems may not be as functional as Western ones yet, but they are actively developing. We will probably see a significant leap in the near future. Western software providers have left, but if you need high-quality analytics right now, and today, you can consider this option. The choice of a tool depends on many factors, including the number and types of data sources, implementation goals, financial capabilities, and many others.