Ask your business data questions yourself.

What self-service analytics means

Self-service analytics helps the person with the question explore business data directly. It closes the gap between “I wonder why…” and a number you can check and act on.

Dashboard tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Looker, and Metabase support recurring reporting and shared metrics. They help analysts and business users monitor the questions they ask regularly. For a question you did not plan in advance, conversational analytics offers another way to begin.

Dashboards and grounded questions serve different jobs

Dashboards are useful when people need to monitor the same metrics regularly. They give a team a shared view of the numbers that matter.

When a new question comes up, conversational analytics lets you ask it in plain English. Loam runs SQL against your data and returns the result to your AI.

Choose the right starting point

Loam supports conversational analytics. Connect your data, ask a question in plain English, and get grounded answers you can check. In Loam chat, you can inspect the returned result rows. Connected AI clients control whether the SQL itself is shown.

Choose based on the job

Start with the question you have. Dashboard tools work well for shared reporting and monitoring the same metrics regularly. Conversational analytics is useful for new questions that you did not predict in advance.

These approaches can work together. Use dashboards for recurring reports and Loam for grounded answers to new questions. For a deeper comparison, see our Tableau alternative guide.