How Companies Evaluate Sigma and ThoughtSpot

ThoughtSpot's promise of using natural language search for business data analysis is critiqued for being ineffective, as it requires extensive training to handle private data unlike Google or ChatGPT which excel in public domain information. Instead, ThoughtSpot uses a "keyword search" similar to a simplified SQL dialect, which can be limiting for complex business questions. In contrast, Sigma, a business intelligence platform, is praised for its intuitive spreadsheet-like interface that allows users to manipulate data as they would in Excel, but on a much larger scale and integrated with cloud data warehouses like Snowflake. Sigma's approach enables users to work live with both clean and raw data, easily incorporate external data sources, and leverage familiar Excel functions like vlookup, fostering a seamless transition for users familiar with spreadsheets. This method provides a unified source of truth without the need to extract data to spreadsheets, and its straightforward governance ensures that data remains live and consistent across the organization.