Data drives decisions, and those decisions fuel successful campaigns, client satisfaction, and growth. In an era where AI is more than a buzzword, harnessing the capabilities of new data analysis tools can set your agency apart. 

However, not all data tools are created equal. In this article, we'll dive deep into OpenAI's new GPT-4 Advanced Data Analysis feature and Akkio’s GPT-powered business intelligence tool, and discover how digital agencies can leverage these platforms for robust data analysis, improved reporting, and even as a new service offering.

Considerations When Choosing a GPT-Powered Data Tool

Scope of Analysis

While GPT-4 is excellent for one-off, quick analyses, Akkio is purpose-built for deeper, continuous data exploration. This distinction is pivotal when agencies want to offer ongoing data management and insights to clients.

Integration & Data Sources

Akkio seamlessly integrates with many data sources like Google Sheets, Hubspot, Salesforce, Snowflake, Zapier, and more. This contrasts with GPT-4, which relies on data imports only. For agencies handling varied client datasets, this integration flexibility is invaluable.

Accessibility

ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis feature is now easily accessible within the ChatGPT interface, and GPT-4 subscribers have direct access to it, making it accessible to its over 180 million users. Akkio is another tool to add to your tech stack, however it is built for non-technical users, so its explanations and analyses are easy to understand in plain English. ChatGPT only provides code explanations at the moment. 

Live Data

Akkio works with real-time data, ensuring the latest insights are always accessible. In comparison, GPT-4 doesn't cater to live datasets. This distinction is critical, especially when analyzing time-sensitive data like advertising campaigns.

Performance & Speed

While both GPT-4 and Akkio are powered by Open AI’s Large Language Model (LLM), Akkio specializes in data analysis and offers a significantly faster user experience, outshining Open AI’s additional feature. The enhanced speed means more timely insights for you and your clients.

Data Preparation

Data preparation can be tedious. Akkio streamlines this process, making complex graph creation straightforward, unlike GPT-4, which can sometimes fumble with intricate requests.

Data Storage

While GPT-4's storage is ephemeral, Akkio provides long-term data storage. This ensures that agencies don't lose valuable insights over time.

Shareability & Collaboration

Akkio's Generative Dashboards and shareable links provide a collaborative platform. GPT-4’s single-user experience can't compare, especially when teams want to discuss data collectively. In addition, Akkio offers the ability to white label Chat Explore with your company’s branding, so you can offer the ability to chat with data as a new service to clients. 

Privacy & Security

Using a tool like Akkio or alternatives allows you to get all the benefits of ChatGPT without sending data to OpenAI, meaning you can use it for credit card fraud prediction, churn prediction from your CRM, and lots of use cases that require a privacy-first approach.

Forecasting Capabilities

While GPT-4 might offer forecasting, its reliance on common machine learning libraries can be limiting. Akkio's autoML capabilities provide clearer, superior results.

Deployment & Integration

Akkio shines by allowing the deployment of models as web apps or integrating them back with other tools, like Zapier.

A Practical Use Case: Analyzing Advertising Data

Imagine a scenario: Your agency is responsible for a client's advertising campaign. You need to analyze the performance, forecast future trends, and provide actionable insights. Let’s walk through how Akkio and GPT-4 could help.

Data Integration

The first step is getting our dataset into the analysis tool. With GPT-4, we can drag-and-drop static .csv, .xlsx, .tsv, and .json files.  

Using Akkio, you can also connect to various advertising and data platforms like Google Sheets, Hubspot, GA4, and more. The beauty of connecting to data sources is the ability to work with live data as it updates, giving us real-time insights. Below, I’ve uploaded a marketing campaign dataset into Akkio, that includes information on a few campaigns, which channels they were advertised on, costs, clicks, impressions, and more. 

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Exploration & Analysis

Now that we have our data, it’s time to start analyzing it. ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis offers improved data visualization capabilities, making it easier for users to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies in their data, similar to what Chat Explore & Chat Data Prep by Akkio do in a contained environment that saves your data.

When users asked Advanced Data Analysis questions, it is capable of performing error checking and outlier detection, ensuring the accuracy and dependability of the data being analyzed.

Both tools can be used to analyze any report from any dataset, including Google Analytics data, making it a powerful asset for businesses striving to optimize their marketing strategies. Whether you’re looking to enhance your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts, optimize social media campaigns, or improve your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) performance, ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis and Akkio have you covered.

Continuing with our advertising data, we can already see below in Akkio’s Chat Explore, that it auto-generates a few suggestions for us to ask our data, making it even easier to draw insights, especially if we’re new to the dataset. 

I’ve asked the same question, “Which ext_service_name had the best performance based on clicks? Show a bar chart of the results”, and we can see each platform’s respective answer below.

As we can see, the data is telling us that the Google Video DV360 generated the most overall clicks. ChatGPT took a bit longer to generate the lengthy analysis, while Chat Explore took only seconds and has the option to see the full approach. 

When using ChatGPT, it won't store the data forever, so you won't be able to chat with an image you uploaded 20 days ago or a dataset that's too old. It also has a few undisclosed limits on the maximum size that might impact your workflow. Chat Explore doesn't have these limits.

Collaboration & Reporting

Sharing insights with your team and clients is as important as ever, and Akkio’s Chat Explore builds this into the product with your business in mind. GPT-4, on the other hand, does not allow for collaboration as of now. 

Akkio also offers the ability to share a Chat Explore link or white label the feature with your own branding for your customers. Now, you can unveil a new service offering to drive revenue, save time, and provide added value to your clients.

You’ll also notice that Akkio’s Chat Explore has the ability to connect to Slack, which creates a collaborative Slack channel to chat with your data directly in the platform. Now, anyone in your company or your clients can access the same data and gain immediate insights. 

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All of these features enhance the collaboration within GPT data analysis, so anyone can jump in, collaborate, and derive insights. GPT-4's single-user nature can't match this collaborative potential.

Forecasting & Recommendations

In addition to data analysis, Akkio goes one step further and allows you to predict future outcomes easily with machine learning. Relying on Akkio's autoML capabilities, you can forecast advertising trends and provide data-driven recommendations. GPT-4's limited forecasting might not be as precise or actionable.

Following our example, we can easily build a model predicting the amount of clicks to expect per ad channel, and use it to predict the results of future campaigns for a higher ROI and optimized spend. 

From here, we can deploy the model into a web app, where we can upload a dataset and immediately get predictions, or deploy it back into any of the native integrations available. ChatGPT-4 does not yet have the ability to build and deploy predictive models based on your dataset. 

Summary: Choosing the Right Tool for Your Business

For digital agencies looking to harness AI, both Akkio and ChatGPT offer valuable tools. With ChatGPT’s built-in feature, hundreds of thousands of people have immediate access to the tool, which makes for easy one-off analysis on static datasets. However, Akkio's specialized features, ranging from live data integrations to superior forecasting, make it a standout choice for businesses looking for a valuable data tool to give themselves an edge in the data-driven world.

Incorporating platforms like Akkio can not only streamline your agency's operations but can also serve as a new, innovative service offering for clients. It's time to embrace the AI evolution and lead your agency into a prosperous, data-enriched future.

If you find the limitations of ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis hindering your workflow, Akkio is a practical alternative that can help streamline your data analysis process. You can get a free trial here.