Business Intelligence tools are a powerful, but a highly complex and specialized, form of software. They can allow you to quickly analyze data and make important business decisions based on the information you gather from them.
However, there are dozens of different BI tools out there and choosing one that is right for your business can be a challenge.
Best Business Intelligence Tools
What Are Business Intelligence Tools
The best business intelligence tools are those that have the right features, are easy to use, and provide a user interface that is intuitive.
They should also be able to integrate with other applications and share information with them.
The best BI tools can help you create dashboards that provide you with all of the necessary data in one location.
You can then use this information to make decisions about your business or personal life. You can also use this information to prepare reports for clients so they can see how their company is doing on a specific issue or problem area.
What Are the Best BI Tools?
Here we’ll take a look at some of the best BI tools for small businesses as well as how they work and what they do.
We’ll also discuss some of their advantages and disadvantages so that you can make an informed decision about which one will be best for your business needs.
Business intelligence (BI) software is designed to help organizations manage their data analysis processes with minimal human intervention required after installation.
A good BI tool should provide easy access to reports and data tables so that employees can easily gather information needed to make important business decisions.
1. Sisense
Sisense is a business intelligence (BI) and analytics software company headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.The company was founded in 2012 by Amir Tibon, Tal Alon and Ori Inbar as an offshoot of Tibon’s previous startup, Logz.io.
It offers a cloud-based analytics platform that allows users to analyze large quantities of data from multiple sources and build dashboards for business users.
Sisense seeks to drive meaningful change in the world by making it easy for businesses to infuse analytics everywhere. Sisense goes beyond the dashboard by providing an AI-driven platform that any company can use to drive better, faster decisions, for their business and their customers.
2. Tableau
Tableau is a software company that makes interactive data analysis and visualization products. The company’s flagship product is Tableau Desktop, which allows users to create and share data visualizations that can be viewed on desktop computers, and on mobile devices such as the iPad.
Tableau was founded by Christian Chabot and Pat Hanrahan in 2003. In January 2014 Tableau acquired DataRobot, a Pittsburgh-based company that develops machine learning algorithms for predictive analytics.
In 2011, Tableau Software was named one of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” by Fast Company, and one of Deloitte’s “Fast 500” fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications and life sciences companies in North America. In 2016 Forbes ranked Tableau as the most loved software company in the world.
Tableau is an interactive, self-service reporting and analytics tool that enables faculty and staff to integrate and combine data from multiple sources into visualizations and be accessed in a single Creator environment using Tableau Creator or through a shared dashboard.
3. SAP Business Intelligence
SAP Business Intelligence is a suite of applications and services that enable you to use big data and analytics to optimize business performance. Businesses are collecting, processing, analyzing, and presenting large amounts of information in real time.
To make better decisions and improve business performance, you need access to timely and accurate information at all levels of your organization. With SAP Business Intelligence, you can easily integrate data from multiple sources, such as transaction systems and other enterprise resources, to create a single source of truth for all your business activities.
SAP Business Intelligence provides the following benefits:
- Enhanced decision making with real-time access to critical information
- Visibility into business processes and operations
- Improved efficiency through increased automation
- SAP Business Intelligence
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is a centralized suite for data reporting, visualization, and sharing.
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4. Looker
Looker is a data analytics platform that provides business intelligence and data visualization to companies. Looker was founded in 2012 by Frank Bien, Lloyd Tabb and Ed Leake.
Looker is a tool that helps you explore, share, and visualize your company's data so that you can make better business decisions.
5. MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy is a software company that builds business intelligence and analytics software and services.
MicroStrategy is an enterprise business intelligence (BI) application software vendor. Its flagship platform contains multiple features designed to help enterprises make data-driven decisions and optimize business processes.
6. Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence (BI) solution that enables users to visualize and explore data, answer questions and share insights. Power BI is available as a cloud-based service or on-premises software and provides capabilities for visualizing data and creating reports and dashboards.
It also includes advanced analytics, such as predictive analytics, forecasting, and scenario analysis. Microsoft Power BI provides interactive visualizations to explore data and build reports.
Users can share their insights with others by publishing dashboards to the web or embedding them in other applications.
Power BI is a technology-driven business intelligence tool provided by Microsoft for analyzing and visualizing raw data to present actionable information.
7. Domo
Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence platform that helps companies make smarter, data-driven decisions. Domo allows users to access data from multiple sources in one place, visualize information on a dashboard, track performance and share insights with others.
8. Oracle Analytics
Oracle Analytics is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform that provides real-time insights into your business. It offers a single view of all your data across multiple sources and allows you to quickly build dashboards to monitor and optimize your performance.
Oracle Analytics helps you increase customer engagement, drive sales, and maximize profitability by connecting all your data sources in one place. It offers an intuitive user experience that allows you to easily access, visualize, and analyze data from any device.
Oracle Analytics can be used with any industry or size of business. The platform is available as a standalone product or as part of an Oracle Cloud solution.
Oracle Analytics is a complete platform with ready-to-use services for a wide variety of workloads and data.
9. Qlik
Qlik is a software vendor that specializes in business intelligence (BI) and analytics applications.
10. IBM Cognos
IBM Cognos is an enterprise-class business intelligence software suite that helps organizations gain insight into their data and make better informed decisions.
IBM Cognos provides a comprehensive set of tools to build, deploy, manage and publish reports and dashboards. The product features an intuitive user interface and extensive help documentation.
IBM Cognos provides the following features:
- Dashboard Designer – Create interactive dashboards with drag-and-drop functionality
- Report Studio – Create complex reports using free-form query editing or pre-built report templates
- Mobile Dashboard Designer – Create mobile-ready dashboards for iPads, iPhones and
- Android devices Tableau Bridge – Integrate Tableau visualizations within Cognos reports
IBM® Cognos® Analytics integrates reporting, modeling, analysis, dashboards, stories, and event management so that you can understand your organization data, and make effective business decisions.
11. Dundas BI
Dundas BI is a cloud-based Business Intelligence (BI) platform that allows you to create powerful, interactive reports and dashboards. Dundas BI is the only enterprise-grade BI solution that offers both self-service and IT-managed access to data.
Dundas BI helps you get more value from your data by empowering your users to explore and analyze information on their own, while providing IT with centralized control over the entire solution.
Key Features:
Self-service BI – Allow users to explore their own data with pre-built visualizations or build their own custom ones using drag & drop tools.
Dashboards – Create dashboards for all levels of users by combining charts, tables, maps and images.
Data Connectors – Connect to almost any data source to start analyzing your business information.
Dundas BI is a fully-open business intelligence platform that simplifies the analytics process and empowers everyone to visualize and analyze data.
What Are BI (Business Intelligence) Tools?
Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications that provide insights into the performance of your business. These tools can help you improve operational efficiency and make better business decisions, but they aren’t one-size-fits-all.
Before you start shopping for BI tools, it’s important to understand what different types of analytics software are available on the market today.
Business intelligence (BI) software provides data visualization and reporting functionality. This type of tool is designed to help users understand their data by providing visualizations and dashboards that present key metrics in an easy-to-understand format.
Advanced analytics software uses machine learning algorithms to predict future trends based on historical data. It’s commonly used in predictive maintenance applications and other situations where there’s a need to predict outcomes based on past behavior.
Big data analytics refers to a class of technologies that are designed specifically for analyzing large amounts of unstructured data — typically terabytes or petabytes — that might otherwise be too unwieldy for traditional databases to handle efficiently.
How Are BI Tools Different From Data Analytics Tools?
BI tools and data analytics tools are two different types of software that can help you make better business decisions. But how are they different, and why do you need both?
BI stands for business intelligence, which is a type of software that uncovers information that helps organizations make better decisions.
BI tools help you analyze your data and make sense of it by creating reports and graphs that show you what’s going on in your business. They also let you see trends over time so that you can predict future results based on past performance.
Data analytics tools also analyze your data, but they go deeper than BI tools do. Data analytics tools use complex algorithms to examine large amounts of data and find patterns within them.
The patterns can be used to predict future outcomes or determine which products or services will lead to higher profits for your company.
The main difference between BI tools and data analytics tools is that BI tools focus on analyzing existing information while data analytics focuses on discovering new information about the world around us.
Which Features Do You Need in BI Tools?
BI tools are getting better, but what should you look for in a BI tool? What are the must-have features?
There are a lot of different types of BI tools on the market, and it’s important to know what you need from your business intelligence tool before you start looking at specific products.
This article will discuss some of the features that every business intelligence tool should have things like data visualization and reporting but also go over some more advanced features that will help you get more out of your business analytics software.
Data Visualization
One of the most basic functions of any BI tool is data visualization. The best way to understand data is through an interactive chart or graph that allows users to manipulate the data themselves.
This is especially useful when it comes to comparing multiple sets of data side by side at once: If you want to see how your sales team performed over time compared with your marketing team, for example, then having a chart that shows both departments side by side makes it much easier than trying to read through two separate tables or charts separately.
Another benefit is that interactive charts and graphs allow users to get a deeper understanding of what their data means.
How Do You Use a BI Tool?
BI tools can be used in many different ways, but there are some general guidelines to follow. Here are the most common ways people use a BI tool:
1. To analyze internal information — This is the most common use for BI tools. As an example, if you work for a car manufacturer and want to see how many cars need repairs, you can use a BI tool to pull all your repair orders into one place and analyze them.
2. To analyze external information — If you have partners that sell products, it’s useful to know how much they sell and where they sell it so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
3. To generate reports — A report is simply a way of presenting data in an easy-to-understand format. Users might use reports as part of their daily activities or as part of larger projects like creating marketing plans or analyzing sales figures on an annual basis.
Making Use Of Business Intelligence Reporting Tools
Business Intelligence (BI) is a term that refers to the process of gathering, analyzing, and reporting business data in order to make better decisions.
Business intelligence tools help organizations gather and analyze data from multiple sources and then use it to make more informed decisions.
The reason why businesses use BI is pretty straightforward: It helps them make better decisions. They can see how well their products sell or what people like about their products.
They can see if customers are happy with the service they are receiving or if they have any complaints about it. They can also find out which products are more popular than others and whether they should invest more money into marketing those products.
Business intelligence reporting tools allow you to access data from multiple sources at once without having to manually enter them into different spreadsheets or databases.
This means that you don’t need to spend hours entering information into spreadsheets; instead, you simply type in your username and password once and then query all the information that you need from one place!