30 Best Business Intelligence and Analytics Software Tools of 2024
Back in the older centuries, most businesses used spreadsheets to analyze their data and extract actionable insights.
This caused lots of problems which included human errors, limited collaboration, poor security, and poor decision-making processes.
The good news is that your business doesn't have to face all of these problems now.
And this is only made possible by using business intelligence softwares.
With business intelligence software, you can combine all your data, visualize in a single platform, and extract insights and tips to grow your business.
But, how do you choose the best business intelligence software that will satisfy all your needs?
This review is the guide that you need.
Stay put and let's explore 30 best business intelligence softwares which you can use today.
So, let's move on.
Best Business Intelligence Software and Analytics Tools
1. Zoho Analytics
Most Suitable Business Intelligence Software for Creating Beautiful Data Reports and Visualizations
Features
- Data Source: Connect to many data sources, blend and merge your data, and upload them in various formats.
- Data Visualization and Report Creation: Create beautiful reports in the form of charts, widgets, and tables.
- Dashboard: Use the drag and drop designer to combine different reports to a single and insightful dashboard.
- Exploratory Analysis: Use drill downs and contextual filters to carry out exploratory analysis.
- Forecasting: Know future events ahead with the smart forecasting feature, and get notified of changes in your data.
- Zia: An analytical assistant which provides answers to your questions in the form of reports and KPI widgets.
- Security: Data backup, and support for redundancy are available.
- Integrations: Integrate with many third-party tools in different categories like finance, IT, and help desk.
Pricing
Zoho analytics has four pricing plans and they are;
- Basic at $22/month
- Standard at $45/month
- Premium which is the most popular plan at $112/month
- Enterprise at $445.
A free plan with access to 2 users, unlimited reports and dashboards, and a 15-day free trial are also available.
You can also get a custom plan and save 20% when you go for an annual subscription.
2. BiG EVAL
Best Business Intelligence Software for Automating Data Test and Achieving High-end Data Quality
Features
- Data Sources: Connect to enterprise or reference data including RDMS data, files and API.
- Test Algorithms: Use test algorithms to evaluate the quality of your information and make your data credible.
- Test Case Execution: Perform test cases and quality checks automatically or set up manually.
- Test Case Organization: Arrange and organize your test cases efficiently.
- Analysis: Get comprehensive analytics of your data including test case and domain analysis, with basic and advanced dashboards.
- Scripting: Carry out complex test logic and optimize test cases.
- Alerting: Send alerts to whoever is necessary when there are unmet conditions.
- Security: Basic login, user management and defined roles, LDAP integration are some security measures available.
- Integration: Access the REST API or use webhooks to connect with other applications and custom systems.
Pricing
BiG EVAL does not provide any pricing details for their plans.
So, you would have to contact them to find out the available plans and different pricing.
However, you can either book a demo, request a sandbox which is a free 10-day test-drive, or request personal and specialist implementations known as Proof of Concept.
In the demo, you have access to live demonstration of the software and its features, personal consulting by a product specialist, and opportunity to ask questions about your project, among others.
3. Yellowfin
Best Business Intelligence Software for Business Monitoring and Data Storytelling
Features
- Yellowfin Dashboards: Simply build safe and great dashboards for effective data visualization and use the code action buttons to add workflows into the built dashboards while giving users more accessibility.
- Yellowfin Data Discovery: Availability of assisted insights which helps to automatically analyze your data and answer your questions, and share information to workflows for reuse in stories, dashboards, and storyboards.
- Yellowfin Signals: Get signals specifically tailored to your needs by adding automated data analysis to your existing dashboard.
- Yellowfin Data Storytelling: Build data stories and presentations to boost your data reputation and gather reports from dashboard sellers to create comprehensive stories and presentations.
- Yellowfin Data Prep: Set your data up for analysis, and extract data from sources like spreadsheets, web APIs, and databases.
- Yellowfin Mobile App: Use Yellowfin on your mobile devices anywhere you want.
Pricing
There are no exact pricing plans, as they are determined by the number of named users and required CPU cores.
Features like dashboards, data storytelling and collocation, automated data discovery are all available.
Yellowfin has a free 30-day trail plan and you can also request a quote for the enterprise analytics platform or the embedded analytics platform.
4. Clear Analytics
Best Business Intelligence Software in combination With Excel for Excellent Spreadsheet Optimization and Control
Features
- Data Sources: Sourced from various origins, your data is automatically cached to ensure efficient delivery of reports to users, and note that retention of cached data is also possible.
- Data Sharing: Grant departments easy access to business data while IT reserves the full control.
- Query Builder: A key feature embedded in excel allows you to explore data contained in databases.
- Dashboards: Create dashboards and queries fast.
- Power BI Portal: Power BI portal drawdown SharePoint/OnDrive ad-hoc queries for making actionable insights available on various devices.
- Full Audit Trail: Get complete analysis report of every number included into the spreadsheet, including the source of the data, and the time of extraction
- BI Usage Analytics: Precisely determine critical reports and users for better control and decision making.
- Cross Enterprise Sharing: Discuss business insights with other teammates.
- Security: Centralized access control, user/role level access, complete query and report auditing, entitlements of actions are some security measures available.
- Integration: Integrate with Excel spreadsheet and Microsoft Power BI.
Pricing
Clear analytics has three pricing plans which include;
- Team Edition at $11 user/month
- Small Business, at $8 user/month, and
- Enterprise Plan with a custom pricing.
The most popular plan which is the Small Business version contains features like unlimited connections, parallel query engine, and power BI publisher. Clear Analytics also allows a 30-day free trial plan and likewise a 30-day money back guarantee.
5. SAP Business Intelligence
Best Business Intelligence Software for Powerful Data Visualization and Reporting, and Prediction
Features
- Data Sources: Consolidate all your data from many sources into a single view and make better decisions easily.
- Self Service: Unite all your data, dissect trends, and tell stories using the self service visualizations tools.
- Dashboard: Design interactive business intelligence dashboards easily for providing actionable information for users on any device.
- Ad-hoc Queries: Users can easily understand trends and root causes with this feature.
- Ad-hoc Reporting: Find immediate answers to ad-hoc business questions and share your data.
- Real-time Analytics: Power your real-time analytics by connecting with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA.
- Smart Predict: Discover future possibilities and new information while getting verifiable answers to your questions based on the exact models that you choose.
- Enterprise Reporting: Manage and optimize your business intelligence strategy using the enterprise reporting system.
- Cross Enterprise Sharing: Communicate business insights with other teammates and increase the speed of your decision making process.
- Integrations: Integrate with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint to predict business drivers and share helpful discoveries.
Pricing
Sap Business Intelligence requires a license and likewise charges you based on the functionality that you want and the number of users. Although the pricing plans are not mentioned on their website, you can request a quote or demo by filling out a form.
6. MicroStrategy
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Discovery and Sharing
Features
- Workstation: This brings all the data access, visualizations, and analytics tools into a single platform so you can unite all your workflows, and manage them directly from there, all by a single user experience.
- Self Service Dashboards: Build up insightful analytics dashboards by connecting with more than 200 datasources.
- Data Visualization: See important details of your data in real-time using the visual vocabulary model.
- Hyper Intelligence: Insert zero-click answers, one-click actions, and insights into applications, websites, and devices used by people daily.
- Location-Based Analytics: View and track your analytics based on mapped locations, areas, and clusters.
- Sophisticated Analysis: Explore the advantage of analytics better by carrying out complex and intricate analytics of metrics that you want to track.
- Reporting: Your reports are highly formatted, tailored to important business segments, and provide for easy, convenient, and accurate viewing of your data.
- Enterprise Data Access: Access large tabular data from the in-memory data and live data and save up memory which would have been required for complex and voluminous applications.
- Covid-19 Tracker: Track the rate of spread and occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic by country or region so you can make effective decisions informed by present happenings.
- Integration: Integrate with other tools like Power BI.
Pricing
You would have to engage them in discussions about the suitable pricing plans for your needs, demos and the available consulting services.
So, get in touch with one of their experts today and see the best plan for your business.
7. Pentaho
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Extraction, Management, and Integration
Features
- Lumada Data Catalog: Discover data automatically with personalized fingerprints and metadata data search, classify high-level sensitive data, and convert data to insights through cross-functional collaboration.
- Lumada Analytics: Analyse anomalies with filtering and zooming, build beautiful dashboards with the drag and drop dashboard designer, and achieve secure reporting with ad-hoc analysis, broad flexibility, and enterprise reporting, respectively.
- Lumada Edge Intelligence: Customize applications, move and process data automatically, host AI and Ml analytics, handle data speedily with 5G support, and get notified of important alerts at necessary times.
- Lumada Data Optimizer for Hadoop: Classify data into various segments including aged data from HDFS to S3 storage to reduce Hadoop cost, improve resource utilization largely, and have Hadoop-based applications work without any alterations.
- Lumada DataOps Suite: Get insights quickly by using data pipelines and onboarding data sources, automate information assets collection and sharing, and deploy cost-effective data fabric wherever you are.
- Lumada Data Integration: Access different data sources, move data in any format to support important operations, gather metadata, and maximize machine learning capabilities.
Pricing
You can try out the data integration and business analytics freely for 30 days.
Likewise, you can also request a personalized demo of any of the different products to see how it works. For the pricing, you've got to contact them directly.
8. Jaspersoft
Best Business Intelligence Software for Building Reports and Data Visualizations
Features
- Reporting: Generate a large volume of reports and dashboards by connecting with data sources and distributing to your choice audience.
- Charts and Visualizations: Choose from more than 50 graphics like crosstabs, interactive tables, maps, custom visualizations from third-party libraries, and HTML5 charts collection.
- Publishing Workflow: Build your reports for blending into dashboards or publish them directly to the JasperReports Server Web to engage users.
- Composite Elements: Create elements which are smaller than subreport, and can be used in any report that you want.
- Report Components Reuse: Use styles more than once via external style sheet, plus other components like visualizations, and data sources to promote consistency
- Report Export: Easily export your report to different file formats such as PDF, HTML and Excel spreadsheet to build engaging web contents or transfer the data to third-party tools through API.
- Report Books: Merge different reports or subreports together to create a unified entity which contains subreports, cover pages, and contents' tables, suitable for your annual reports and regulatory statements.
- Custom Features: Build your own way by adding custom features to suit your needs, or select from the available libraries.
Pricing
Jaspersoft, being an open source software, allows you to customize the software to your needs.
Also try out jaspersoft freely for 30days and note that the pricing information is not available.
You would have to request a quote.
9. QlikView
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualization
Features
- A Quick Note: Qlikview has been upgraded to QlikSense, a BI platform for self service oriented analytics.
- Visualization and Discovery: Visualizing, combining and exploring your data for decision making and finding answers to questions is made easier with this feature.
- Dashboards: Build powerful dashboards, composed of interactive elements and share with your audience as you wish.
- Insight Advisor: Arrive at smart insights quickly through the help of the insight advisor, QlikSense AI assistant, which works through Natural Language Processing (NLP).
- Custom and Embedded Analytics: Customize your analytics solutions with open APIs, build custom apps and visualizations, embed your analytics into applications or take advantage of the advanced analytics integration provided by insight advisor.
- Catalog: Secure, organize and arrange your data using a protected enterprise-level catalog, and have all your data set marked with defined metrics.
- Reporting and Alerting: Create and publish reports in varied formats like Microsoft office and PDF with QlikSense analytics for distribution, and act timely on important data-driven alerts provided through self-service and centralized alerting.
Pricing
Due to the introduction of the new solution known as QlikSense, the pricing information for Qlikview is no longer available.
Although, past users hinted us that there were two major versions of Qlikview and they include the Personal and Enterprise plan.
The first one, Personal plan was free while the enterprise version had a customized pricing and also depends on the users.
Qlik also offers a free trial.
10. BIRT
Best Open Source Business Intelligence and Reporting Software for Creating Data Visualizations and Reports
Features
- Data Sources: Using an XML file or URL, build different reports on XML data sources or integrate with data from different sources.
- Libraries: Build reusable component report libraries, create and store visual and nonvisual items in the library.
- Combination Chart: Create combination charts, use internal bookmarks and the chart interactivity editor to add drill to details.
- Cascaded Parameter: Build a BIRT report which uses a cascaded parameter group that allows you to interlink a group of parameters, and which can be combined with data set parameters.
- Sub Reports: Create a report which uses nested tables, and reference outer table columns within a nested table to ensure the BIRT reports are designed with key information contained within the same report.
- Report Elements: Label, text, dynamic text, data and image elements are available within a report design.
- Drill to Details and Grouping: Build a master and detail report, and a grouped report.
- Property Binding: Modify data source and data set public properties during runtime.
- Parallel Report: Build a report with parallel sections, and use table filters to cull the displayed data.
- Mapping and Sorting: Use a BIRT report element to display a different value based on an expression, and take advantage of the sorting feature's flexibility.
- Output Formats: Get your output in different formats including DOC, HTML, XLS, PPT, and ODT.
- Integration: Use BIRT APIs to integrate into any application that you use or want, the runtime side of BIRT.
Pricing
As you might have guessed, BIRT as an open source software is free. You can go through the BIRT demo, available through class presentation and which shows you some of the available features.
11. IBM Cognos Analytics
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Preparation and Reporting
Features
- Data Sources: Import data from CSV files and spreadsheets, connect to cloud or non premises data sources like Amazon and Google BigQuery.
- Data Preparation: Clean your data with AI-assisted data preparation, prepare data from multiple sources, combine data, create new tables and add calculated fields.
- Dashboards: Simply build dynamic and compelling dashboards, create auto-generated visualizations which you can drill down for additional detail, and share them easily through slack or email.
- Report Generation: Create patented reports including multi-page reports in the choice formats of your audience like your stakeholders and share with them accordingly.
- AI Assistant and Forecasting: Ask questions from the AI assistant, get your answers in the form of visualization, predict and act on seasonal trends with time series modelling.
Pricing
There are three pricing plans and they are On Demand, On Cloud Hosted, and Client Hosted.
The first plan, On Demand is the most popular plan and it starts at $15 with standard license per user per month.
The second and third plans begin at $40 and $12 respectively.
Additionally, the first plan is most ideal for 1 to 200 users, while the second plan best caters for up to 10,000 users.
You can also take a 30-day free trial.
12. Dundas BI
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualization, Reporting and Analytics
Features
- Dashboards and Reports: Create rich interactive dashboards, printable reports, and scorecards, add visualizations and components to the dashboards and reports.
- Data Sources: Connect directly with any data source including flat files, big data, and web services, and effect changes in your data without needing another new report as the changes are automatically added to your dashboards and reports.
- Formula and Visualization Engine: Trend and forecasting, priority ranking, clustering, correlations and statistics for data analytics are available.
- Design: Use the unified data layer approach which covers data connectors, data cubes, and metric sets to communicate with and analyse data irrespective of the source.
- Dundas BI Data Warehouse: Store the output of a data cube and use the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) capability, built into Dundas BI through the data cube layer.
- Integration: Integrate with other systems, applications, websites and Microsoft's BI technologies such as Microsoft SQL server, Microsoft office (Excel), and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Pricing
Dundas BI offers custom pricing plans which are based on licensing and dual pricing models, and volume-based user pricing.
So get in touch with them by requesting a price quote.
You can also take the 25-day free trial plan to see what the software has to offer.
Either take the online trial, supposedly called the Lite version, or you download and install the full Dundas BI product with all its features.
13. Style Intelligence
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Analytics, Dashboards and Reporting
Features
- Data Sources: Deploy the Inetsoft application to mashup on-premise and on-cloud data with different formats and structures, from different data sources such as ActiveCampaign, Adobe Analytics, Infusionsoft, and Google Analytics.
- Data Blocks: Pull in data from data sources or use to create cached data blocks, which you can compress and optimize for in-memory operations.
- Dashboards: Build visualization dashboards easily in a web app, and explore the end user analysis available through the built-in interactions and customization which are automatically added to the dashboards.
- Reports: Build designed and well-formatted document reports which can be distributed online or offline, and personalize these reports using parameters.
- Mashup and Visualization: Profile data with the mashup engine, check data manipulation through data visualization, and add transformations for better visual output.
- Fully Web-based Designer: Create advanced and refined data transformations and mashups easily without even needing to write Structured Query Language (SQL).
- Bookmarks: Personalize your analytical views, and save them as bookmarks.
- Ad-hoc Reporting and Self Service Customization: Explore self service information with the two major components of an ad-hoc tool which are the data access components and the visual components, and the self service customization of the visualizations, dashboards and reports.
- Report Bursting: Generate a large number of reports in a single pass.
Pricing
You would have to purchase a patented license to use Inetsoft's style intelligence product, which varies based on usage and your data needs.
Moreso, you can license for the in-cloud and on-premise deployment.
14. Geckoboard
Best Business Intelligence Software for Building Intuitive, Dynamic and Shareable Dashboards
Features
- Data Sources: Using the pre-built integrations, connect and get data easily from over 60+ data sources in different categories such as analytics, customer support, finance, marketing, sales, and project management.
- Dashboards: Build the live dashboards that you want fast, share with team mates via email, links, chat or documents, or display your dashboards on large screens for clear and bright visibility in your workplace.
- Dashboard Snapshots: Post automatic snapshots of your dashboards to team mates via Slack.
- Data Visualization: Filter your data down to what you want to see and use the simple to use interface to select the compelling visualizations.
- Dashboard Loops and IP Restriction: Cycle through many dashboards on a single screen and restrict users from accessing particular dashboards by restricting their IPs.
- Security: Some of the present security measures include communication and information encryption, intrusion detection technology, PCI DSS compliance, third-party services permission and authentication, and dashboard URL security.
- Mobile Access: Access your dashboards anytime on your mobile devices.
Pricing
The pricing plans for the annual subscription are;
- Standard at $28/month
- Team, the most popular plan at $125/month
- Team plus a $219/month, and
- Enterprise with custom pricing.
Geckoboard has a free plan which lets you create a dashboard with their spreadsheet data source, and likewise access to adding dashboard utilities like text, images and QR codes to the created dashboard.
Consider subscribing annually to save 20%.
A 14-day free trial plan which gives you access to all the features included in Geckoboard's Pro plan is also available.
15. Birst
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Analytics and Optimization
Features
- Data Sources: Extract your data from any source by connecting with live data and combining data from multiple source systems, and even big data.
- Data Store: Use the personalized and automated data store building.
- Data Lake: Take advantage and exploit the integrated data lake and API gateway.
- Data Sharing: Easily share your analytics with customers, partners, and teammates.
- Al Automation: Perform tasks automatically using AI automation.
- Data Blending: Combine and integrate centralized, decentralized, and analytics content.
- Data Preparation: Make analytics sandboxes available for users with the self service data preparation.
- Data Delivery: Deliver data-as-a-service across the organisation.
- Data Deployment: Support for public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise deployments is available.
- Mobile Access: Access your data easily on any devices including your mobile devices anywhere, and either online or offline.
- Integration: Easily integrate dashboards, data discovery, and reporting, and likewise insert analytics in your applications using flexible APIs.
Pricing
To get the pricing details, you would have to get in touch with them by filling out a form. After which, you will be contacted by an Infor customer representative.
You can also take a look at the software.
16. Netlink
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualization, Collaboration, and Sharing
Features
- Data Sources: Have access to a very range of data by connecting and blending data from multiple sources
- Data Modeling: Model your data by arranging according to the importance of your key metrics.
- Augmented Analytics: Make important business decisions fast and smartly by using automatic insights generated by augmented analytics from your business data.
- Collaborative Analytics: Let other users see your views and results by sharing them through collaborative analytics.
- Notification: Get notified about current happenings and trends in your business with the real time notifications feature.
- Natural Language Processing(NLP): Ask questions on what you want to know or understand and get your answers in charts and graphs form.
- Expert Support: Stuck at any point? Get help from time to time, from the Netlink support, without paying extra fees.
Pricing
The available pricing plans are;
- Basic at $2.49 per month, with minimum of 250 users
- Advanced at $4.99 per month, with minimum of 100 users, and
- Professional at $8.99, without any minimal number of users.
Data visualization and dashboard downloads are available for the basic plan while data download, alerts, and collaboration are the additional features included in the advanced version.
For the professional plan, you get extra features like authoring, data preparation and management, and Natural Language Processing(NLP).
You can likewise take a 30-day free trial which gives you access to features like natural Language processing (NLP), augmented analytics, collaborative analytics, dashboard designs, data modelling and blending.
Get in touch with them by filling out a form available on their website.
17. Tableau
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualization and Sharing
Features
- Data Sources: Use Tableau's native data connectors to connect to different data sources to access databases and files, including big and web data.
- Dashboards: Build interactive dashboards which gives you access to real time visual analytics which you can use to generate insights and be in the know of opportunities and helpful trends.
- Metadata: Your users can effectively optimize data sources by pivoting, splitting, and managing metadata.
- Trend Analyses and Forecasts: Construct puissant calculations from your live data, drag and drop reference lines and forecasts, and use trend analyses and correlations to get enriching statistical understanding.
- Data Extraction: Extract voluminous data for fast and easy exploration so you can take your data offline or bring it in-memory.
- Interactive Maps: Build maps automatically, and use the built-in postal codes to set up mapping for over 50 countries globally.
- Data Sharing: Utilize Tableau server to easily and safely share visualizations and data.
- Integration: Integrate with other useful third-party tools like Salesforce CRM.
Pricing
Tableau's available versions for teams and organisations are:
- Tableau Creator at $70 user/month, billed annually
- Tableau Explorer at $35 user/month, billed annually
- Tableau Viewer at $12 user/month, also billed annually.
You can also purchase any of the available add-ons like Tableau data management add-on, Einstein discovery in Tableau, and server management add-on at extra costs.
A 14-day free trial plan is also available.
18. Domo
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualisation, Analytics, and Integration
Features
- Visualisation Engine: Domo's proprietary visualisation engine lets you select your favorite chart type from more than 150 chart types such as data science charts and period-over-period charts for data visualization.
- Custom Maps: Visualize your data by selecting from over 7,000 custom maps or better still, just upload your maps, all with a few clicks.
- Analyzer: Build actionable data visualization using a simple drag and drop interface, filter or sort data without changing the data source.
- Beast Mode: Using SQL or simple functions available in the beast mode interface, calculate new metrics from single or many datasets without changing or altering the value of your existing data.
- Beast Mode Manager: Make updates with bulk actions, visualize all your calculated fields across all Domo datasets, and track their usage locations.
- Natural Language Queries: Get instant responses, and answers to your questions about your data, through textbots.
- Automated Data Discovery: With Domo's deep learning and descriptive stats modules, access AI powered insights into your data with insights.
- Alerts: Get alerts through web, email, or your mobile devices, and stay abreast of important changes in your data.
- Mobile App: Build visualizations easily, and provide them for easy access on any devices including your mobile devices.
- Security: SSO Integration, BYOK data encryption, and personalized data permissions are some available security features.
Pricing
The pricing plans are customized based on your need and usage as you would have to get in touch with the sales team for a personalized quote.
Try out domo for free after you might have created a domo account.
19. ClicData
Best Business Intelligence Software for Building Dashboards, Data Management and Sharing
Features
- Data Sources: Connect to different sources which includes tools, databases, CRMs, web analytics, financial systems, ERPs, and APIs to get all your data and unify into a single platform.
- Data Preparation: Clean, blend and prepare your data in the format you want.
- Dashboards: Create beautiful and insightful dashboards and reports using different elements such as tables, charts, images, indicators, drop-down lists, and other 70+ visualization widgets, and make them available for your desired audience through email, mobile or web portal.
- Automation: Schedule and automate different tasks like data refreshes, dashboard publications, email or text alerts, and key indicators updates.
- Mobile App: Clicdata mobile app which allows you to access and share your dashboards conveniently from your mobile devices, and virtually anywhere.
- Security: Safe data centers, monitored and maintained by hosting and infrastructure provider, Microsoft Azure, house your data.
Pricing
Clicdata has four different offerings and they are;
- Premium at $71/month
- Team at $238/month
- Enterprise at $450/month, and
- Dedicated plan, with custom pricing.
Please note that the costs mentioned above are for the yearly subscription.
The premium plan which charges the lowest amount gives you access to 10 users, up to 5GB storage, web connectors, dashboard sharing, and support through unlimited support tickets, tutorials and webinars.
Clicdata also has a free trial plan which you can take for 14 days.
20. BOARD
Best Business Intelligence Software for Business Intelligence, Performance Management and Advanced Analytics
Features
- Data Sources: Upload your data by connecting to any data sources with the self service data modelling functionality known as data fast track.
- Data Exploration: Search and explore information fast from screens, applications, data and metadata using the board's search functionality
- Data Models: Blend extra data sets by default or build derived fields in an Excel-like environment to enrich your data models.
- Dashboards: Build dashboards that represent all your business metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and other data by using elements such as dataviews, charts, widgets, gauges, tables and other data-aware objects.
- Self Service User Interface: Using the drag and drop self service interface, generate further analyses with the search result or use it as an element to build new reports.
- Visual Analyses: Build visual analyses and analytical applications from your existing data with a few clicks
- Sliding Panel: Select values, set rows and columns, and generate quick business insights with measures and dimensions provided by the sliding panel.
- Pinboard: Customize, save and organize any existing report or graph in a private virtual environment to allow your users create their personalized access to business information.
- Security: Board possess a number of compliance certifications which includes ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2.
Pricing
Board does not provide any information on their pricing plans. Though, you can request a free demo to see what the software has to offer.
21. GoodData
Best Business Intelligence Software for Powerful and Reliable Data Analytics
Features
- Data Preparation: Merge different sources, build custom pipelines or select a data warehouse to convert your data into dashboards.
- Dashboards and Reports: Build interactive dashboards, charts and reports with your organizational data such as leveraging data from any part of the organization.
- Dashboards Optimization: Optimize your dashboards to make them available and ready for sharing on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
- Metrics and Filters: Custom filters coupled with a drag-and-drop functionality let you build your reports on an intuitive interface by creating new visualizations.
- Custom Branding: Personalize the Gooddata analytics platform with custom branding, logos, and colors, use different brand identities for dissimilar user groups or teams.
- Updates: Provide updates for your metrics and reports without altering the structures of existing visualizations.
- Security: Some of the available security measures are GDPR and CCPA compliance, customer security/risk assessments, reporting and audits, single sign-on and IP whitelisting.
- Integration: Easily integrate reports and dashboards into your web portal, business application or software product.
Pricing
Gooddata has a free version which lets you enjoy sweet features like unlimited users and dashboards, data integration options, 5 workspaces, basic support and standard security measures.
The paid plans are;
- Growth at $20 per workspace/month
- Enterprise with custom pricing and access to unlimited workspaces.
Request a demo by filling out a form to know about Gooddata features, implementation and pricing.
22. Exago
Best Business Intelligence Software for Ad hoc Reporting, Dashboards and Analytics
Features
- Data Sources: Without having to stress themselves on knowing about your data models, your users can combine data from different sources on a report by selecting their preferred fields.
- BI Dashboards: Your users can build dashboards directly by pulling fields from existing live or warehoused data onto the dashboard canvas.
- ExpressView Designer: Explore your data, create, format and export reports easily, even if you are a new report builder.
- Advanced Report Designer: Take your power users deep into building advanced reports with intelligent formulas, drilldowns, report linking, custom SQL objects, and customizable visualizations.
- Pixel-Perfect Templates: Merging of filtered data onto formatted PDF, RTF, and Excel templates is enabled by this feature, which in turn, allows your users to create clean medical forms, invoices, and orders fast.
- Reports Export: Exago lets users export reports to PDF, CSV, XLS, or RTF form, send reports via email and schedule recurring report deliveries.
- Integration: Integrate Exago bi with your favorite applications with the open API, customizable casa, single sign-on authorization, and programmatic extension points.
Pricing
Exago offers a single pricing which covers unlimited client accounts and users, unlimited servers and support, service hours and a dedicated customer success manager.
However, for the actual cost of the plan, you would have to contact them. By filling out a form, you can request for a personalized demo.
23. Alteryx
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Preparation, Analytics, and Process Automation
Features
- Data Sources: Integrate with more than 80 data sources such as spreadsheets, documents Snowflake, RPA bots and cloud sources.
- Automation Building Blocks: Create visual analytics workflow, and access about 300+ no-code, low-code building blocks to prepare and blend data pipeline and analytics, including the advanced ones.
- Data Profiling: Automated data profiling and health checks lets you get quality data and reliable results.
- Data Extraction: Extract and gather data and insights from semi-structured and unstructured sources like PDFs and text flies.
- Insights: Enrich your data with demographic, firmographic and geospatial intelligence to gain faster and deeper insights.
- Visual Canvas: Easily track any step in your analytic process with visual canvas.
- Process Automation: Make business decisions quickly by automating analytic processes to output using 70+ multiple tools like Salesforce, tableau and RPA bots.
- Alteryx SDKs: Build and reuse custom tools and formulas, create automation building blocks which you can use within Alteryx designer.
Pricing
Get in touch with the sales team through phone to discuss the pricing plans and costs.
On Alteryx, you have access to two trial options, the interactive online trail and full trial, of which you would select one.
The first one gives you an access time of 14-days while the access time for the second one, full trial is one month.
You can also watch a 5minute demonstration of the Alteryx designer in action.
24. LongView
Best Business Intelligence Software for Financial Analytics
Features
- Dashboards: Create dynamic dashboards which give a single representation of your key business metrics, and easily analyze your real time performance and operation.
- Reports: Generate reports fast with point-and-click functionality and using your most recent available data, and make them available in different varieties for your users.
- Report Automation: Automate your dashboard reporting instead of manually extracting your reports
- Data Formats: Easily deliver your performance data into engaging formats when interacting with your business decision makers
- Drill Down: Drill down to obtain data with your dashboards
- Custom Analytics: Build custom analytics and modify the analytics applications in line with changes in your business
- Self-Service Analytics: Know and understand the latest developments that occur in your business and access your analytics data without stress.
- Integration: Embed graphics into your reports to provide for easy comprehension
Pricing
Longview has not made its pricing information available to the public so you've got to get in touch with them.
You can also schedule a live demo to see Longview analytics in use.
The demo includes a 20-minute discovery call with a product expert, live demo of Longview analytics according to your business needs, and access to exploration of the available solutions to see the one which is best for you.
25. InsightSquared
Best Business Intelligence Software for Powerful Analytics and Forecasting
Features
- RevOps Dashboards: Unite data and reports from multiple systems, create intelligent RevOps dashboards which give a full representation of your key indicators and trends, and share dashboards effortlessly with important stakeholders leading to a quick and improved decision making process.
- Report Drill Down: Drill down into data within your reports to generate insights, useful for taking informed decisions and therefore actions.
- Custom Reporting: View your funnel comprising accounts, leads, opportunities, contracts, upsells, and renewals comprehensively and from different angles by drilling into the custom reporting feature.
- Funnel Grouping: Visualize your funnels based on segments like product lines, company, time periods, or individual roles and easily identify trends.
- Account Activity: The account activity, which is included automatically in the marketing, sales and account management reports over time allows your managers to train reps and other revenue contributors uniquely and on a more personal level to help them boost their performance.
- Alerts: Understand data and trends on your reports more and utilize actions to alert your teammates on the necessary steps to take for maximizing performance and upcoming challenges.
Pricing
If you would like to use insightsquared, then you'd have to contact them directly for the pricing information. Note that you can also request a demo of the software.
26. Sisense
Best Business Intelligence Software for Complex Data Analytics
Features
- Quick Note: This BI software has undergone a name change to Sisense.
- Data Pipelines: Take in unprocessed data from distinct sources and transfer to another location for storage such as importation to a data warehouse, or for analysis and business intelligence.
- Data Exploration and Analytics: Explore and visualize voluminous and complex data using the code-first, low-code and no-code tools.
- Cache Data: Use cache data to minimize query costs, ensure rapid prototyping and full self service experience.
- Data and Machine-learning Models: Filter and drill down into dashboards to gain deeper insights with the refined details provided by the data models, gain knowledge of upcoming gains and opportunities with the in-built machine learning models.
- Security: Data and cloud security, bug bounty, threat intelligence, disaster recovery, vetting, asset management (lifecycle), and background checks are some security measures put in place.
- Integration and Add-ons: Integrate with other useful tools in different categories like machine learning, data catalog and virtualization, databases, storage, through APIs, and bring onboard add-ons in various categories such as dashboard management, data security and governance, collaboration and presentation.
Pricing
Sisense does not provide details for their pricing plans as you would have to contact them to get a price quote based on an annual license model and custom pricing.
You can likewise watch a demo or take a free trial of the software.
27. Splunk
Most Suitable Business Intelligence Software for Powerful Analytics and Automation
Features
- Dashboards and Visualizations: Select your favorite charts and other visualizations to build personalized dashboards which are integrated with charts, reports, and reusable panels.
- Reporting: Create, schedule, and use reports in your dashboards, which you can also save and share in safe readable formats like PDFs.
- Augmented Reality: Undergo your data and dashboards on the objects themselves when you scan QR codes or NFC tags which are attached to devices or machinery.
- Natural Language Platform: Query the Splunk natural language platform and get real-time answers without even needing to write SLP, even your non-technical users who are not familiar with coding can easily gain access to data.
- Monitoring and Alerting: Monitor events and track important key performance indicators (KPIs), create real-time visualizations using scheduled searches, and get critical custom alerts with Splunk custom alert actions.
- Splunk Mobile: Visualize and explore your dashboards on the go, from your mobile devices, get notified of important alerts and take the necessary actions needed, all from the same mobile devices.
- Splunk TV: With Apple TV, easily display your Splunk dashboards safely and in enriching mode in your NOC/SOC environments.
- Security: Splunk has important compliance certifications including HIPAA, GDPR, , ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 Type 2.
- Integration: Integrate Splunk reports in any application that you want, or utilize the ODBC integrations to gain access to Splunk data in third-party applications such as Tableau and Microsoft Excel.
Pricing
Splunk has various pricing versions although the exact pricing costs for the different versions are not available on their website.
Contact the sales team if you need more information about the available offerings. Note that you can also download the free trials of major Splunk solutions.
28. Oracle BI
Best Business Intelligence Software for Enterprise Analytics and Interactive Reporting
Features
- Data Preparation: Your data preparation process is automated in that you can use the automated machine learning recommendations which covers time variation, population and geography to enrich your datasets and easily build up your data through smart enrichment options.
- Data Visualisations: Using augmented analytics, easily visualize your data, ask questions and get visual answers with Natural Language Processing (NLP), made for conversational search and analysis, and create visual stories using automated graph and chat recommendations with machine learning.
- Predictive Analytics: Get quick results, insights, and forecasts prediction in no time using the embedded machine learning, without coding and on a simple interface.
- Instant and Intelligence Insights: The built-in machine learning also provides automatic explanations of your data and you can arrive at interactive textual descriptions of visualizations through the natural language generation.
Pricing
Get in touch with the sales team by choosing the product category and the product that you want.
You would be contacted by a sales representative so you can know more about the available pricing plans.
You can try out the always free services in Oracle Cloud which includes two Oracle Autonomous Databases, two AMD Compute VMs, Block, Object and Archive Storage.
A 30-day free trial plan of Oracle cloud services is likewise available.
29. Looker
Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Visualization, Exploration, and Sharing
Features
- Data Sources: Without data extraction or using parallel pipelines, connect straight with your cloud or multi cloud database environment like Google BigQuery, Snowflake and Amazon Redshift, and combine data to get a wide range of insights.
- Data Visualizations: Build intuitive reports and compelling beautiful dashboards which your users can use to visualize and explore data trends and patterns, share your visualizations from any device without a time barrier.
- Reports and Alerts Scheduling: Schedule reports and alerts to keep you notified of every activity in different aspects such as dropping sales and ETL failures.
- Looker's SQL Runner: Your analysts can smoothly visualize every detail present in their data and share intuitive reports with less-technical users, which they, in turn, can easily explore.
- Security: AES 256 bit database encryption, TLS 1.2 network traffic encryption two-factor authentication, ISO 27001 and SOC Type 2 certification for Google cloud hosted instances are some of the security measures Looker employs.
- Integrations: Capitalize on pre-packaged integrations with high-ranking applications, and easily send data anywhere you like using webhooks and API and to tools such as Slack, Marketo and Segment.
Pricing
If you would like to try out Looker's business intelligence platform, then you have got to request a quote. Note that you can likewise request for a demo.
30. Microsoft Power BI
Best Business Intelligence Software for Interactive Data Dashboards and Visualizations
Features
- Data Sources: Get insights from a wide spectrum by connecting with over 100 data sources, including on-premises and cloud-based sources.
- Data Modelling: Use the data modelling tools to prepare and work on your data, transform and enrich your data with the self-service Power Query.
- Report Building: Build and share intuitive reports in no time and customize your report with theming, formatting and layout tools.
- Grouping, Forecasting and Clustering: All these features work to enable you drill down and dig deeper into your data to uncover trends and patterns
- Al Augmented Analytics: Explore and discover hidden insights, patterns, and future outcomes in your data which can make better and actionable decisions faster, and take advantage of future opportunities.
- Security: With a view to ensuring topnotch security for your data analytics, some of the available features are Bring your own encryption(BYOE), compliance certifications including HIPAA and FedRamp, strong permission controls and network virtual support.
Pricing
To start with, Microsoft Power BI offers a free trial plan which lasts for a period of 30 days.
Then, Microsoft Power BI also offers a free version including the Power BI desktop which you can use to obtain meaningful insights within your data, and create rich reports with visual analytics.
But if you want to enjoy the best features, consider subscribing for any of the paid plans which are;
- Power BI Pro at $9.99 per user/month
- Power BI Premium which is subdivided into per user at $20/month and per capacity from $4,995 per month.
Some features available in the Pro version are reports sharing, mobile app access, 8/day refresh rate and Al visuals.
A few of the additional features you'd get with the premium version are application lifecycle, advanced AI and data flows.
If you would prefer volume pricing, you can get in touch with Microsoft to know more about volume pricing.
What is Business Intelligence Software?
To better understand what a business intelligence software is, picture the scenario below.
Businesses, whether saas or b2b, deal with data.
They source data from and about customers using different tools like CRM softwares and they collect data about the performance and effectiveness of marketing strategies deployed from time to time.
Doing this is not a simple or interesting task.
However, after having successfully collected the data, they've got to work on them.
What this means is that they must unite all the data, analyse manually and work painstakingly all-round the clock at gathering important insights from the jumble of data collected.
This too is not an enjoyable or straightforward task.
But here is the biggest task, and that's implementing the insights generated.
Gathering data is one thing, working on the collected data to extract insights is another thing.
But you know the most tedious task? Implementing these insights or using them to predict future possibilities is as hard as you can imagine.
In order to solve these unavoidable problems among others, most businesses began to invest in IT, that is Information technology.
But that likewise comes with another set of problems such as incurring additional fees and extra set up tasks.
So what is the final solution, especially in this 21st century?
Enter business intelligence software.
Business intelligence software are a special types of softwares which lets you gather data from different sources, talk of data from other softwares like credit card processing softwares, CRM softwares, accounting softwares, ERP softwares, online survey softwares, files and documents, videos and other records that contain business data.
These data are then leveraged and consolidated into dashboards where you can visualize and track them easily to generate important and useful insights and trends automatically.
Some of the most common features available in the business intelligence software are dashboards and reports, data warehouse, data sharing, predictive analytics and forecasting, Al and process automation.
Best Business Intelligence Software by Category
Once you understand what business intelligence softwares is, the next thing you might need to know is the best business intelligence software by category.
What are the various types of best business intelligence softwares that we have today?
Read on to know them and what they can do.
1. Self Service Business Intelligence Software
Self service business intelligence software are specifically made for business end users who want to leverage their available data for discovering worthwhile insights which are then used to drive their decision-making process effectively.
One important peculiarity of self service software is that they often come with simple-to-use functionalities which allows business users to perform various functions.
These softwares are easy to use, and mainly do not require users to have coding knowledge or other technical skills that are often associated with the implementation of other softwares.
Therefore, self service business intelligence softwares can be used by almost all members of a business organization.
With the present functionalities and features of self service business intelligence softwares, users can perform different functions like building interactives and insightful dashboards, and accessing pre-built templates for data query.
They can even ask questions to discover more about their data through the process of natural language query.
2. Data Visualization Business Intelligence Software
As the name implies, data visualization business intelligence softwares is simply for visualizations of important key metrics.
For every business, there are goals and objectives set to be achieved in the short and long run.
No business, including yours, would want to be thrown out of the market and one way to ensure this does not happen is by measuring up and comparing performance against competitors.
When you know what your clear business goals are, and how your business measure up to competitors, then you would know the next strategies or actions to take to either maintain your performance or restrategize your strategies.
Data visualization business intelligence softwares is what you need to track your key performance indicators (KPIs) with other necessary metrics.
You can easily collate data from different sources, and see your data in real-time on interactive KPIs dashboards.
A major drawback, however, is that you might not be able to drill down into the data.
3. Reporting Business Intelligence Software
Somewhat similar to data visualization softwares, reporting softwares allows you to arrange, organize, report, and display your data.
Using them, you can assign report scheduling automatically, and even share with your audience as you deem fit.
4. Embedded Business Intelligence Software
Embedded business intelligence software are analytics functionality which are integrated into commonly used applications in the business environment, and which allows users to visualize, monitor and track their data.
Use Cases for Business Intelligence Software
Now that we have done justice to laying out the best business intelligence software by category, the next thing you might probably want to know is the use cases for business intelligence software.
You have checked out every detail on the softwares we reviewed above, and you are finally getting ready to choose one for your business.
But probably, you find yourself wondering where these business intelligence software are applicable or particular areas where they can be used, then continue reading.
Stay put and let's explore together the three most important use cases for business intelligence software.
1. Data Storage to Enable Business Intelligence Applications
One of the major reasons why data storage is one of the major use cases for business intelligence software is due to the high rate of data gathering by businesses.
And since getting data is as important as storing them, data storage is a vital business process.
Data Warehousing
There is no way we will talk about data storage as touching business intelligence software without mentioning data warehousing.
So, what is data warehousing?
Data warehousing is simply the process of collecting data from a wide range of sources, including structured and unstructured sources, and storing them in a centralized platform.
It is one of the major foundations on which most business intelligence softwares works.
Importance of Datawarehouse
Data warehouses provide users with easy access to centralized data, which are in turn utilized and leveraged to enable business intelligence applications run smoothly.
Data storage, through data warehousing, is also key to generating important insights and uncovering trends for exploring business opportunities.
Additionally, some of the other applications of business intelligence softwares like dashboards and reporting are only realized when data are coherently stored and duly unified into a single platform.
Interactive Dashboards for Data Storage
For example, let's look at how dashboards work.
Before interactive dashboards can be built, data is firstly collected by either import from files, or through connections and integrations with third-party data sources.
Large amounts of data are gathered, filtered, arranged, and organized to create enriching visualizations in the form of dynamic and compelling dashboards.
Insights and perceptions are then generated from these dashboards to drive the business forward and make beneficial decisions.
Business users can access the stored data simply at their fingertips without having to stress themselves looking for data.
2. Analyzing Big Data with BI Tools
Before we delve into how business intelligence softwares enables the analysis of big data through BI tools, let's first uncover what big data really means.
What Does Big Data Really Mean
Big data, as it is often called, refers to an exceedingly large amount of data which is difficult or almost impossible to manage, control, and optimize with normal or conventional traditional data-processing tools.
Majorly, big data is plainly defined in what is known as the ‘three Vs concept of big data'.
They are volume, variety and velocity.
One, volume refers to the extremely large amounts of data which is collected while the variety includes the wide formats of the vast amount of data collected.
For example, it could be structured, unstructured, partly-structured and even, unstructured data.
The data are in various formats and mostimes in widely-different forms.
Yet, they are collected together as a whole.
The third V, which means velocity identifies the speed at which all of these data is collected.
This goes to show that big data is collected at a very fast rate and accumulates into a great volume of data in wide and different formats.
However, big data definitions have been expanded and therefore more Vs have been invented.
They include value, veracity, and variability.
Sources of Big Data
But, where does big data come from? From where are they gathered?
Apart from data mining, big data can also come from almost any possible source, i.e all sources by which a business is connected to the outside world.
For example, big data might come from comments made by users and customers on social websites and networks, questionnaires and surveys, business applications and other sources.
Big Data Analytics Using Business Intelligence Software
Big data is important in that it provides valuable insights for businesses to make better products, improve their services, implement better marketing strategies, and grow the business more.
In the previous days, big data was manually handled and analysed majorly by using spreadsheets.
But now, through the use of BI tools made possible by business intelligence softwares, you can handle and manage big data effectively.
All you need to do is integrate big data into your business intelligence software.
Then, use the available BI tools and features like predictive analytics and forecasting, data visualizations and reporting, and natural language queries, to extract insights and uncover trends from your data.
Business intelligence tools let you analyse your big data efficiently, more comfortably and in a short period without wasting your time.
3. Business Intelligence Software for Corporate Reporting
What is Corporate Reporting?
Corporate reporting refers to the process and manner by which a company's comprehensive information is made available to concerned third parties such as investors and stakeholders.
Think of it, every serious business carries out different operations and actions relevant to the growth of the business, almost on a daily basis.
And likewise there are stakeholders for almost any business in the corporate world.
So, how do stakeholders for each business know of every activity and action taken by the internal personnel?
Through corporate reporting, of course.
And while most people erroneously assume corporate reporting is the same thing as financial reporting, this is not true.
Even though corporate reporting does not exclude financial reporting, it also covers other types of reporting like audit reporting, integrated reporting, corporate governance, and corporate financial reporting.
Why is Corporate Reporting Important?
Corporate reporting is important because it helps to keep the business on good standing generally with the public.
Apart from that, corporate reporting is an effective way by which a business organization keeps in touch and makes information available to its stakeholders.
Corporate reporting is as fundamental to the survival of the business as other internal activities which are carried out in the business.
Leveraging Corporate Reporting with Business Intelligence Software
Poor reporting quality is bad business for a business, and on the other hand, excellent reporting quality is good business for a business.
This is where business intelligence software comes into play.
Business intelligence software provides enough tools and features by which a business can efficiently increase its corporate reporting process and strategies.
Specifically known as business intelligence reporting, corporate users can easily organize, build, design and even analyse their reports with simple-to-use functionalities of business intelligence softwares.
In fact, most business intelligence softwares allow users to share reports and dashboards to their chosen audience conveniently.
Some of the features that enable business intelligence reporting are dashboards and data visualizations, augmented analytics and embedded business intelligence, and ad-hoc reporting.
Therefore, there is no doubt that business intelligence software helps to adequately simplify corporate reporting, and optimize the entire reporting workflow efficiently.
Trends in Business Intelligence Software
What are the emerging trends in business intelligence softwares in this present year 2021 and coming years?
Read on to know about four of these emerging trends in business intelligence software.
1. Increased Automation
Automation is the process by which tasks are performed automatically without the input of manual labor.
Presently, automation in business intelligence software is becoming the order of the day.
Starting from the combination of data from data sources to the building up of dashboards and reports, data analytics processes are scheduled and carried out automatically.
Users can therefore automate their business intelligence workflows and data science tasks easily.
Increased automation has evidently allowed businesses to utilize business intelligence insights to grow their businesses fast. It has also saved data analysts huge amounts of tasks and efforts that were expended on performing tasks manually.
2. Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics
One of the major secrets of succeeding in business is the ability to predict likely events before they occur.
When you can spot future occurrences before they take place, you would be able to align your actions to put you ahead of other competitors in business.
For example, consider the past Covid-19 pandemic as a case study.
As most businesses have now realized the value of remote working, who could have thought remote desktop softwares, video conferencing, and video conferencing softwares would become as common and important as they are presently?
Now imagine, if a business had invested in all these softwares pre-Covid 19 period?
You know the gains already.
Fortunately, predictive and prescriptive analytics is trending and becoming more integrated in business intelligence softwares.
Businesses can take advantage of this special feature to determine future business trends from existing data, and thereby take the necessary actions to leverage the predictions for business growth.
3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Generally, artificial intelligence is one of the most major technologies that have become so advanced, and used in this 21st century.
Infact, there are now AI softwares which you can use to build intelligent business applications.
Not only that, AI has also become a major trend in business intelligence software.
AI algorithms are used to generate advanced insights from complex data sets.
Moreso, users can easily set automated data visualizations, all thanks to the evolving AI technology.
The same applies to machine learning.
With machine learning, users can easily personalize their analytics process, augment data preparation, ask questions about their data and get conversational answers.
4. Stronger Data Security
Without reliable data security, business data and data analytics are prone to corruption by malicious malwares, viruses, and hackers.
This has made data security to be at the core of business intelligence software.
Recently, business intelligence softwares have adopted stronger and more robust data security measures such as basic and advanced encryptions, and compliances certifications.
Consequently, data security has turned out to be a positive trend in business intelligence software, and it has probably come to stay. Business users can therefore rest assured that their data is well protected, safe and secure.
FAQ
In this section, we have compiled some commonly-asked questions about business intelligence softwares and we have provided verifiable answers to the questions.
Here, you go.
There are many reasons why you should use a BI tool.
The foremost reason is that it gives you access to a wide range of data by connecting with different data sources.
When you use a BI tool, you don't need to look far to get your data as most of these tools have native app connectors and other media by which you can source data in various formats.
You can also generate valuable insights from your data by using a BI tool.
BI tools let you drill down into your data to extract actionable insights, and likewise ask questions and get real-time answers through the natural language query feature.
Predictive analysis and forecasting feature which is also available in BI tools lets you stay ahead of possible changes and events that might affect your business.
If you find yourself wondering whether a BI tool is useful for you, then, I can confidently assure you that a BI tool is really worth it.
Business intelligence mainly works through what is called ETL meaning Extract, Transform and Load.
Data is firstly extracted from different sources such as databases, business applications and spreadsheets.
The extracted data is then processed, transformed and optimized in the necessary format so it can be made ready for usage functions like querying, and reporting.
The optimized data is then loaded into a data storage depository commonly known as data warehouse which allows the data to be consolidated into a single platform for easy access, retrieval and usage.
It's from these data warehouses that BI tools retrieve data in order to make it available to users, and generally in the form of interactive dashboards.
There is not a single best business intelligence software because every software promises to be the best.
It depends on you to choose the business intelligence software which is best for you.
Likewise, you would find that some business intelligence softwares are better off in certain features than others.
As an illustration, you might find a group of business intelligence softwares provides more useful features for reporting than others.
Another category might do better in data visualization through data dashboards building.
So, it depends on the particular functions you want to deploy your business intelligence software for.
Still, a good business intelligence software should contain enough features and functionalities that allows you to carry out business intelligence strategies and processes, comfortably.
Also, there is no exact cost for business intelligence softwares as it varies from vendor to vendor.
Even some vendors do not offer a single pricing plan for the same solution such that you would have to choose the version that offers the features that you need, and can subsequently afford.
Also, a sizable number of vendors do not provide pricing information about their softwares.
Generally, be prepared to spend about $2,500 per year if you want to go for a quality business intelligence software that will yield the best returns for your business.
Which BI Vendor Should I Pick?
By this time, you have no doubts that a business intelligence software would be very useful and provide many benefits for your business.
And you should be able to know the one that provides the features that satisfy your business needs.
Although, if you still haven't decided on a particular business intelligence software; that's not a crime either.
All you have to do is to go through the above-mentioned softwares again, this time more carefully, to see the best one that ticks all the boxes.
Additionally, we have grouped the business intelligence softwares according to their major use cases and here are the examples you can find under them.
- Dashboards Building: Zoho Analytics, Yellowfin, QlikView, Geckoboard, Tableau, Clicdata, Longview, Looker, and Microsoft Power BI.
- Reporting: Sap Business Intelligence, Jaspersoft, Birt, IBM Cognos Analytics, Exago, and Oracle BI.
- Data Analytics: Microstrategy, Pentaho, Dundas BI, Birst, Netlink, Domo, Board, Alteryx, InsightSquared, Sisense, and Splunk.
- Data Test Automation: BiG EVAL.
- Spreadsheet Optimization: Clear Analytics.
Some BI vendors offer free trials which you can try out or look at the demos of the business intelligence softwares.
Doing this will help you to know the best way business intelligence software can be useful for your business.
Above all, ensure you choose a business intelligence software that is easy to use, has good features, provides rich integrations, and offers outstanding customer support.
With that, you are on your way to building a successful business and achieving financial freedom fast.