Business Intelligence tools are designed to help company staff make sense of all the complex data they have to work with on a daily basis. But how do you know which BI tool is the right one to help you achieve your goals and why use them ? In the following article we will tell you.
What is a BI tool?
BI tools or platforms are software that you can use to collect past, future, and current data and then process and analyze it. It is done to generate useful information, create interactive reports, simplify decision making for your business and many more functionalities.
These platforms come with key features, including Data Visualization, KPI Dashboards, visual analytics, and interactive dashboards. Apart from this, these tools also allow you to take advantage of automated reports along with predictive analytics to understand future trends.
How does BI help companies understand data?
The human brain is wired in such a way that it picks up visual triggers quickly to fully immerse yourself in something. This is how we process data in general.
Simply put, when you look at a picture or graph, it becomes much easier for you to understand things instead of scrolling through endless texts or spreadsheets. BI tools are built with this aspect of the human brain in mind.
The main objective of BI tools is to make the data easy to capture so that the user can create valuable information from it.
Visualizing data through charts, graphs, heat maps, images, videos, and infographics embedded in the visualization helps you better understand your data.
How does a BI tool work?
BI tools work in the following steps:
- Access and visualization of data
- interact with them
- Analyze and discover significant information beneficial to your business
- Share that information with your team for further implementation
- Promotion and governance of valuable data to make better business decisions, along with future planning.
Why use Business Intelligence tools?
First, data discovery, which used to be limited to the expertise of advanced analytics specialists, is now something anyone can do using these tools.
Not only that, these tools give you the insights you need to achieve things like growth, solve urgent problems, collect all your data in one place, forecast future results, and much more. forward!
Benefits of BI tools
- It brings together all relevant data from multiple endpoints such as portals, CRM, ERP, databases, flat files, APIs, etc.
- Help businesses build self-service analytics without any IT support. It is because these tools make everything clear and concise that users can easily understand. They can then effortlessly generate reports that make sense and run queries as well.
- Predictive analytics can be achieved with these tools to shape future decisions based on trends. If conditions change at a later stage or an anomaly occurs, you can receive intelligent alerts that help you react instantly.
- Due to automation with BI tools, you can save time by using the drag and drop editor from your interactive dashboard.
- Along with time, you save your business expenses that are otherwise wasted on inaccurate planning.
Now that you know what you’re doing, let’s explore some of the best business intelligence tools on the market.
10 Best Business Intelligence Tools
Now yes, the time has come to know the most used Business Intelligence tools in the sector, do you want to know them? Forward!
1. Powerbi
Power BI is not just a Business Intelligence tool. It is a business analytics service from Microsoft that aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards.
2. Tableau
Tableau is our second Business Intelligence tool, a business intelligence and analysis software. Its main service is the development of interactive data visualization products that focus on business intelligence.
3. QlikView
QlikView is another must-have Business Intelligence software that combines all the data, helps create reports and gain business insights quickly. In addition, the information can be exported in excel format. It includes data integration, user-driven business intelligence, and conversation analytics.
4. SAP BI
SAP BI is Business Intelligence software, a business intelligence technology with which you can share strategic information and make better decisions with the SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence (BI) suite.
Your analytics platform can support your users and from a single tool to multiple tools and interfaces. The tool has on-premise implementation, real-time Business Intelligence and provides greater user autonomy.
5. Pentaho
Pentaho is a set of free programs to generate business intelligence. Includes built-in tools for reporting, data mining, ETL, etc.
This tool allows you to simplify data operations and democratize access to information for all stakeholders in the company, with automation based on policies and data management based on metadata.
6. MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy Workstation provides what you need to access, visualize, and analyze your data for free and without license keys. No trial version. It also offers fast and flexible analytics to help maximize the impact of data, while laying the foundation for a data-driven future.
7. SAS Business Intelligence
SAS Business Intelligence helps users have the right information for whoever needs it, integrate and discover data on their own. Also, with this tool you can share interactive reports and review easy-to-use analytics.
8. Sisense
Sisense is an analytics tool that makes it easy to prepare, analyze, and explore growing data from multiple sources.
The main functions of this BI tool help to simplify data analysis and unlock data from the cloud so that everyone can analyze the data and generate better results. Plus, it’s perfect for building personalized experiences and automating multi-step actions to speed up workflows.
9. Oracle BI
Oracle BI is a Business Intelligence tools platform that allows you to simplify analytics strategies through a modern and integrated platform.
This tool serves people across the organization to make faster, more informed, mobile-enabled business decisions. Additionally, the platform has powered the current release of industry-leading cloud analytics, Oracle Analytics.
10. Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence, reporting, and data analysis software that enables you to visually analyze your data and discover insights in minutes.
Huge amounts of raw data can be transformed into reports with this tool. In addition, you can track key business metrics, review past trends, identify outliers, and reveal hidden information.
Conclusion
Data plays a very important role in shaping today’s businesses. So it’s up to you how you use the data available around you to make better decisions. This is why using a business intelligence tool can greatly help you run your business with better planning and execution using detailed data.
If you need something lightweight, alternatively you can take advantage of Google Data Studio with these powerful data connectors to visualize your data.
Have you already tried any of these tools? Which one do you prefer? Do not forget to share it and if data analytics is your thing, do not miss the Master in Business Intelligence with which you will learn to use the most important techniques and tools to obtain business intelligence from data.
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