The challenge of concentrating on the data we truly need and presenting it in an understandable manner is growing as more and more data becomes available. This is the essence of business intelligence. We will discuss business intelligence technologies, advantages, and use cases in this article.
Business intelligence: What is it?
Enterprise data analysis techniques and technology are referred to as business intelligence (BI) strategies and technologies. BI tools offer perspectives on corporate operations that are historical, present, and predictive. In the big data era, it is now an essential tool.
A collection of methods, frameworks, and tools known as business intelligence (BI) transform unstructured data into insightful knowledge that motivates productive business decisions. It is a collection of tools and services for turning data into knowledge and information that can be put to use.
It speaks of methods, tools, and technology for gathering, combining, analyzing, and presenting corporate data. The goal of business intelligence is to facilitate improved decision-making at the corporate level, allowing companies to boost profits, enhance operational effectiveness, and outperform competitors.
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Use cases for business intelligence
- Reporting
- Online analysis
- Analytical
- creation of a dashboard
- Data extraction
- mining processes
- sophisticated event handling
- Management of business performance
- Comparing and contrasting
- textual analysis
- Analytics that predict
- analytical prescriptions
- Spreadsheets
- Information display
Large volumes of structured and occasionally unstructured data can be handled by BI tools to aid in the discovery, development, and creation of new, strategic business prospects. Long-term stability and a competitive market advantage can be achieved by firms through the identification of new opportunities and the implementation of an effective strategy grounded in insights.
Businesses can analyze vast volumes of data and make data-driven choices quickly with the aid of business intelligence (BI) tools.
For instance, you can estimate the financial impact of an operations decision or forecast customer purchasing behavior using BI software. You can use BI software to get real-time data insights rather than waiting for a quarterly or annual report.
Applications of BI differ between industries. Financial services companies and insurers, for instance, utilize business intelligence (BI) to develop new products to offer to current customers based on their portfolios and to analyze risk throughout the loan and policy approval procedures. Manufacturers rely on business intelligence (BI) for both historical and real-time analysis of plant operations, as well as for production planning, procurement, and distribution management. Retailers use BI for inventory management, promotional planning, and marketing campaign management.
Big consumers of business intelligence (BI) include airlines and hotel companies for tasks including monitoring flight capacity and room occupancy rates, establishing and modifying pricing, and assigning staff. Analytics and big data help healthcare businesses diagnose illnesses and other medical issues and work toward better patient outcomes. Among other things, schools and universities use BI to track overall student performance metrics and spot students who might need help.
Benefits of business intelligence
- Continuously assess the performance of your business
- More efficient marketing, sales, and customer service initiatives
- Bottlenecks in the manufacturing, distribution, and supply chains can be identified before they result in financial loss.
- HR managers may more effectively keep an eye on worker productivity, labor expenses, and other workforce information.
- Boost and expedite decision-making
- Streamline internal business procedures
- Determine new trends in business and the market.
- one perspective across all of your business operations
Tools for business intelligence
There are numerous suppliers offering business intelligence technologies. Prominent IT companies that provide business intelligence software including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SAS, and Salesforce. The latter acquired Tableau in 2019 and continues to market its own tools created prior to the acquisition. With the 2020 acquisition of Looker, Google has a presence in the BI space as well. In addition to the vendors we will cover in this post, other noteworthy BI providers are Alteryx, Domo, GoodData, Infor Birst, Information Builders, Logi Analytics, MicroStrategy, Pyramid Analytics, Sisense, ThoughtSpot, and Yellowfin.
In order to help you select the most contemporary BI platform for your company, we have listed our evaluation guidelines below:
- Tableau
Data visualization and integration with several data sources, such as Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Excel, are features of a self-service analytics platform.
Leading company in the business intelligence sector is Tableau. Individual analysts, small teams, large enterprises, and everyone in between trust the program.Tableau Desktop, Tableau Online, Tableau Server, Tableau CRM, embedded analytics, server management, data management, and other BI tools are among the many that they provide. Tableau is the most adaptable software in this area due to its broad product offerings, numerous use cases, industry-specific solutions, and tools based on several technologies. Tableau’s top features include: real-time actionable insights; easy access to data from multiple sources (e.g., Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.); multi-platform support (desktop, browser, mobile); team collaboration tools; advanced analytics presented in a powerful visual interface; easy resource and content organization; centralized data sources and custom permissions; and multiple deployment options (cloud, on-premises, hosted, Windows, Linux, Mac, multi-tenant). Tableau is a feature-rich and sophisticated program overall.
- The Splunk
a “directed analytics platform” that offers data analytics and business information suitable for enterprise use. Using a data platform designed for the cloud, it drives results in the areas of security, IT, and DevOps. It provides a solution for every requirement and industry.
- Alteryx
Provides a multitude of BI insights and streamlines workflows by combining information from several sources. Business outcome optimization and automation through analytics. It enhances sales, lowers attrition, streamlines your supply chain, automates taxes and audits, and swiftly integrates Alteryx with cutting-edge technology.
- Qlik
Providing access to all of the enterprise’s data is Qlik’s main objective. Thanks to the Qlik cognitive engine, the Associative Engine now offers AI and machine learning capabilities that provide context-aware insight recommendations. There are on-premises and cloud versions of Qlik Sense, the self-service platform to access that analytical capacity.
- Domo
Domo is a cloud-based platform that prioritizes usability and dashboards that can be deployed by business users. It is designed for a range of vocations and industries, including CEOs, sales, BI specialists, and IT personnel. These industries include financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and education.
Domo provides automatically recommended visuals. Once you upload your data source to Domo, you may use data visualization to go from raw data to charts, graphs, maps, and other visualizations that are automatically suggested. The data can be improved, annotated for more discussion or commentary, or improved with access control.
Domo’s AI engine, Mr. Roboto, powers predictive analysis, allowing data scientists to build predictive models and leverage AI technologies such as natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to warn and alert users about changes in KPIs, among other things.
- BI Dundas
From Dundas, Dundas BI Although the company’s historical strengths, dashboard and scorecard creation are the main uses for data visualization, it can also be used for routine and ad hoc reporting. An adjustable online interface that may be customized to the abilities of the user is used for analysis and visualization: Features are viewed differently by power users and regular users. The most recent version features point-and-click trend analysis, an application development environment for personalized analytic applications, a new in-memory engine, and new natural language query capabilities.
- Board
integrates performance management, predictive analytics, and business intelligence into one application. Finance, planning, consolidation, HR, skills mapping, workforce planning, marketing, supply chain, supply chain optimization, sales, supplier management, delivery optimization, cross-selling and up-selling analysis, IT, KPIs, and service levels are among the modules it contains.
- NetSuite
The application offers a full range of business intelligence (BI) capabilities by combining financial data, dashboards, reporting capabilities, predictive analytics, and other features.With NetSuite, customers can set up projects automatically when certain services are offered. They can also set up automatic tracking of project tasks’ completion percentage, allocated time, and total time. Utilization and backlog reports facilitate the analysis of worker productivity and workloads. You can create and send invoices, track time and expenses, compare project performance to budgets, and use additional metrics in addition to project management. Revenue recognition, costs, unbilled balances, and other project-related financials are managed via the NetSuite Project Management module.
- Datapine
It is an excellent business intelligence tool since it blends sophisticated analytics capabilities with an easy-to-use interface. Business users and data analysts alike may produce actionable business insights and make well-informed, data-driven decisions with the help of the self-service BI solution. With a few clicks, you may link almost any type of data source, including databases, flat files, CRM and ERP systems, marketing, social media, help desk data, etc. They have a sizable dashboard gallery with over 80 dashboard themes for various application areas, along with an abundance of cutting-edge dashboard functionality. Dashboards can be shared with ease using a variety of methods, such as advanced embedding options, sharing via URL, and automatic email reports.
- Izenda
Self-service reporting that is integrated directly into your software and offers customizable dashboards and reports, responsive design, integrated security features, and an admin user interface (UI) that allows you to control user permissions, multi-tenancy, data connectivity, and other features.
- Perceptual
One of the most widely used BI tools available today is Sisense. Developers, executives in business, product managers, and data specialists all use it. More than 10,000 businesses, including well-known names like GE, Verizon, Motorola, Wix, Hewlett Packard, and the Salvation Army, rely on the software. Sisense offers solutions tailored to various industries, including supply chain management, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and government. Additionally, they provide solutions that are designed with particular departments in mind within your company.
The primary functionalities include the capacity to develop robust analytics applications, individual user self-service analytics, on-premises, cloud, or hybrid deployment with Windows or Linux, Integrate Sisense with your current tools and branding with ease.
- The Chartio
This BI system is hosted on the cloud. It enables users to examine data from business apps with different technical backgrounds. You may easily simplify data with the tool’s charts and dashboards to make better decisions. Sharing images in PDFs, Slack, embedded web pages, and other formats is simple with Chartio. Product managers, sales teams, customer success teams, and all users (C-suite, sales representatives, etc.) can utilize its self-service features and tools.
Custom themes can also be made and saved using it.
- Exago
Thanks to its cutting-edge features and award-winning usability, Exago is a fantastic tool for both novice and seasoned users. Offering options including a library of common configurable reports, a drag-and-drop ExpressView designer, and an Advanced Report builder divided into spreadsheets, you can choose what features each user has access to. Reports can be created, formatted, and exported at any degree of technical proficiency. Their “stealth mode” integration allows them to offer an open API, completely adjustable CSS, single sign-on authorization, and programmatic extension points, all while integrating with your software.
- Metric Perspectives
Metric Insights combines all of your BI tools and data into a single, easily navigable interface to help you engage users. It delivers insights into your data in every application and on any platform, automatically detects anomalies in your data, and has a ton of integrations and plug-ins to let you connect to the data that matters most to you. Metric Insights is compatible with QlikView and Qlik Sense applications in addition to Tableau Server and Tableau Online. They provide plug-ins to extract data from a variety of well-known systems, including Facebook, Google Sheets, Hubspot, iTunes, Power BI, Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, Basecamp, Becon, Adaptive Insights, Adobe Analytics, and more.
This solution also provides controlled notifications. This business intelligence program’s ability to control alerts and make sure users are responding on triggered data is an intriguing feature. Team members can take responsibility by designing and assigning workflows, and the tool will retain a history so you can always access the finished workflows.
- Netsoft
InetSoft provides machine-learning solutions to fulfill your demands in finance reporting, marketing tools, supply chain dashboards, project management dashboards, sales dashboards, and enterprise asset management. Scalable architecture, machine learning combined with human-developed analysis, and visualization dashboards and published reports are among the features.
- Small-scale strategy
MicroStrategy offers cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployment solutions to cater to the enterprise BI market across multiple industries. With its drag-and-drop interface, users can easily construct customizable dashboards and customized data visualizations. MicroStrategy boasts of federated analytics, which enable users to combine data from sources like Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI and create reports and insights by leveraging their current investments in these platforms. Additionally, it has an enterprise semantics graph that indexes data assets to add real-time telemetry and location intelligence to data silos.
- Cloud Analytics for Oracle
Oracle has concentrated on creating a cloud solution that is easy to use and intuitive, with robust machine learning and reporting capabilities. Predictive analytics, data preparation, data connections, visualizations, a native mobile app, and support for embedded analytics are some of the key features.
- AccurateData
The tools needed for data intake, storage, analytical queries, visualizations, and application integration are offered by GoodData. You can build dashboards and reports for your everyday tasks or incorporate their analytics into your website, desktop program, or mobile application.
- IBM Cognos Analytics
It is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that builds dashboards and reports using AI suggestions. Users may now access, find, and access recently used content within the software—where you can filter and save your searches—thanks to a new Cognos Analytics search system.
- Tibco
Tibco Spotfire is a self-serve platform for dashboards, interactive visualization, data preparation, and workflow that leverages artificial intelligence. The platform supports the creation of complicated data models by providing machine learning-based data preparation capabilities. Financial services, energy, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, government, transport and logistics, healthcare, and life sciences are just a few of the verticals where it is used.
We are surrounded by data, which is growing yearly. Your data management will become more coherent, reliable, agile, and predictable by using business intelligence solutions, which come with a plethora of functions. Our goal was to assist you in thinking through the top business intelligence tools available, and we believe that by providing a thorough analysis of each tool, we have encouraged you to investigate business intelligence tools and identify the ideal option for your division or organization.