These five essential BI tools can help you uncover insights to make important business decisions.
Just as a handyman needs a toolbox of hammers,
nails, and a screwdriver, individuals in business
intelligence (BI) careers need to be familiar with
certain software tools. Business intelligence is the
functions, strategies and tools companies use to
collect, process and analyze data.
Based on the insights gained, business intelligence
tools can identify new opportunities for
organizations to improve return on investment
(ROI) and competitive advantage. These tools are
suitable for all departments, industries and
business users. So consider exploring a tool to
advance your career.
Here are the benefits of BI tools and five of the most commonly used tools.
What are business intelligence (BI) tools?
Business intelligence tools collect, process and
analyze large volumes of structured and
unstructured data from internal and external
systems. Data sources can include documents,
images, emails, videos, magazines, books, social
media posts, files, and more. BI tools find this
information through queries, which present data in
user-friendly formats such as reports, dashboards,
charts, and graphs.
These tools can perform data mining, data
visualization, performance management, analytics,
reporting, text mining, predictive analytics, and
more. As a result, employees can use this
information to make better decisions based on
forecasts, market trends, and key performance
indicators (KPIs).
Advantages of BI tools
BI tools can help your business take smart, agile
steps toward a larger goal.
Centralized Data: All your data in one place.
Businesses collect data from numerous databases,
portals, customer relationship management (CRM)
systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems, and more. To understand the whole thing,
you need business intelligence tools that bring data
together and provide specific types of views
(questions, trends, analytics) based on your query
or what you want to know about.
Self-sufficiency: Data no longer belongs solely to
the company's IT team. Now any non-technical
employee, even an intern, can access and analyze
the data their specific team needs. You can
generate a report of all electronics sales in 2020, or
visualize medical records to determine the number
of COVID-19 cases in 2022.
Make predictions: With access to vast amounts of
past and present data, employees can make
evidence-based decisions. Predictive analytics and
forecasting allow users to generate insights based
on the performance history of a product or service.
If business conditions change, smart tools can
automatically detect anomalies and you can react
to disruptions as they arise.
Automated reports: Instead of manually entering
data into an Excel spreadsheet or switching
between different tools, many BI tools are
automated. If you need a report on a product for a
specific time period, the tool will generate it for
you. If that information is important and you want
to add it to a presentation, you can create an
interactive visualization and download the charts
and graphs you need.
Reduced business costs: BI tools can do so many
things, from analyzing consumer behavior and
forecasting sales to monitoring processes in real
time, that the process of analyzing, planning, and
reporting is much more efficient and accurate than
before. In fact, more than 50% of BI tool users say
these benefits have helped them reduce costs and
increase revenue.
Top 5 Business Intelligence Tools
There are dozens of BI tools available today. To
help you determine the top five, here are the most
frequently cited websites ranking the best BI tools.
These five BI tools are listed in no particular order.
1. Microsoft Power BI
One of the most popular BI tools is Power BI from
the software giant Microsoft. This tool is
downloadable software that allows you to run your
analysis either in the cloud or on a report server,
synchronize with sources such as Facebook and
Oracle, and create reports and dashboards with this
interactive tool in a matter of minutes. It has built-
in AI capabilities, Excel integration, and data
connectors, and offers end-to-end data encryption
and real-time access monitoring.
Learn Power BI with Coursera: This guided project
will teach you the basics of Power BI Desktop in
just two hours. Read and transform data and create
interactive reports and dashboards.
2. Tableau
Tableau is known for its user-friendly data
visualization capabilities, but it does more than
just create pretty charts; Tableau offers live visual
analytics that allow users to quickly find trends in
data with a drag-and-drop interface. The tool
supports data sources such as Microsoft Excel,
Box, PDF files, and Google Analytics. Its
versatility extends to the ability to connect with
most databases.
3. QlikSense
QlikSense is a BI tool that focuses on a self-service
approach and supports a wide range of analytical
use cases, from guided apps and dashboards to
custom and embedded analytics. It offers a
touchscreen-optimized, user-friendly interface,
sophisticated AI, and a high-performance cloud
platform. Search and Conversational Analytics, an
associative exploration feature, allows users to ask
questions to uncover actionable insights and helps
increase data literacy for those new to using BI
tools.
4. Dundas BI
Dundas BI is a 25-year-old browser-based BI tool;
like Tableau, Dundas BI has drag-and-drop
functionality that allows users to analyze data on
their own without involving the IT team. The tool
is known for its simplicity and flexibility through
interactive dashboards, reports, and visual
analysis, and since its creation as a data
visualization tool in 1992, it has evolved into an
end-to-end analysis platform that can compete
with new BI tools available today. 5. Scicence
5. sisense
Sisense is a user-friendly BI tool that focuses on
simplification and streamlining. The tool allows
users to export data from sources such as Google
Analytics and Salesforce. Inchip technology
allows for faster data processing than other tools.
Key features include the ability to embed white-
label analysis, which means companies can fully
customize the service to their needs. As with other
tools, there is drag-and-drop functionality; Sisense
allows users to share reports and dashboards with
team members and external parties.
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