5 Best Business Intelligence (BI) Tools

Business Intelligence: An Introduction

 

The process of translating data into actionable insights that aid a company's strategic and tactical decisions is known as business intelligence (BI). BI tools retrieve and analyze data sets to provide users with extensive insight into the state of the business, and then display analytical results in reports, summaries, dashboards, graphs, charts, and maps.

 

Business intelligence (BI) combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help companies make more data-driven decisions. Business intelligence (BI) technologies are critical to the efficient operation of a company.

 

The term "business intelligence" is also used to represent a group of technologies that provide for quick, simple access to data-driven insights about an organization's current state. Raw data from various source systems must be merged, aggregated, and cleansed using data integration and data quality management technologies before it can be utilized in BI applications.

 

This ensures that BI teams and business users are studying correct and consistent data. The ultimate goal of business intelligence operations is to assist companies in making better business decisions that will increase revenue, improve operational efficiency, and provide them a competitive advantage over their competitors.

 

BI does this by combining data analytics, data management, and reporting technology, as well as a variety of data management and analysis methods.

 

Applications of BI

 

1. Services:

 

BI aids in the management of people. This is significant since, in the service industry, employees are an integral element of the company's success. 

 

Corporate intelligence is also useful for assessing business performance and improving relationships with business colleagues. It also aids in the management of large amounts of data within the organization. It will also aid with employee training and knowledge management.

 

2. Retailing: 

 

E-commerce has completely changed the retail industry. For one thing, digitalization makes data collection easier, resulting in an unparalleled amount of business insight for online businesses. Digital native companies have begun to create physical storefronts, implying that e-commerce data now informs real stores.

 

Digital data connects with business knowledge from physical stores, in addition to informing physical places. For example, Facebook has a tool for determining how effective digital advertisements are at generating shop visits. Companies are increasingly tracking and catering to customers' buying behavior, both online and offline.

 

3. Banking: 

 

Business intelligence (BI) aids banks and financial organizations in determining their consumer base. This will assist them in developing marketing strategies. 

 

It also aids banks in the development of performance indicators and benchmarks for assessing company performance. It can also assist with knowledge or learning management. It will aid in the administration of vast amounts of data.

 

4. Social media: 

 

In social media, business intelligence has two purposes: it connects and entertains users while also gathering business intelligence that allows advertisers to execute hyper-targeted ads for a price. Jewelers, for example, can promote themselves exclusively to newly engaged people on Facebook.

 

Social media sites also utilize their terabytes of data to improve their own platforms, sometimes in unexpected and high-tech ways.

 

5. Manufacturing:

 

BI will improve supplier interactions and standardize all transactions with them, resulting in increased efficiency. BI will anticipate product demand, allowing inventory, production, and procurement size to be optimized.  (source)

 

Top BI tools

 

1. Microsoft Power BI

 

The Power BI app allows users to analyze, display, and publish data from local and cloud sources to the Power BI platform. Among the capabilities provided are data preparation, visual-based exploration, interactive dashboards, and augmented analytics. 

 

The Pro edition of Power BI Desktop, available for a monthly fee, makes collaborative analysis simpler by integrating Microsoft Office365, SharePoint, and Teams to restrict access to raw data and published findings.

 

For enterprises that want to go all-in, self-service data prep is feasible utilizing prebuilt connections to corporate data stored in Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or third-party sources such as Salesforce in the Premium tier.

 

The benefit of Microsoft power BI

 

• Power BI seamlessly connects with your existing business environment, allowing you to use analytics and reporting tools. Microsoft Azure experts can also aid you in incorporating dynamic graphics into your apps using this simple method.

• The information dashboards, which can be tailored to match every enterprise's specific needs, are Power BI's crowning feature. To ensure a consistent user experience, you may easily incorporate dashboards and BI reports in your apps.

• By transferring a current BI system to a strong cloud environment with Power BI incorporated, memory and speed limits are removed, allowing data to be retrieved and analyzed fast.

 

 

2. SAS

 

While SAS is most known for its superior predictive analytics, it also has a strong business intelligence platform. This well-established self-service platform, which dates back to the 1970s, enables users to make educated decisions about their businesses by leveraging data and metrics. 

 

SAS offers high-level data connectivity and advanced analytics and reporting through their set of APIs, giving users a wide range of customization choices. They also offer a fantastic text analytics option that allows you to gain additional contextual insight into your data.

 

Benefits of SAS

 

• SAS Visual Analytics aids in the analysis of an enterprise's large data and the generation of significant insights from it in such a way that business users may draw inferences from the entire process themselves, relieving the IT team of this responsibility.

 

• SAS Visual Data Exploration aids in the creation of visually attractive graphics that pique the interest of business users who would not otherwise find such data intriguing.

 

• Data consistency is ensured via centralized data management, security, and shared metadata. The outputs are guaranteed to be accurate, and the findings may be tracked back to the data sources.

 

 

3. Domo

 

Domo is a cloud-based platform for corporate users that focuses on easy-to-use dashboards. It offers business intelligence solutions to a wide range of industries and professions including finance, health care, manufacturing, and education along with CEOs, sales, BI professionals, and IT workers).

 

Domo is utilized by both small businesses and major corporations. At both the micro and macro levels, the platform delivers visibility and analysis including predictive analysis powered by Mr. Roboto, their AI engine. 

 

We've got you covered on everything from cash balances to listings of your best-selling goods by location to marketing return on investment (ROI) projections for each channel.

 

Benefits of DOMO

 

• Executives can operate their businesses from their smartphones, with data available 24 hours a day and staff always linked. The platform keeps track of user data and makes it available to all team members.

 

• The platform's Business Cloud allows users to combine data from a variety of sources, including cloud CRM, Google Analytics, and email, and turn it into live visualizations.

 

• DOMO enables consumers to quickly obtain all of the information they need to make well-informed decisions, regardless of their technical experience.

 

• Users may integrate their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube data to DOMO to better understand their social media presence. This includes engagement rate, average engagement, and impressions, to name a few.

 

 

4. Tibco

 

Tibco Spotfire is a self-service AI-powered data visualization platform that includes dashboards, interactive visualization, data preparation, and workflow. The platform features machine learning-based data preparation tools to help in the building of complex data models.

 

It's employed in a variety of industries, including financial services, energy, manufacturing, consumer packaged products, government, transportation and logistics, healthcare, and life sciences. Python is now included in the latest release.

 

Benefits of Tibco

 

• Because of its flexibility, dependability, and scalability, it is frequently utilized. Make quick application development easier. Message-oriented middleware, databases, and Distributed Systems are all simple to integrate (DS).

 

• Ability to deal with a variety of challenges. Data transformation to the receiver is simple and efficient. In real-time, a shared framework makes the process faster and easier. Data is routed and transformed in the proper format to its intended destinations.

 

 

5. Qlik Sense

 

QlikSense is a business intelligence and data analytics platform developed by Qlik. QlikSense may be viewed at any time and from any device. QlikSense is a popular BI solution because its user interface is built for touchscreens.

 

It boasts a one-of-a-kind associative analytics engine, powerful AI, and a high-performance cloud platform, which makes it even more tempting. This platform's Search & Conversational Analytics function is particularly intriguing since it allows users to ask queries and uncover new insights using natural language.

 

Benefits of QlikSense

 

• Qlik Sense's augmented visuals and data discovery feature to aid in the spread of data literacy, which implies that people of all skill levels and capacities may learn to intuitively draw meaningful insights from data and so interpret data.

 

• It provides an appropriate platform for the corporate ecosystem, allowing developers to work with extendable and configurable APIs, combine huge and small data, and load programs utilizing a multi-cloud platform.

 

• The environment for interactive analysis, in which nearly anything may be found in the depths of data via global search and selections that respond fast.

 

• Qlik Sense works on a variety of platforms, including desktops, tablets, laptops, and mobile phones. This simplifies the process of developing and assessing apps. (source)