Business intellegence tools

You can also submit your own open-source designs. It sends notifications directly to your smartphone, tablet, or a white label mobile app. It also provides access to the data on any mobile device. Combine private clouds, public clouds, and on-premises resources to develop a hybrid solution.

Pricing: You can get a price quote based on your project type, number of users, data volume, project timeline, etc. Key Features: Device Designer — It helps you customize, design, and publish optimized dashboards for tablet, desktop, and smartphone. Live Charts — Explore and understand data in real-time through live charts that offer data-rich visual patterns. Tableau Maps — It automatically turns the location data into interactive maps with 16 levels of zoom.

You can also use custom geocodes to map the data as required. Tableau Blueprint — It helps you create a methodology to create a data-driven organization. Create live stories to develop a compelling narrative. Easily share data and reports securely through Tableau Online or Tableau Server.

Combine database and computer graphics to study large datasets on your laptop. It offers interactive visualization to explore hidden opportunities. The Ask Data feature leverages smart algorithms to index, profile, and optimize data sources.

Pricing: Tableau offers different pricing plans for different deployment options. SAP Business Intelligence. Best for analytics reporting and cross-enterprise sharing Quote-based. Key Features: SAP Analytics Cloud — It offers access to all the database solutions and joins multiple analytical instruments at a single place.

Predictive Analytics — It leverages machine learning to predict future trends based on your data. It also comes equipped with pre-built algorithms and ML model management tools. BusinessObjects BI Suite — It offers real-time data access with multiple capabilities, including reporting, interactive dashboards, ad hoc instant reports, and data visualization. Pros: Available both on-premise and in the cloud. It also supports multilingual reports.

It offers augmented analytics to help you understand complex data easily. Embed analytics with business applications.

Color-based analytics solution for better understanding. Centralized location for all insights and reporting data with custom dashboards. Integration with MS Office. Free demo and customized pricing. Pricing: SAP provides quote-based pricing information.

Best for startups and mid-sized businesses Quote-based. Key Features: Looker Blocks — These are pre-built pieces of code that you can use to fast-track your analytics.

It offers SQL patterns, custom visualizations, fully built-out data models, weather and demographic data, and more. Embedded Analytics — Embed analytics anywhere instantly while achieving the desired customization. It also offers plug-and-play solutions.

Sales Analytics — Combine data from multiple systems to gain actionable insights to maximize sales and reduce churn. Pros: It offers customizable and purpose-built business workflows for managers, representatives, and operational teams. Over pre-built LookML modeling patterns to facilitate development. It allows you to choose the cloud and database architecture of your choice. Create custom-built applications based on your requirement.

Pricing: Looker provides quote-based plans based on your company and the number of employees it has. Best for large enterprises with big budgets. Key Features: Location-Based Analytics — To put the data into perspective, it puts relevant data into their geographies to make it more relatable. Data Visualization — It offers color-rich interactive reports to help you understand complex data easily.

Self-Service Dashboard — It helps you track key metrics of the business, including revenue, profit, sales, and more, from one location. Pros: You can use the drag-and-drop function to insert built-in widgets. Save templates in the middle of the work and resume from where you left. Create sales and digital marketing reports quickly through the drag-and-drop feature.

It offers multiple filters to help you create and view specific reports instantly. Eliminates the Excel work in the majority of the cases. It provides integration with voice search technology like Alexa.

Microsoft Power BI. Key Features: Power Pivot — It helps you import and integrate different datasets from multiple sources and create in-memory data models. Customized Visualization — Leverage its custom library to design data visualizations that meet your business requirements. Power Query — It enables data shaping and cleansing easily. You can rename the column, merge data, replace values, and modify other business-critical aspects of the data.

Pros: Its Power view feature supports maps with zoom and pan functionalities. It displays a personalized view of the dashboard for different users based on their requirements. Ad-hoc data visualization and reporting. Best for extensive connectivity using data connectors Quote-based. Key Features: Report Scheduler — Schedule specific reports to teams and professionals at a particular time and date. Alert Center with — It works as a hub for notifications to metrics data and conversations to helps users take immediate action.

You can also get alerts regarding KPIs. Domo Appstore — It provides numerous pre-built apps and connector APIs to let you build your own custom apps. Pros: Domo provides mobile access to your data anytime, anywhere. Its query engine enables you to find answers quickly. Create customized data collections and dashboards. Its text bots provide answers to questions in natural languages. Load heaps of data through a single click. Pricing: Domo provides custom-based pricing.

Oracle Analytics. The business analytics software offers four sub-products, including: Oracle Analytics Cloud — It helps you discover insights from anywhere you want, even using mobile devices. You can also use augmented analytics to combine data in your organization with third-party apps. This further helps you automate tasks like data preparation, visualization, forecasting, and reporting.

Oracle Analytics Server — It helps you with on-premises or customer-managed deployment and discover more unique insights from raw data. Plus, Oracle Fusion helps you identify the precise value of your data with prebuilt integration and data models. Oracle Essbase — It lets you test and model business assumptions — whether on-premises or in the cloud. Key Features: Augmented Analytics — It delivers AI-powered augmented analytics for smarter data preparation and discovering more accurate results.

It also leverages natural language processing NLP to enable conversational-style answers and analytics. Data Connectors — You get numerous data connectors to connect to data sources in the cloud, on-premises, or on your desktop. Pros: Easily share results and reports for seamless collaboration. It offers pre-built analytic data models in compliance with your security rules. Embed analysis within applications to enable interactions with customers through a chatbot.

The ML models come with predictive analytics capabilities. Get an aggregated view of all the content and reports from a centralized dashboard. Qlik offers three significant functions: Data Integration — It provides data and analytics in real-time and performs data streaming, cataloging, refinement, etc.

Key Features: Qlik Replicate — Qlik helps organizations with data replication, injection, and data streaming. Data Warehouse — They automate the process of managing and optimizing data warehouse, generating ETL code, applying updates, etc.

Qlik Catalog — It puts all your data into a simplified view and helps you find data whenever you want. It also performs data standardization, cleansing, and implements protection measures. Pros: API integration and end-to-end cloud data integration. Security and compliance certificate. It performs usage monitoring. Create custom analytics or import and embed analytics into your application.

Qlik also provides personal consulting, training, and several support programs. IBM Cognos. Create Reports — It lets you create multi-page and multi-query reports for multiple databases. Share Insights — You can connect your dashboard to Slack or email and share data modules, widgets, and even your entire dashboard. Pros: It helps you create visual reports and animated stories. Get real-time updates on your mobile phone. Import data from spreadsheets, CSV files, cloud, and more.

You get automated version updates. It performs predictive analysis and seasonal forecasting. Cognos also provides control access based on roles. Pricing: Initially, you get a days free trial.

Dundas BI. Some of its new features include: New functions to zoom your charts. Restrict access and allow login from only specific IP addresses. Automatically size text. Install Dundas BI on Linux. Key Features: Slideshows — Slideshows allow you to define your own selection of dashboards or other news in sequence.

Mobile Experience — You can build, view, and share dashboards, data reports, and scorecards on your mobile device anywhere and at any time. Pros: You can use sample data and Excel data. Integrate with all types of data sources. You can visualize data through heatmaps.

Drag-and-drop tools for easy customization of reports. It also provides a live demo and a free trial. Pricing: Quote-based plans. Here are a few essential features that you need to look for in a BI tool: Ranking Reports — This feature can help you identify what is working and what is not working for your business. You can also analyze the ranking through various dimensions and focus only on specific areas.

Executive Dashboards — Leverage intuitive dashboards to gain a real-time overview of your organization. You can study business-critical data sets through charts, summaries, graphs, and other customized reports. Interactive Reports — It will help you condense and analyze heaps of data in an easy to understand format. You can use these reports to identify anomalies, outliers, and trends in the historical data. Geospatial Mapping — Location intelligence can help in transforming your data into a cartographical and graphical representation.

Plus, simplified data laid out on the map will help non-technical people understand it easily. Operational Reports — It can help track and analyze daily events and make data-driven decisions. Open Integration — Your BI tool should be able to fetch data from numerous sources like emails, websites, social media platforms, and more.

Step 1. Download and Install. Step 2. Connect the Data. You can now load the data Tables or make changes to the table before loading it. After you select Transform data, Power Query Editor will get launched. Step 3. Shape Data. If you want to change the data type, select columns that you want to change. Executive Summary. Those were my picks for the best BI tools to try this year. However, each tool comes with its own unique selling points.

Nevertheless, make sure to go through key features, pros, and cons to make your final decision. The goal is to find a cost-effective solution that provides business intelligence tools to your organization at the scale you need and has flexibility to grow with your organization. Any business intelligence tool requires training and support, initially and as new features are added. Explore what training options are available.

Is training included or do you need to manage it in-house? If you need to deliver training to a distributed workforce at multiple locations, are online classes available? What kind of training is offered for software updates? In addition to traditional training and education, user communities can provide tips and advice from peers and product experts. Before you select a business intelligence tool, look for forums, blogs, and user groups that help provide training and support.

Finally, make sure you understand how product support is provided. Evaluating your business intelligence vendor is equally as important as reviewing features of the tool. Take the time to research their reputation and stability to make sure they have long-term viability and will be able to provide continuing support. When choosing a vendor, look for an industry leader who has a wide range of offerings that will work for your organization's current and future needs.

As you evaluate BI tools, look for customer stories and case studies based on company size and industry.

You may also discover new ways to use business intelligence after reading the success stories of other organizations. Since all these features—from integration to collaboration—need to be easy for everyone to use, look for a trial offer to take the tool for a test run. If possible, have users from a range of functional areas try the tool and provide feedback. This is the easiest way to know for sure if a business intelligence tool is right for your organization.

Power BI. Does this tool work with my data? Can I use it with my existing business tools and software? Does it offer the security and compliance features I need? Allow IT to create a secure, governed environment. Offer management tools for data quality and consistency. Enable data cleansing before information is fed to BI analytics tools. Provide data protection that persists even when exported to other file types.

Deliver geolocation data for enhanced insights and compliance. Automate critical compliance processes. Securely retain and archive data. How does this tool support different types of users? Self-service BI Appropriate for employees in any operational area. Technical skills are not required for building analyses.

Features AI-assisted automation and insights. Interface has user-friendly features—drag-and-drop, filtering, drilldowns, and computed fields. Enterprise BI Most often used by analytics teams to more deeply investigate data. Features advanced administration and deployment controls. Includes big data support and on-premises reporting. What are the data visualization capabilities?