Top Business Intelligence (BI) Tools For Your Business

What Is Business Intelligence Software?

Business Intelligence (BI) Software is a type of application software designed to analyze, report, and transform data (business information) into useful insights. They usually do not require expensive installation and thus, they are an excellent alternative for on-premises maintenance.

BI applications are generally categorized into data visualization, warehousing, dashboards, data cleansing, and reporting software.

What you will gain with BI Software

Businesses capture tons of customer data. But sadly, most of them do not put even half of it to use. Why? Because accessing data from different sources and databases and consolidating it is not an easy task.

As a result, pulling relevant information from loads of unstructured data is a challenge for most businesses.

But, with top Business Intelligence (BI) tools, you can put your data to use like never before. BI tools allow you to merge all your business data from different sources, analyze it, and act on it.

For instance, BI will help you identify a pattern of increased demand for a product with a change in your market research and product development strategy.

Popular BI platforms

Not all BI tools are end-to-end or compatible with every enterprise’s needs.

Here is a curated list of esteemed BI tools to help your enterprise transform the way it uses business data:

1. Microsoft Power BI

• This on-premises, scalable BI platform is easy-to-use and helps to visualize data in a way that makes it possible to gain meaningful insights into it. It uses real-time business analytics to transform and analyze complex and unstructured data. It is an appropriate BI tool for businesses of all sizes, from small to large.
• It provides five platform choices, including Power BI, Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium, Power BI Mobile, Power BI Report Server.
• An ideal platform choice must consider the enterprise’s needs, budgets, and collaboration goals. If you are an SME looking for collaborative analysis for a nominal monthly fee, the pro version of this top BI tool would be an ideal choice.
• What makes this intuitive BI tool stand out: It seamlessly integrates with existing business applications and cloud services. Also, it requires no specialized technical support for agile inquiry and analysis, meaning you can reduce your reliance on your tech teams.

2. IBM Cognos Analytics

• This top BI tool is cloud-based and has built-in AI capabilities that help create beautifully interactive dashboards and insightful reports that help uncover hidden truths, patterns, and connections in your data.
• The more connected your data is, the more powerful it is. IBM Cognos Analytics is based on this concept and, thus, it intelligently merges all data from multiple sources into a single data module using ML (Machine Learning) capabilities.
• This modern Business Intelligence tool consists of several robust, web-based elements designed to meet different data requirements, including Cognos Framework Manager, Cognos Cube Designer, Cognos Transformer, Cognos Connection. Query Studio, Report Studio, and Event Studio, among others.
• What makes this scalable BI tool stand out: It allows easy shareability of reports and dashboards over emails, Slack, and other platforms. And the best part is that it requires no special tech expertise.

3. Tableau

• Tableau is a self-service yet powerful BI platform that allows business users to visualize any data with much ease and publish those visualizations. Configuring and installing it is a breezy process.
• This top BI tool lets you access your data from different browsers and devices and share interactive dashboards and reports across users. This is great for enterprises that want to nurture a collaborative work environment. Midsize and large enterprises are usually the biggest users of this popular BI platform.
• What makes this distinctive BI tool stand out: It allows non-technical business users to create intuitive, real-time visualizations in a few clicks. It capitalizes on the AI techniques of NLP to enable you to create reports and dashboards by saying what you want to see instead of running codes and queries. Phenomenal, isn’t it?
• Another great thing about Tableau?
• It offers tailored versions for over a dozen industries.

Choosing the right BI tool

Choosing a BI tool must be an informed choice, one that considers enterprise needs, expertise levels of different business users, and data formats preferences, among other things.

The best BI tool must offer high usability to non-tech users, be compatible with your existing software, and scale up well as your data need increases.

Jellyfish Technologies is a leader in implementing powerful BI tools and solutions into organizations to help them meet their data needs. Reach out to their highly-skilled team to get the top BI tools recommendations for your needs.