Raw and unprocessed data can be a business’ strongest asset if it’s fed to a sophisticated tool that can analyze it, process it, decipher it, and extract meaningful insights from it. This process of insight extraction from data is the basic essence of business intelligence. For example, a company has customer data from the past decade that indicates the products that were bought by each customer in the timeframe. The company can plug all this data into a business intelligence tool and plot graphs out to see which product sold was the most popular (or least popular) and when. These are basic variables, but BI tools can plot and understand trends from a wide range of standpoints.

Data analytics tools work on large amounts of data and can import data from multiple sources. Some BI tools require you to perform some pre-processing before adding data, while some are capable of processing almost completely raw data. Once data has been imported, users can view different trends or generate different reports depending on their needs.

Business intelligence tools can also be used to create customized dashboards that contain different metric statuses, reports and key performance indicators among other things. Dashboards allow users to keep the most important information in one place. An example use case of business intelligence can be to identify the possible causes of delays in a supply chain. By making this identification, policymakers can take the required actions to minimize the delays and improve the chances for increased revenues.

Take Your Data Beyond Simple Spreadsheets

Business intelligence and data visualization tools can help businesses regardless of their sizes. Here are a few of the many advantages that they offer:

Intelligence you can rely on

Arguably the most palpable BI advantage is that it yields actionable intelligence that can be relied upon. Because BI is pure science and is based on actual data, its output can be used to take important business actions. For example, if you can observe from historical data that one of your product lines isn’t bringing home any profit, you can be sure that it’s not just speculation or a hunch but a fact that the product needs to be discontinued/reevaluated.

Integration of information

Most of the famous business intelligence tools allow you to import data from multiple sources into one common reservoir. By being able to put all of your data in one place, businesses can formulate more accurate insights.

Fast answers

Before the big data boom, running queries on large amounts of data took hours, sometimes even days, but most modern tools find your answers in lightning-fast times. This way, your KPI dashboard is always kept up to date with the latest real-time data.

Data visualization

It’s safe to say that data visualization is one of the most important characteristics of a business intelligence tool. While spreadsheets do allow you to represent data, most of the popular data analysis software allows you to present data in a far more aesthetically pleasing, useful, and efficient way. You can create your own customized dashboards to make sure that you stay synchronized across various business departments.

Cost reduction

An obvious benefit of business intelligence is the cost reduction it ensures. By being able to know exactly where things went wrong (or right), businesses can take steps to ensure that future costs are reduced by streamlining recurring processes.

How To Compare Business Intelligence Tools

Now that we have established the importance of business intelligence software, let’s take a look at some of the features that you should look for when deciding on a BI tool:

Cloud-based with mobile applications:

In the modern world, cloud-existence is preferred and for good reason. Cloud-based solutions save you the hardware cost and also allow you to stay connected at all times without any interruption. It’s also recommended to go with a tool that provides mobile applications as well.

Intuitive visualization:

Good BI reporting tools are known for their intuitive reporting and visualization features. You should be able to drag and drop while customizing your dashboard.

Real-time data processing:

Data is no good if it’s not getting processed in real time. To make efficient and forward-thinking business decisions, you need your processing tool to be able to evaluate data at lightning fast speeds. If a BI tool still does batch data processing, then it’s not worth the investment.

Custom notifications and alerts:

People need to know when certain triggers are met and certain business intelligence tools allow you to do just that. For example, if you want to keep a threshold value against the sales of a specific product and want to be notified if the threshold is exceeded, you can do that with some of the most sophisticated business intelligence tools.

Usability:

Even though most business intelligence tools are laden with rich features, not all of them are user-friendly. A good BI tool is easy to get acquainted with, even for a newbie. At the very least, a tool should have an easily customizable data dashboard.

Recommended Business Intelligence Software

If you care about the future of your business and realize the potential benefits of data analysis, processing, and visualization, then by now you should be thinking about possible tool choices. Here are a few of our favorites:

Cluvio is a leading, cloud-based data analytics program. This modern platform allows users to run queries on their data in SQL language, process it using the R programming language and create intuitive, customizable dashboards from the refined data within no time. Cluvio is perfect for small and medium-sized startups looking to harness the power of data to make data-based business decisions in the future.

Sisense is another top choice if you are in the market for a modern business intelligence tool. It offers all the important analytics and reporting features in a simple-to-use user interface.

Dundas BI is a business intelligence tool that is easy to use and offers fast insights. It has been a market leader in the BI scene for a long time now and has been used by small companies like startups, and large enterprises alike. Dundas BI brings together various analytical capabilities.

Clicdata is a business intelligence and data visualization tool which integrates with a variety of third-party applications with ease. It has four different pricing plans and has some exciting features including live dashboard notifications.

Final Word

Most companies have data available in high amounts and, via business intelligence, this data can be used to generate actionable and reliable insights. BI tools have metamorphosed a lot over the last decade or so and we can only expect them to improve even more as time goes by.