Best Business Intelligence Tools

What Is Business Intelligence Software?

Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created. In the last two years alone, 90% of the data was generated.

This big data refers to large data sets that are too complex and unorganized for traditional data processing and data management applications.

Business intelligence software, also known as BI software, is a set of applications that helps in sourcing, sorting, analyzing, and presenting complex data into actionable insights.

BI tools can present analytical findings in summaries, reports, graphs, dashboards, charts, and maps.

It helps businesses better understand an organization's strengths and weaknesses.

The first comprehensive business intelligence systems were developed in the period between 1970 and 1990 by IBM and Siebel.

Today, it is typically used by business owners, managers, senior executives, and frontline staff like sales, support, and purchasing.

Key Benefits of Business Intelligence Tool

People often ask this question, "Why should I use BI tools? How will it benefit my organizations?"

Here are a few benefits that a business intelligence tool has to offer.

1. Gain Valuable Insights for Your Business Growth

There are several reports that you can generate using business intelligence tools.

Business intelligence software collects, access, and analyzes data to deliver actionable insights. Business owners use it to generate reports on a variety of data sets like operational processes, staffing and customer service, expenses stream, and more.

BI software allows combining relational data and multidimensional data models with real-time data. It also enables cross-departmental collaboration that helps manipulate the enormous volume of data and dig deeper into business performance.

It allows you to identify growth areas, forecast future demands, develop new products, and determine your market position.

2. Eliminate Guesswork

Until the introduction of BI tools, companies were forced to rely on month-old reports to make crucial decisions regarding finances, marketing efforts, management, and more.

Sometimes, they even made decisions based on their guts.

But with business intelligence solutions, organizations can make data-driven decisions that often result in a competitive advantage for their business.

BI tools are well-equipped with powerful analytics capabilities that process raw market data in real-time. New data is produced continuously.

Besides, BI solutions have an intuitive interface that can be accessed by even non-tech users, allowing them to run data processing.

It clearly takes a great deal of stress and uncertainty from the business.

3. Gauge Business Performance

Business intelligence tools have scorecards and dashboards that give complete visibility into business performance.

Businesses can input data-based goals such as target delivery time, and then track progress on a daily basis. All you need to do is customize metrics to align with your company's goal.

All the reports can be generated in real-time. Thus, it enables professionals to track goal fulfillment and give you an overall view of organizational productivity.

In fact, most advanced solutions even let you set trigger alerts if you reach a minimum or maximum threshold of your performance range. That way, senior executives or managers can take immediate action to rectify the situation.

By adequately implementing business intelligence tools, you can positively boost your performance.

4. Sales Intelligence

Companies can't take advantage of when they are not aware of the future. But now, with business intelligence software, organizations can identify opportunities and try to make the most of it.

The best business intelligence systems offer predictive analytics and forecasting that enable you to anticipate future outcomes.

These applications study patterns — historical, recurring, and current to forecast future market demands. Those insights can help identify customer preferences. You can then use them to your advantage to maximize your sales.

In fact, these insights can be useful in convincing your stakeholders about your company's products and services.

This ability to anticipate the market's future reaction adds to company flexibility. And it can be quite beneficial for highly disruptive industries like retail, tech, and entertainment.

5. Address Issues Immediately

One significant advantage of online business intelligence tools is that it helps deal with crises instantly.

With the help of BI solutions, you can generate insights in a matter of a few minutes and use this information to make a smart action before the problems escalate.

For instance, it can help identify which branch has the surplus inventory to re-allocate to a branch in need. You can extract essential data at such critical times to find a solution.

Robust Features of Business Intelligence Software

Now that you know the benefits of using business intelligence software, let's look at its features.

These features help to accomplish various tasks.

1. Data Visualisation

Data visualization allows companies to break down complex information into visually appealing graphical forms. It becomes easy for users to quickly understand the report in a more simplified manner.

It can be presented in charts, map, or table format, which ensures that information is efficiently communicated across different levels of the business.

Thus, data visualization is one of the important components in making business intelligence widely accessible.

2. Mobile Access

As data continues to grow, companies are turning to the cloud for storing, managing, and analyzing their big data.

Besides, executives are always on the go. Thus, they must be able to access the data from wherever they are. They should also have accessibility from any device, including a smartphone, tablet, and desktop.

The cloud service has enabled syncing of information in real-time. Thus, the popularity of mobile-responsive business intelligence is also on the rise.

3. Integration

One important feature is the ability of online business intelligence software to integrate with other applications.

Business intelligence platforms have to rely on various data sources, such as CRM systems, ERP systems, and more to gather data and convert it into meaningful insights.

Online business intelligence tools are available as a standalone application. However, many vendors already tie it up with other business applications, such as content management, sales and accounting module, and more.

4. Reporting

The primary role of business intelligence is to sort the data and help businesses gain insights.

Business intelligence reporting can be customized as well as ad hoc.

Customized reporting is based on specific metrics. You can sort the data subsets and arrange the data points in an order that matters to you.

Whereas, ad-hoc reports allow you to quickly generate reports at the time of an urgent requirement.

5. OLAP

OLAP is an acronym for online analytical processing.

OLAP tools enable you to analyze multidimensional data in real-time. In fact, it can also analyze the same data simultaneously with other analytics processing.

For instance, the same sales data set can be used to analyze project progress as well as an individual's performance. OLAP data is stored in cubes instead of tables.

While looking for the best business intelligence tools, look for OLAP functionalities, like data unification, complex business queries, and data mashups.

Potential Problems With Business Intelligence Software, and How to Fix Them

There is no denying that BI contributes to organizational success. However, getting it right comes with its own share of obstacles.

Let us look at some of these potential issues, and how you can fix them.

1. Lack of a Clearly-Defined BI Strategy

One of the most common challenges faced by companies is that despite installing an excellent business intelligence solution, there is a lack of a clearly defined BI strategy.

Without having a proper data-driven strategy, you will not be able to realize its full potential.

Companies should develop a roadmap that will add value throughout the organization.

2. Lack of Company-wide Adoption

Before installing BI solutions, it's important to have all stakeholders on the same page.

For instance, in a small business, employees might resist the data culture. They might not be encouraging about the adoption of BI.

But this issue can be solved by properly communicating about the advantage of retail business intelligence solutions. Explain to them how it will enhance their productivity and how the adoption costs will outweigh the benefits.

3. Unused or Under-utilized Complex BI Modules

Without realizing their need for BI, they implement a solution that tries to cover the whole range of business analytics.

But not all businesses need to cover every functionality. This results in some of these sophisticated tools unused.

This might also negatively impact your work productivity as the structure might seem complicated and waste a lot of time for staff members. Besides, it can become a liability as its cost might not be optimized.

4. Difficulty in Installation and Deployment

An unplanned and rushed installation is often unsuccessful. Besides, it has been seen that the BI system rollouts can take a year or more in large enterprises.

This can disrupt the entire business operations for a long.

That's why the logical solution is to take a step-by-step approach to implement online business intelligence tools.

Senior executives can list out all the issues they are planning to solve with the best business intelligence software. And then, instead of trying to solve every business problem at once, they can prioritize it.

Buyer Guide to Choose Right Business Intelligence Software

Big data and business analytics are estimated to reach $512.04 Billion by 2026 from $171.39 Billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 14.80% between 2019 and 2026.

Clearly, more companies today are realizing its value across the organization.

To reap its benefits, businesses need to choose the right business intelligence platform. Here's how you can do it.

1. Ease of Use

When choosing a business intelligence platform, it is of utmost importance to consider intuitiveness as the main factor.

The ease of use directly correlates with enhanced productivity as even non-tech users can access the system without much difficulty. Besides, when a new member is hired, managers don't have to spend much time in their training.

Some of the features to look out for: collaboration features, drag-and-drop mechanisms, self-learning database, toggle view, filter data, and more.

2. Accuracy of Reporting Tools

Even though the accuracy of data largely depends on the raw data, how the data is processed equally matters.

Not every BI solution is created equally. That's why you should check out the software's OLAP capabilities. The more comprehensive the OLAP tools, the more is the accuracy of data.

Your business success depends on the accuracy of the data.

3. Customization

Another significant factor is its ability to customize. When you choose to implement a business intelligence software, you need to think from a long-term perspective.

It is not something you can change every two years. That's why for long-term software exploitation, make sure that the solution can be tweaked and modified to adapt to changing business processes.

At the same time, you need to consider your business long-term goals. How you plan to expand in the future, and how this BI tool is going to help.

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