Top 20 Business Intelligence Tools

Business Intelligence tools are application software that collect and process large amounts of unstructured data from internal and external systems (including books, journals, documents, health records, images, files, email, video, and other reliable business sources) for effective decision making. BI tools are used to identify customer behavior, improve visibility and efficiency of a business. These tools also help prepare data for analysis, for users to create reports, dashboards, and data visualization. The results give both employees and managers the power to accelerate and improve decision making, increase operational efficiency, pinpoint new revenue potentials, identify market trends, report genuine KPIs and identify new business opportunities.

In this article, we discuss some of the top Business Intelligence tools for 2018 and compare their abilities to capture, categorize, and analyze corporate data and extract the best practices for improved decision making. Our Business Intelligence tools comparison also brings to light how Business Intelligence software helps companies gain insight into their overall growth, sales trends, and customer behavior.

The Business Intelligence tools listed below includes the top 20 Business Intelligence tools in the market.

1. Sisense
2. Tableau
3. Domo
4. Looker
5. Chartio
6. Qlik Sense
7. Google Analytics
8. SAP Crystal Reports
9. Microsoft Power BI
10. Microsoft SharePoint
11. Oracle BI
12. BIRT
13. Clear Analytics
14. Pentaho BI
15. Jaspersoft
16. BIME
17. Adaptive Suite
18. Knime
19. SpagoBI
20. ClicData

1. Sisense:

Ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools in the BI market, Sisense is mostly known for its capacity to remarkably organize data from multiple sources without pricey preparations. Sisense, one of the Business Intelligence solutions, works with the innovative ElastiCube technology, to import large sets of data and work with any CPU layout without compromising the quality of your results.

Sisense, which won the Best Business Intelligence Software Award in 2016 from FinancesOnline, is distinguished for its easy usability. The software ensures ease of use through a singular dashboard with its drag-and-drop functionality. Sisense enables users to come up with reliable analysis using visual reports as a basis, making the process far easier and hassle-free. The platform’s interface is easy to use, allowing users to learn system navigation quickly and easily.

2.Tableau:

Tableau, one of the top-rated Business Intelligence tools is known for its single-click rapid reporting. It is a free proprietary, easy-to-use BI system that supports Data Exploration and Data Visualization with in-memory architecture. It helps businesses connect, visualize, and share data through PC or iPad.

Tableau as a Business Intelligence tool, allows you to copy different dashboard elements and transfer them to other workbooks, to facilitate iteration and development possibilities. You may, for instance, combine the work of different analysts on a new, seamless dashboard. With Tableau, you may create dashboards, publish, and share them with colleagues, partners, and customers. The intuitive business platform facilitates collaboration, allowing for group analytics and keeping all shareholders updated.

Tableau, one top Business Intelligence tools, integrates with Microsoft SharePoint and supports mobile BI strategy, allowing users to numerous information sources and import and visualize information within a very short span of time. It also allows you to modify existing views, analyze data, and save new versions with a dedicated app. One-click rapid reporting is the most important feature of Tableau.

3. Domo:

Domo, counted among the most commonly used Business Intelligence tools, is a cloud-based system. The best thing it does is to bring together the people, the data, and the business insights business users need to deliver a detailed view of what is happening in the organization. Domo achieves this by enabling decision-makers to view data in real-time, all from a singular dashboard. It has a visually pleasant interface, dashboard widgets, and displays, which are complemented by very useful sparklines and trend indicators.

Domo, which tops the Business Intelligence tools list, offers GUI-based and SQL-based data flows. The Self-service BI software is easy to use. Anyone can operate the system without any prior software knowledge. Domo works by providing data visualizations and Business Intelligence, from which sound decisions and actions can be derived. The Business Intelligence solution can mix data sets with standard SQL and even create personalized model cases, which integrates local and cloud-based information. In addition to basic analytics, Domo has social sharing functionalities that can be used for online discussions. You may import data from LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox, Google Analytics, Adobe Cloud, Box, Hadoop, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Workday, and Open Database Connectivity. It is fast gaining acceptance among the Open Source Business Intelligence tools in the BI market.

4. Looker:

Looker, one of the top-rated Business Intelligence tools, is a data-discovery platform that helps companies make better business decisions through real-time access to data. Its 100% in-database and 100% browser-based platform analyzes data of any size or form. Looker analytics integrate with any SQL database or data warehouses, such as Amazon Redshift and Greenplum.

The data discovery app also allows you to define fields with several field parameters, including dimensions and dimension groups (manipulation-prone columns and tables), measures (alike aggregate SQL functions that provide row information), and templated filters (unique to the user, he can create new ones upon need). Looker makes it to the top Business Intelligence tools list for its intuitive data exploration approach. It has a web-based interface that can be used to exploit the expertise of companies’ analytics teams. Using the system, teams can build and share reports in an instant helping their organization use data to boost business decisions and actions.

5. Chartio:

Chartio, one of the highly ranked Business Intelligence tools, helps businesses all over to analyze and track their critical business data. Focused on creating an interface for data, the BI tool helps businesses make informed decisions through real-time and intuitive business analytics. Customers can connect their databases to Chartio, to visualize their business data in real-time, bypassing the need for secure data warehousing and at the same time avoiding its security pitfalls.

Chartio’s drag and drop interface enables business users to get data from Google Analytics and then compare the data to sales data culled from an Oracle database. Data can be checked in real-time or updated on a scheduled basis. In addition, Chartio has an interface to clean up your business data. This allows you to see the data in various formats such as bar charts, line charts, and area bar charts.

Chartio is supported by a wide range of systems including Amazon Redshift, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google BigQuery, and Twilio.

6. Qlik Sense:

Qlik Sense, makes it to the top Business Intelligence tools list, by its robust and flexible nature. Qlik Sense automatically generates personalized reports and custom dashboards. The BI platform allows users to explore massive data and come up with business insights that help in decision making.

Qlik Sense, one of the top Business Intelligence tools allows you to collect valuable insight and share with your colleagues for further action. The smart search feature in the Business Intelligence tool allows for data analysis through interactions with charts and visualizations. In addition, Qlik Sense provides smart visualizations, information summaries, color gradient use, and a responsive design. Ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools Qlik Sense is highly recommended for freelancers.

7. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics, ranked among the most popular free Business Intelligence tools, has a host of analytical features that suits the interest of both mobile and traditional users. The top-rated freemium web analytics service uses a wide array of funnel visualization methods and creates data summaries on robust dashboards. Personalization is one of the best features of Google Analytics. It personalizes your dashboard and prioritizes widgets that showcase a metric, including pie charts, timelines, or combined dimensions. It is also capable of recognizing important data.

Google Analytics can also collect details like ClientID information and analyze user actions on the website. Moreover, the BI platform’s native mobile app has mobile site-ready tracking codes, which work with PHP, Perl, ASP.NET or JavaScript pages. Counted among the top Business Intelligence tools, Google Analytics makes it to the best Business Intelligence tools list for the lifetime free plan it offers for any client.

8. SAP Crystal Reports:

SAP Crystal Reports, ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools, is designed to work with databases, collate and filter data for analysis. The BI software solution presents data in the form of reports from data captured from multiple sources. The report wizards in SAP Crystal Reports help users create accurate reports and complete common reporting tasks, much faster. The platform uses cross-tabs, formulas, conditional formatting, and sub-reports in data analysis, thus allowing users to reveal less than obvious data relationships.

SAP Crystal Reports has several attractive features that allow for easy access to pertinent data, presenting them through reports, financial statements, invoices, and order forms. This intuitive system can likewise provide insights that lead to sound business actions. The popular BI software solution can be used by virtually any kind of business and can be deployed on-premise or through the cloud.

9. Microsoft Power BI:

Microsoft Power BI, one of the most popular Microsoft Business Intelligence tools, is known for its seamless connectivity.  Data can be processed from any source, Salesforce, MailChimp, Google Analytics, QuickBooks, Azure, OData, local libraries, and even Facebook.

Microsoft Power BI, one of the leading players in the Business Intelligence tools market, is distinguished for its visibility and easy accessibility. Microsoft Power BI dashboard helps track businesses and can be accessed from any device. The Business Intelligence software has new connectors that can help users boost their campaigns. Microsoft Power BI, ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools, can publish reports and visualizations on the web, allowing users to target emails and social media posts. These reports can be accessed by business stakeholders.

10. Microsoft SharePoint:

Microsoft SharePoint is by far the most popular Microsoft Business Intelligence tool, used by more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. Customization is the most attractive feature of Microsoft SharePoint. You can edit components and create your own customized applications.

SharePoint, ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools in the market is also known for its Centralized Administration Console, used by managers to access basic operation features, adjust settings, restore information, monitor performance, and take advantage of the configuration wizards all in one place. The Microsoft Business Intelligence tool also consolidates intranet, extranet, and internet sites and thus ensures seamless operation with any technology. The best part about Microsoft SharePoint is its ease of use; does not require professional assistance for implementation or any training for use.

11. Oracle BI:

Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g, ranked among the premium Business Intelligence tools, delivers a full range of capabilities including interactive dashboards, ad hoc queries, notifications and alerts, enterprise and financial reporting, scorecard and strategy management, business process invocation, search and collaboration, mobile, and integrated systems management.

OBIEE 11g or Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition is based on a proven web service-oriented unified architecture that integrates with an organization’s existing information technology infrastructure for the lowest total cost of ownership and highest return on investment.

12. BIRT:

BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools), one of the top Open Source Business Intelligence tools in demand, is a flexible, Open Source, and purely Java reporting tool for building and publishing reports against data sources ranging from typical business relational databases to XML data sources, to in-memory Java objects.

BIRT developers can incorporate powerful reporting into their Java, J2EE and Eclipse-based applications. BIRT, which is fast gaining importance as one of the top Business Intelligence tools today, is developed as a top-level project within the Eclipse Foundation and leverages the rich capabilities of the Eclipse platform and a very active Open Source community of users. These tools are used for creating reports, data visualizations, and charts that can be embedded in web-based and rich client applications. Information gleaned from embedded BI tools such as BIRT may be used in both real-time decision making and to track and analyze historical data or ongoing developments.

13. Clear Analytics:

Clear Analytics, rated among the top Business Intelligence tools, is known for generating accurate and timely reports and clear business insights system. The Business Intelligence software helps the customers predict risks and analyze the growth ahead of time enabling them to make better business decisions.

Clear Analytics is an intuitive Excel-based solution that helps businesses implement a fully-operational, self-service Business Intelligence system with little downtime and minimal training. The Business Intelligence platform offers a variety of BI-specific features to help generate, automate, analyze, and visualize a company’s key data and information. Clear Analytics also enables consolidation of data from multiple data sources and all within Excel.

14. Pentaho BI:

Pentaho BI, one of the big names in Business Intelligence tools list, has a wide array of attractive features including advanced analytics, from predictive modelling to basic reporting. The Business Intelligence tool is specifically designed to blend with mobile platforms, providing a seamless experience from smartphones and tablets. The software is known for its flawless query and reporting, interactive analysis, dashboards, data integration, and mining.

Pentaho’s data integration functionality allows users to find, manage, and combine data from multiple sources, including native support for analytic databases, Hadoop, and NoSQL. The popular Open Source Business Intelligence system can integrate with partners like Melissa Data and Human Inference. Pentaho, which is fast gaining importance as an Open Source Business Intelligence tool, is also suitable for embedding or white labeling visual analytics as part of third-party Software as a Service software applications as it is data agnostic.

15. Jaspersoft:

Jaspersoft is an embedded BI solution with data visualization, analytics, and reporting capabilities. The popular Open Source Business Intelligence tool allows application developers to use and highly interactive reports, dashboards, and analytics into their applications.

Jaspersoft’s Java-based reporting library tracks and renders pixel-perfect documents with the use of data from any source. Counted among the top Business Intelligence tools, it allows users to store user profiles, dashboards, analytic views, reports, and more with the solution’s centralized server repository. The Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite uses a commercial Open Source business model and is trusted by a community of more than 250,000 registered members.

16. BIME:

BIME is a Cloud Business Intelligence platform that helps customers connect to their data, from multiple sources. Through BIME queries can be created and executed easily, and dashboards created the state of the art interface function.

BIME was the first company to provide front-end BI capabilities for Google BigQuery. It was also the first BI app available in Google Apps. Now, BIME has partnered Google to provide robust big data analytics experience. Apart from Google, BIME has partnerships with technology companies like Amazon, Appirio, Noovle, and Appsbroker. BIME is highly recommended as a Business Intelligence tool by top global companies including Greenpeace, Royal Canin, Lenovo, Shell, and McAfee.

17. Adaptive Suite:

Adaptive Suite is a user-friendly, straightforward corporate performance management (CPM) and business insight suite designed to simplify core business workflows such as budgeting, planning, forecasting, and reporting. Adaptive Suite, is a cloud-based BI platform can be accessed anywhere. The comprehensive BI suite helps businesses graduate from manual spreadsheets and workflows and turn everything into cloud-based processes, from cash flows, revenue forecasts, balance sheets, budget, expense plans, headcount analysis. This ensures that you get a holistic view of your business without having to dig through files and documents. Adaptive Suite, ranked among the top Business Intelligence tools, comes with the Adaptive Planning functionality, a feature that speeds up your budgeting, planning, modelling, and forecasting processes.

18. Knime:

KNIME (Konstanz Information Miner) is an Open Source data analysis platform that allows users to deploy quickly, scale efficiently, and familiarize in a short span of time. KNIME is well known for its predictive intelligence.

The data-driven innovation system in KNIME helps uncover data potential with more than 1000 modules and ready-to-use examples, and an array of integrated tools and algorithms. KNIME, ranked among the best-known Business Intelligence tools in the world, blends all your data on the same visual platform. Commercial extensions for performance and collaboration are also available.

19. SpagoBI:

Spagobi, an Open Source BI software, was developed by SpagoWorld initiative. Spagobi helps users create innovative, intelligent processes that enable companies and organizations in a vast array of industries to successfully accomplish their individual mission-oriented goals.

SpagoBI, fast-growing as a Business Intelligence tool, is the only entirely Open Source Business Intelligence Suite and covers every analytical aspect of your business. This solution will bring innovative themes and engines to your Business Intelligence projects. The open architecture provides impressive tools and features that are unique only to SpagoBI.

20. ClicData:

ClicData is a Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard solution specifically designed for small and mid-sized businesses. The drag-and-drop interface designed for ease of use allows users to connect to data located both on-premise and in the cloud. Users can analyze data pulled from a wide variety of sources, including Google Analytics, Facebook, Salesforce, Oracle, MySQL, and Dropbox.

ClicData’s intuitive, dynamic reports and an extensive array of visualization widgets give you the control to make better and more informed business decisions. The ETL features and HTML5 integration power customizable automatic updates and report sharing capabilities optimize performance across your entire enterprise. Though a newer player in the fray, ClicData is fast gaining acceptance among the users and has already made it to top Business Intelligence tools list.

The success of Business Intelligence projects depends largely upon organizations’ choice of BI solutions and vendors’ ability to deliver successful and relatively rapid implementations, along with supportive follow-up and maintenance. Therefore, choosing the right Business Intelligence tool for your business is the primary condition for ensuring better business values. With a ready reckoner of Business Intelligence tools, you may shortlist the best one for your business, however, big, or small.

BONUS TIP: While preparing yourself for a tableau interview, it is also advised to have insights on Tableau vs Power BI.

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