6 Business Intelligence Tools You Need to Know
BI tools can automate and visualize queries to save time and reduce errors so you can act on insights faster. Donald Farmer is a data strategist with 30-plus years of experience, including as a product team leader at Microsoft and Qlik. He advises global clients on data, analytics, https://www.xcritical.com/ AI and innovation strategy, with expertise spanning from tech giants to startups. An AI tool won’t be of much use if it’s too complex for your team to navigate. Look for programs that have user-friendly interfaces and integrate well with your existing systems. Furthermore, these tools are particularly effective in AI writing applications, crafting personalized content that engages customers on a deeper level.
The 28 Best Business Intelligence Software Tools for 2024
Unlike traditional analytics tools, Python allows for custom data analysis and automation, making it a favorite Blockchain among data scientists and analysts. This blog explores the top 5 tools for business and data analytics, including their key features, use cases, and why they stand out as essential components in the analytics landscape. Some top competitive intelligence tools include Crayon, Klue, Kompyte, Owler, Similarweb, SEMrush, Ahrefs, SpyFu, Copy.ai for content, BuzzSumo for research, and Crunchbase for company/market data. If your team consists of IT professionals and other data experts, you may operate perfectly fine with a BI tool that has enhanced capabilities and a higher learning curve.
Best business intelligence software for solopreneurs
The tool is built in a Microsoft’s Power BI solution and all information included in the ESG intelligence tool is divided in 3 main pillars; Environment, Social and Governance. Another example of Power BI dashboard for decision-making is tracking sustainability efforts with the ESG intelligence tool by Pwc. You can also use Zapier to connect Tableau to all the other apps you use to run your business, so you can automate your data workflows. I also appreciated the app’s Query Editor, which keeps track of all historical brokerage business intelligence changes to data. If I were to mess up and delete some important rows in my dataset, Power BI would whip out the time machine and bring us back to the good ol’ days. And with its very own app store, you’ll almost certainly find the APIs you need to get the job done.
- Many BI platforms allow users to run SQL queries to extract and analyze data.
- ThoughtSpot is known for its search-driven analytics, which allows you to interact with your data using natural language queries.
- In this case, there’s a known collection of data sets, but the performance metrics may be defined while the data analysis is being done.
- It uses a drag-and-drop format, and you can either start on the data level or the visualization level.
Top Business Intelligence Tools for 2025 [Features + Pricing]
Copy.ai would be an excellent choice for small to medium-sized go-to-market teams looking to enhance their content creation capabilities, improve efficiency, and maintain brand consistency. The tool is also highly scalable, supporting single sign-on, multi-level data access permissions, user behavior audits, and enterprise-level security. Finally, consider the level of support and community resources available for the BI tool you’re evaluating. Reliable customer support can help you troubleshoot issues, maximize the tool’s value, and minimize downtime. Additionally, a strong user community can offer valuable tips, tricks, and best practices to help you make the most of your BI solution.
Each tool offers unique features, and your choice should depend on your company’s specific needs and budget. In conclusion, selecting the right BI tool involves careful consideration of your business needs, budget, ease of use, integration capabilities, and support resources. Make sure the tool you choose supports the data formats and sources you work with, ensuring a smooth and streamlined analytics process (at least in theory).
Available in several languages, Board carries out advanced business intelligence with real-time reports, personalized dashboards, and stunning visualizations. Whether you want to track sales, marketing, customer service, financials, or all of the above, Google Data provides rich data visualizations that help you make better organizational decisions. Build interactive reports, create charts and graphs and share all of your data insights with your team. To discover more about business intelligence tools and understand what they can do for your business, take a look at the Google Business Intelligence Professional Certificate. This two-month course gives you what you need to learn data visualization, modeling, dashboarding, and reporting.
Increasingly, they provide access to specific applications, such as Salesforce. Mode is an analyst-focused tool that’s easy to get up and running so you can move quickly. It lives online, so you can collaborate easily, and it offers the ability to query in SQL, Python, and R. With its HTML editor, Mode offers a customizable environment and the option to embed white-label analytics dashboards in your site.
It offers tools for data visualization, reporting, and augmented analytics, allowing users to analyze information from diverse sources. OAC helps organizations gain insights and improve their analytical capabilities. Looker is one of the best business intelligence tools that is driven by a powerful semantic layer. This semantic layer allows users to create a structured representation of their data, defining relationships between data, metrics, and dimensions. Looker’s approach to data modeling simplifies data access and interpretation, making it easier for both technical and business users to explore and analyze data.
Your choice of analytics platform directly impacts employee and/or customer happiness and, consequently, the future success of your organization (not only today but for many years to come). Most BI platforms offer free trial periods or demos so test these platforms before committing fully. When testing, focus on usability, customization options, and overall performance. Some are designed for technical users, while others are user-friendly, making them accessible even for those without technical expertise. We compared this information to reviews from real-world users to understand how users interact with the software and their experiences with each tool.
It uses a drag-and-drop format, and you can either start on the data level or the visualization level. For example, you can drag an empty bar chart without any configured data into a report, then configure it on the spot, or vice versa. As someone who has used Microsoft Word and Excel for over a decade, Microsoft Power BI felt eerily familiar. The interface is laid out very similarly to other Microsoft products—similar icons, menu placement, and everything in between.
Users can drive better business outcomes with its data governance, data storytelling, collaboration, and visual analytics. Every platform on this list will take your data and turn it into something visually engaging that’s far easier to digest and analyze than a spreadsheet. Your choice comes down to your organization’s size and budget, what features are must-haves vs. mere nice-to-haves, and how much experience your team already has with data analysis.
It requires understanding your unique data environment, scalability needs, and future growth plans. A well-executed proof-of-concept can reveal the tool’s fit and potential for your organization. Moreover, considering the tool’s growth trajectory and user adoption aspects is critical. In this case, there’s a known collection of data sets, but the performance metrics may be defined while the data analysis is being done. As above, the analysis work is often one-time in nature and typically requires data-savvy business analysts. Domo’s cloud-based software provides self-service BI capabilities for business executives and managers, with an emphasis on ease of use, dashboards and augmented intelligence features.
For example, your sales teams can use SpotIQ to monthly forecast for a particular region, helping teams to quickly identify problem areas and make actionable strategies to drive leads. But ultimately knowing where each analytics tool fits in your respective data framework is of equal importance. Strike a balance between cost-effectiveness and comprehensive features based on your organization’s specific needs, growth plans, and budget constraints.
Now owned by Salesforce, Tableau is one of the foremost BI tools and has been around for over two decades. The purpose of Data Rundown is to share knowledge about interesting topics within data and tech. Here are five criterias I always look at when selecting a BI-tool for a project. For example, for some of your projects the collaboration and sharing features may be of high importance, but in some projects it may not be as important.
Users need to be able to create and save KPIs, other business metrics and calculations related to them for analytics uses. For more information on the BI tools that Segment integrates with, check out our integrations catalog. Organizing data via a spreadsheet also takes a lot of time, especially if you’re working with a large data set. First, you have to download spreadsheets from each individual data source — some of which can take several minutes, or even an hour, to gather and translate data into an Excel document.