The massive volumes of data produced nowadays are a great challenge for businesses. Companies strive to analyse the necessary data to make sustainable and profitable decisions, so they look for a hand from business intelligence tools (BI tools).

Business intelligence entails several software tools used to collect, process, and analyse data. BI Tools can gather insights and identify new opportunities crucial for businesses to gain a competitive advantage in today’s market. In this sense, business intelligence tools are an excellent way to help your business take smart steps toward accomplishing its goals.

To help you choose the right solution for your business, we have gathered the top 5 business intelligence tools.

What is a Business Intelligence (BI) Tool?

A business intelligence tool or BI tool is an application software that collects and analyses a large volume of data from both internal and external business sources such as journals, books, documents, files, emails, images, and videos. The BI tools then present the data in user-friendly formats such as reports, dashboards, charts, and graphs – easy-to-understand visualizations.

BI tools are commonly used for enquiring and generating reports on data, but they can also combine a large set of applications for the analysis of data. They involve software for data visualization using various tools and charts to create performance records and dashboards, displaying KPIs and business metrics.

These BI tools allow business employees to use this information to make improved decisions based on predictions, market trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs). It also identifies opportunities for growth and increases business efficiency in many sectors of activity, such as the IT field. To simplify, the main aim of BI tools is to streamline the decision-making processes.

Advantages of BI Tools

• Gather relevant data
• Users can take advantage of predictions and make improved decisions
• Eliminate manual tasks
• Reduce business costs
• Provide competitive advantage

Top Business Intelligence Tools

Tableau

Known for its user-friendly data visualization capabilities, Tableau is one of the most popular Microsoft BI tools used in organizations.

This tool mainly serves two functions, the collection of data and data analysis. It supports data sources such as Microsoft Excel, Box, PDF files, and Google Analytics, but it is also able to connect with most databases.

This integrated tool offers a varied range of graphical representations that are extremely interactive and allows users to easily build personalized reports and dashboards.

Key Features:

• You can share dashboards and tools to perform group analysis on any given dataset.
• It can automatically update data, which allows the organization to receive the latest data and extract useful information in real-time.
• It allows teams to join data from multiple databases.

QlikSense

QlikView is a trending BI tool that emphasizes a self-service approach. It supports a wide range of analytics functions and allows you to develop apps, dashboards, and data visualizations.

This BI Tool offers a user-friendly interface optimized for touchscreens, sophisticated AI, and high-performance cloud platforms. Furthermore, it brings advantages for beginners using BI tools. Its Search & Conversational Analytics enables a faster and easier way to ask questions and discover new insights.

Key Features:

• The drag-and-drop feature allows you to build interactive and flexible data visualizations.
• It supports several file types and data sources.
• Insight Advisor Chat.

Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular and widely used BI tools in the market. It is an open-source tool that provides an environment for the analysis, integration, and visualization of data.

This interactive tool allows you to sync with sources such as Facebook and generate reports and dashboards in minutes. It comes with built-in AI capabilities, Excel integration, and data connectors, and allows users to identify trends in real time. However, it might not be the easiest BI tool for smaller companies.

Key Features:

• Its Power Query feature allows you to load data automatically from extremely old databases.
• You can use this software to share reports for free.
• Seamless integration with other Microsoft products.

Sisense

Sisense is one of the most used BI tools and its main purpose is to gather, analyse,  and visualize datasets. It is known for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, that allows anyone to use and understand it, including those who are not from an IT background.

This BI tool allows you to share reports and dashboards with your team members or other departments within the organization, as well as external companies. This can benefit your business by permitting you to analyse several patterns and build informed business strategies for improvement.

Key Features:

•  Its interactive and user-friendly dashboard provides drag-and-drop features, along with accessible tools.
• The data processing takes less time than other BI tools because of its in-chip technology.

Datapine

Datapine is another commonly used BI tool that is admired for being easy to use. It is an all-in-one tool that allows both professionals such as Data Analysts and non-technical professionals to analyse, explore, and visualize data from several data sources.

This BI tool enables data analysts and business users to easily integrate different data sources, perform advanced data analysis, build interactive business dashboards, and generate actionable business insights.

Key Features:

• Its unique drag-and-drop feature creates appealing data visualizations in a few clicks, providing a user-friendly interface.
• There are at least 80 predefined dashboard templates available to several industries.

Choosing the right business intelligence tool for your business can be challenging. If you want to know more about the best BI tools in the market, talk to us!