Business Intelligence Tools

Due to the emergence of social media, marketing will never be the same. B2C businesses spend more on marketing than B2B businesses, ranging from 5 to 12 percent of total revenue.

In business intelligence (BI), data is analyzed to provide actionable insights. Marketing strategies are driven by it in forward-looking companies. For companies to identify trends in the market, measure the effectiveness of campaigns, and find new growth opportunities, business intelligence is essential.

The following are our picks for 2021’s most popular BI tools.

Microsoft Power BI

Marketing can create interactive dashboards and reports using the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite. Power BI is a desktop-based BI application that combines Microsoft’s cloud-based Power BI Services with Power BI. Power BI Embedded was released in 2016 via the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

A very powerful tool, Microsoft Power BI includes built-in AI and is tightly integrated with Excel. A real-time access monitoring system encrypts data from start to finish.

  • Clientele: Organizations of all sizes
  • Highlights: Reports can be annotated via the mobile app
  • Cost: For dedicated cloud computing and storage resources, $4,995 per resource, $8.99 per user, per month, desktops are free.

Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics, a suite of business intelligence tools, was released in 2009. Dashboards and reports can be created by utilizing business intelligence and analytics tools.

With its automated data sync feature, businesses can analyze data from any source. Uploaded data could come from spreadsheets, flat files, or online storage services. The cloud and local versions of relational databases are also accessible. Marketing insights can be gained in minutes with Zia, an NLP and ML analytical assistant.

Some companies that use Zoho Analytics include Dell, HP, Tesla, and Ikea.

  • Clientele: Business Users
  • Highlights: Mobile app allows touch-screen annotation of reports
  • Cost: Free 15-day trial; Basic: $13/ per month; Standard: $25.81 per month; Premium: $57.06 per month; Enterprise, $215.33 per month

SAS Visual Analytics

SAS’s Visual Analytics tool is part of its cloud and microservice-based SAS Viya platform. Automated suggestions on relevant factors are included with this latest version, as well as insights expressed via visualizations and natural language.

Besides extracting data from social media and texts, generating charts and maps automatically, and self-serve data preparation are also found in the software. The Cloud Foundry platform can be installed on-premises, on public clouds or in private clouds.

  • Clientele: Users across large enterprises
  • Highlights: Automated analysis functions
  • Cost: On request

MicroStrategy

With cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment options, MicroStrategy targets enterprise business intelligence in a variety of industries. Users can create real-time dashboards with a drag-and-drop interface. The integrated analytics offered by MicroStrategy allow users to combine existing investments in databases such as Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI, and present the results in a unified way. As part of the software, it offers enterprise semantics graph, which enables real-time telemetry and location intelligence to enhance data silos. There is a 30-day free trial available for MicroStrategy’s full platform.

Clientele: The whole enterprise

Details: Mobile role-based identity badges based on smartphones can replace physical identity cards, passwords and tokens

Cost: By request

Qlik

It was the first product of the company, released in 1994, that bore its name. With it, a business can create a dashboard and guided analytics application.

Using Qlik, marketers can consolidate, search, visualize, and analyse data from multiple sources in order to generate meaningful insights. It can be used anywhere by marketers.

  • Clientele: The whole enterprise
  • Highlights: Associative Engine can analyze all your data, on the fly
  • Cost: Free for limited versions; $30 per user, per month for Qlik Sense Business; $40 per month for Analyzer; $70 per month for Pro; $100 per month for Analyzer Capacity Pack.

Tableau

Businesses can use Tableau marketing dashboards to converge all marketing data into one place and gain actionable insights into social media presence, customer journey, website performance, and spending.

Tableau Mobile, Tableau Prep, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, and Tableau Online are some of the products the company offers. Using an intuitive interface, Tableau Desktop lets you explore data. Furthermore, it utilizes AI-driven statistical models based on natural language.

  • Clientele: Midsize and larger enterprises
  • Highlights: Tableau provides users with the ability to request information using natural language processing
  • Cost: Each deployment needs at least one Tableau Creator ($70 per month); for Tableau Server, $12 per month, minimum 100 or Explorers $35 per month, minimum 5 users

Dundas BI

Dashboards and scorecards are the company’s historical strengths, but in addition to these, Dundas BI from Dundas Data Visualization can run standard or ad-hoc reports. The interface can be adjusted to match the skills of both power users and standard users. With new versions, visitors to the website can perform trend analysis with a click, use Linux or build customized analytical apps with a development environment. Dundas BI also offers tools for various industries, including clean tech, mining, and construction. Business Intelligence is its focus for large enterprises.

  • Clientele: C-suite, HR, finance, sales, marketing, customer service
  • Highlights: Flexible, HTML5 interface that adapts to any device
  • Cost: Based on concurrent users, not named users, without relation to the number of servers or cores

DataBox

Databox was founded in 2011 in Germany. Businesses can track performance metrics using its free-to-start and easy-to-setup features.

Using visualisations, DataBox helps marketing teams observe trends in acquisition sources, provides automated morning briefings to know how campaigns are performing, and provides access to all metrics in one place, regardless of data source.

  • Clientele: Business Segments
  • Highlights: Custom reporting templates and integrations
  • Cost: Starter: $72/month, Professional: $135/month, Performer: $231/month

Board

The Board International platform combines three tools into one: BI, predictive analytics, and performance management. However, the product is primarily focused on finance-oriented business intelligence. Finance (planning, consolidation), HR, marketing, supply chain, sales, and IT are included. This Swiss company offers software in six languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, and Italian. Their latest platform includes an in-memory calculation engine that replaces Multidimensional Online Analytic Processing (MOLAP).

  • Clientele: The whole enterprise but usually enters via the finance department
  • Highlights: Language support
  • Cost: License fee per user varies according to role

Oracle Analytics Cloud

Over the last few years, Oracle Analytics Cloud has grown as part of Oracle’s flagship Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition suite, launched in 2014. The cloud HCM offering will provide business leaders, analysts, and HR executives with self-service workforce analytics in 2020. Oracle’s cloud offering is user-friendly and intuitive, with machine learning and reporting capabilities. A native mobile app is available that integrates embedded analytics, data preparation, data connectors, visualizations, and predictive analytics.

  • Clientele: Users in midsize to large enterprises
  • Highlights: Supports natural language queries; automatically generates explanations that clarify trends and visualizations in natural language
  • Cost: Enterprise: The cost per user is $80 per month, which is $2.1506 Oracle compute units (OCPUs) per hour. The cost per professional is $16 per month, which is $1.0753 OCPUs per hour.

Conclusion

The difficulty of concentrating on pertinent information and presenting it in a manner that is actionable is increasing as we have access to more and more data. That’s the point of business intelligence.

It is easier to gather and visualize data using BI tools so that we can discern its meaning. Choosing the right tool becomes crucial to the ease in which you can complete the process, and to the visual representation you can achieve.