Collecting, analysing, and understanding data is key to making the right business decisions.
Traditionally, it was the job of highly trained, and expensive, data analysts. But there are now tools that can analyse more data, more efficiently than their human counterparts.
Employing these tools allows you to make informed decisions faster, helping you to keep your competitive edge.
Business Intelligence tools
Broadly speaking, Business Intelligence (BI) tools come in two forms:
1. Full-stack business intelligence tools
Full-stack tools are designed to eliminate data silos, by consolidating business data into usable insights.
2. Data discovery and visualisation
In contrast data discovery and visualisation tools, discover patterns and build easy-to-understand visual representations of those trends.
Read on to discover eight of the hottest BI tools on the market.
1) SAP Business Intelligence Tool
SAP Business Intelligence is a powerful data discovery and visualisation tool. It analyses data from multiple sources to produce valuable insights for business performance and customer behaviour.
The platform offers advanced analytics including real-time business intelligence, predictive analytics, and machine learning, helping directors to make informed decisions.
2) IBM Cognos Analytics
Although all business intelligence platforms analyse data to some extent, few do it as comprehensively as full-stack BI platform, Cognos Analytics.
As with other tools, you can visualise, analyse, and share insights, but it’s the AI aspect that sets it apart.
The AI helps to uncover hidden patterns in your data that other tools might miss, taking your analysis to another level.
3) Accountabl
Employee expenditure data sets are large and difficult to capture, especially if you’re still using a paper receipt and excel based reporting system.
Accountabl creates a uniform, centralised and enriched repository of data that brings total clarity to employee expenses.
It empowers your workers to buy what they need to get the job done, captures receipts, and eliminates reimbursements while giving total transparency and control to management.
Accountabl also integrates with accounting packages, making it easy to assess the impact of staff expenses on your cash flow, bottom-line, and company performance.
Plus, it allows you to track the CO2e of business purchases and travel, so employees can make greener decisions, and your company can monitor its scope 3 emissions with confidence.
Try accountabl for 30-days free.
4) QlikSense
Data discovery tool QlikSense is a touchscreen optimised business intelligence platform, that you can use on mobile devices.
A great QlikSense feature is Data Storytelling, which allows users to add a narrative to the data by drawing on their experiences, to emphasize the most important parts. So, it’s easier to get stakeholder buy-in, and make informed decisions.
5) Sisense
Full-stack platform Sisense is a great tool for less technical workers, combining standard BI tool features with a user-friendly interface.
It takes data from platforms such as Google Analytics, Ad Words, and Salesforce, and processes it to give actionable insights.
If you’re new to business intelligence tools, Sisense is a good place to start.
6) Salesforce Einstein Analytics
This BI tool from Salesforce has been designed to help companies manage their sales cycle more effectively, automate repetitive tasks, and help close deals quicker with advanced analytics, reporting, and forecasting.
The platform connects data from sales, marketing, finance, billing, and service teams to build a complete picture of your customer acquisition and retention performance.
It then uses that data to create actionable insights on how to improve.
7) ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot acts like a search engine, allowing users to type in questions like they would with Google or Bing.
However, behind the interface is a search and AI-driven analytics platform that extrapolates patterns and trends from relevant data to give precise answers.
The software is powered by the ThoughtSpot Falcon, which the company describes as the world’s fastest number cruncher, able to analyse hundreds of billions of rows of data at speed for near instant results.
8) GoodData
Most BI tools on this list create data, while GoodData aims to revolutionise how companies share data with customers, partners, franchisees, subsidiaries, and employees by integrating into workflows.
It allows you to provide data analytics to the brands and suppliers you work with, to share ideas on how to drive revenue.
Get BI smart
So, what are you waiting for? Adopting the right BI tools, will allow you to streamline your entire operation and learn how your business can improve.
Actioning insights will lead to efficiencies and growth and ensure that you maintain your competitive edge.
For more ideas on how to level up your company, check out our article on business dashboards.
