5 Best Business Intelligence (BI) Softwares & Tools for Data Visualization

Business intelligence tools are the best weapon for BI analysts who churns data to make intelligent business decision. Are you a small, medium, or large enterprise? Are you a business intelligence analyst? Are you a digital marketing service provider or working with an organization looking for advanced business intelligence software to understand user behavior with the help of data? You are at the right place.

This article aims to showcase the best BI tools by considering various features and pricing. Before I list out those tools, let me briefly explain what does business intelligence mean?

What is Business Intelligence?

Today in this vastly competitive market where business scenarios keep on changing, we require business intelligence technology that enables enterprises to convert raw data into useful data. Every enterprise wants to maintain details about its customers, employees, vendors, and suppliers. To manage these data in arranged form, business tools are required. These BI tools not only help the organization to maintain data but also help in keeping the budget, increasing profits, and in improving the efficiency of the organization. Business intelligence analyst is the best job profile who can operate these BI tools and use their knowledge and expertise to convert these data into result-driven decision-making resources. Imagine maintaining records manually in registers would be so hectic; it would consume more time, and more workforce and would also lead to duplication of work. Business intelligence tools do the same job with advanced features at a very limited cost. Nowadays, artificial intelligence plays a crucial role to boost the process of business intelligence software. AI is changing the way businesses work across the world.

Advantages of Business Intelligence Tools

BI tools empower an organization to make reliable decisions to maximize the core value of the business measure customer behavior, buying experience, and trends, and analyze audience data. Business intelligence tools can help organizations manage their business data, analyze market trends, optimize services or products and identify the areas that need to be corrected.

• Following is a list of other benefits of using business intelligence systems.
• Quicker analysis
• Accurate and fast data reporting
• Incredible business insights
• Increased business revenue and higher profits
• Competitive pricing analysis
• Improved employee satisfaction
• Improved growth pattern
• Quick decision-making approach

Where is Business Intelligence Software Used?

BI tool is a type of software application used by small and large companies to gather, analyze, and report data for business analysis and data visualization to get optimized solutions for business growth. They can be utilized in sales, finance, marketing, production, and human resource departments. Application of this software includes measuring performances, analysis of quantitative data, and getting customer behavior of buying and selling. Business intelligence tools are generally by data analysts, IT developers, business executives, managers, suppliers, customers, etc.

Best Business Intelligence (BI) Software & Tools:

Here are those tools providing enterprises with business intelligence solutions along with data storage, and IT resources through cloud computing:

1. Tableau Software – Visualization Tool for Data Analytics

Tableau Software is a leading business intelligence and analytics tool that helps brands to visualize and understand data in a properly detailed and tabular manner. We can connect to multiple formats and servers in Tableau. You can share the data with your employees, business partners, suppliers, and customers. Tableau software can also be used for sorting data and compressing valuable data which uses less space on your computer. If we talk in simple words, this BI software is like a blender it blends the complete data into useful data. If you become familiar with this tool, then you have just to open the tool, and you will understand the data easily and quickly. Data can be represented in different formats like waterfall charts, histogram charts, Pareto charts, box plots, etc… Tableau online certification courses are also available in the market which helps you to understand how to use different functions of this tool.

Now if we talk about the pricing of Tableau software, it depends upon the package you opt for, there are four types of pricing options they are offering at the time of writing this blog post:

• Individual $35
• Professional $70
• On-Premises $35
• Fully hosted $42

This package mentioned is per month charges which are billed annually.

Check out more information about Tableau from this official Tableau video:

2. Power BI – Best Reporting Tool for Business Intelligence

Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular interactive data visualization business intelligence tools these days. It helps users in creating and analyze data properly on their desktops, PC’s or also can download the app on your mobile to access the data from any part of the world. In this way, you can collect the data and then arrange the data in proper order; you can also save and share the data like any other file. With Microsoft Power BI, you can open the reports in different views report view, data, and relationship view. It helps you to get connected with various data and sources.

So, now in brief we would understand the working of this Microsoft Power BI tool. There are two types of workspace in this workspace where customers have personal space to work and other app workspaces where you can share the data with your colleagues with every workspace there is a list of data sets listed accordingly, and reports can be prepared and shared only owner or people with whom the report is shared can make changes in the report. Dashboards are created to help people to be on the same page and can see information and take decisions by using the same data in simple words it’s like a notice board. There is a workbook option where you can work or edit your workbook. There is various navigation pane available that helps you to move between these reports.

• The price of the Microsoft Power BI tool starts from $9.99 per user/month.

If you are looking to try Microsoft Power BI, just download it FREE of cost and start using it now. You can also try power BI pro at free of cost for 60 days. Checkout brief information about Power BI now:

3. QlikView – Best Business Intelligence Software for Data Analytics

QlikView business intelligence tool was founded in 1993 in Sweden, till date they have released over 7,8,9,10,11 versions of their software. This tool is affordable, easy to learn, and helps in presenting data in different graphic form that allows the viewers to take decisions quickly and easily. You can collaborate with your colleagues and work you can also download the app and access the data wherever you want to. It helps in creating reports from different sources; it helps to understand the relationship between information easily.

If we talk about its working you can load the data from different sources, you can view existing data or files if you want can prepare reports using different graphs can also make changes in the existing files if you have the authority to do so. Users can develop various layers and transform the data easily. To learn in detail how to work on this tool tutorials are available online certification courses are also available. The main benefit of this course is that you can use it in both small-scale and large-scale organizations.

• The pricing of this tool depends upon the package you choose which starts from $1350 to $1500 per user.

If you are looking for an enterprise-level business intelligence tool, QlikView can be your choice depending on the budget and the feature requirements.

4. MicroStrategy – Leading Business Intelligence Software

MicroStrategy business intelligence tool helps the user to make reports, connect with other users on the dashboard,  calculations, format reports, etc. It has the feature of the mobile app, the software allows to the storage of data so that clients all over can view the data and make the right decisions. This BI software is easy to adapt and maintain it. One of the best things about this software is it’s cost-effective as it allows cloud services to combine with third-party hardware. If you are not sure whether you want to use this tool or not, the company provides you a trial kit where you can work on this software for a limited period and decide whether it fulfills your expectations or not. Online courses are also available which help you learn about this tool in depth.

• The price of this tool starts from $600 per user per month

If you are looking for a BI tool that easily processes a large amount of data, you should consider testing the Micro strategy BI tool.

5. Sisense – Best Business Intelligence Reporting Tool

A top-ranked business tool that helps to gather data from different sources and produce a rich report for analysis, easily this report can be shared among your colleagues. If you are non-technical background, then this is a tool which eases to adapt with. If there is any question or doubt you can ask and get a quick solution to it. One of the best parts of this tool is reports or data will be prepared only if it’s a new query or report overlapping of work will not take place. You can quickly update raw data with different graphs and tables and present the report for analysis.

• Flexible plans are available depending on the size of your company and work. The free trial plan is also open if you want to test the tool.

The below table will give you an overview of all the tools which will help to decide quickly which tool is best for your organization:

Sisense business intelligence tool is the best suited for small or medium businesses with specific requirements. If you are a startup or an organization with limited technical knowledge, you can also try Sisense for business intelligence analysis.

Final thoughts

Business intelligence analysis is a vast industry and there are all different types of tools available in the market. Before you buy any BI tool, make sure you understand its offering and features carefully. I recommend going for a DEMO or sign up for the FREE trial and use for a couple of days. It can help you to match the BI tool feature with your business needs and budget.

If you are already using a business intelligence tool not listed in our list, write here by comment or email us. We would love to review them for our readers.

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