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10 great pieces of business intelligence software
Business intelligence is based on understanding, visualizing and acting based on the data that you already have in your possession. So a good BI software should be able to provide you with the most relevant insights in the simplest and quickest way possible.
The most relevant factor in choosing the right BI tool is your organization. You need to take into consideration your company, the number of employees, departments and teams. The best way to determine the quality of the BI software is still customer satisfaction and scale of the product which is based on market share, vendor size, and social impact.
Business intelligence softwares that have a tendency to lead the market in 2016 are:
Microsoft Power BI offers great cost and availability to its users. Some of the tools are obtainable on the time-trial basis, but regardless of that it offers quality information visualization very expediently. This tool is great for analyzing market and customer opportunities and business operation risk assessment.
One of the major benefits is that it segments the prospect companies by revenue, geography, complexity and some additional factors, this can ease the presentation of the data. The dashboards are available online which makes them accessible from any location.
However, there are still some issues to be fixed in order for this BI software to get the highest review. For example, while the analysis of small data sets is quite easy, business data can sometimes present a problem, in addition the quality of data must be adjusted before it is exposed to Power BI.
9. Tableau
Tableau is well known for providing intuitive business intelligence tools in order to improve data discovery and understanding for various companies and business users. It prides itself in having easy to use, simple drag-and-drop features so a user can easily access and analyze key data or create innovative reports and visualizations. Sharing critical insights across the company has also been made easy by this application.
Tableau offers three main products for data discovery- desktop, server and Tableau online. Each of these tools is aimed at helping the user collect, correlate and share data. The difference being only the scope in which you want to do these processes.
One of the issues that Tableau still has to work on is the ability to integrate data from different sources in preparation for analysis. This feature is still weak and takes time.
Panorama Necto is an end-to-end business intelligence (BI) suite designed to work in tandem with any data source, in addition it is the only BI solution designed s designed specifically for the Microsoft platform. The most liked feature of Panorama is its collaborative and supportive business intelligence capability. It is this collaborative environment that helps the users to easily get or share feedback on reports from each other.
In addition, Panorama supports a vast number of infographics, which offers users and enriched visual appeal of the dashboard along with providing a high level of visual capability. This BI software is highly recommended for businesses that want to have a great BI tool experience within the budget, as it offers quite competitive prices in comparison to other BIs.
As with all newer products, there are still some areas for improvement. For example, most customers have stated that it would be a great idea if Panorama would provide additional options for handling big data and also support for Linux environment.
7. SAP Lumira
SAP Lumira BI software enables users to take full advantage of large amounts of data available to business by using data visualization. It is easy to bring together and quickly make sense of all relevant data regardless of different forms and on multiple platforms. Lumira offers advanced analytics models, great tutorials for first time users and the SAP customer support is also at your disposal.
For users that like SAP and all that they have to offer, Lumira is the way to go. You will feel comfortable in the familiar setting and you will be able to pick up on the user commands quite quickly.
When we talk about the possible room for improvement within SAP Lumira BI tool, it is very important mention that it still needs to clarify the details regarding the connection to data warehouse or to data mining, it is key for process implementation.
6. GoodData
GoodData is a cloud based Business Intelligence platform considered to be a good option for business users in need of an easy-to-use interface. As most BI’s It supports the creation of charts and dashboards along with the connectivity to a large number of data sources. This platform covers all the basic functions needed by a BI from data visualization to data access and integration. It offers a columnar data warehouse, collaboration along with governance and management tools.
Most reviewers have expressed their satisfaction with GoodData customer service, naming it one of the best they had a chance to work with. In addition, it is important to state that the same GoodData Dashboards are used at multiple levels within the same company. The filtering and drill in capabilities allows the users to select different pieces of the data within the Dashboard without needing to be analysts.
The issue that GoodData has to deal with in order to improve user satisfaction is to enable the non-technical users to create the simple metrics.
5. Domo
Domo Business Intelligence software allows executives to obtain the data they need in the format they want it. In addition, its multiple data sources can be linked together forming graphs that are a great aid in the process of decision-making.
Domo is widely used for identification of potential problems due to the fact that it enables easier communication of these problems to the people responsible for solving them. Another feature praised by users is Domo’s interfaces, dashboard widgets and displays, which are considered to be quite appealing. In addition, it incorporates creative data displays such as multi-part widgets, sparklines, and trend indicators.
When it comes to Domo features that still need a bit of work, the fact that it is cost prohibitive for most business is quite an issue. Also there is a large number of customers reporting that they have faced significant difficulties when extracting data from Domo.
SAS Business Intelligence is a part of SAS Enterprise Solutions, it combines business intelligence and analytics in order to discover and gather data on an enterprise-level. In addition, this Business Intelligence also deploys real-time analytics directly to both mobile devices and Microsoft applications.
Additional benefits of using SAS BI is the Integration of advanced visual analytics directly in the BI tool. This feature can aggregate Twitter streams and integrate them into the dashboard. Additionally, it runs on an in-memory server which makes the analysis more efficient.
When it comes to possible issues that might appear when using SAS Business Intelligence is the fact that non-tech users do not have access to reporting and analytics tools at the moment. Also there are no predictive analytics functions and no free trial on offer.
3. IBM Cognos
IBM Cognos Business Intelligence software is considered one of the leaders in the field. The Cognos Analytics is comprised of more than thirty different products while its abilities include dashboarding, reporting, analytics, scorecarding, and, notably, data integration.
An important feature of his BI is that it is scalable for all company sizes. The IBM Cognos team is continually improving its software based on customer feedback. Also it is usable with both multidimensional and relational data sources.
The issues that IBM Cognos still has to improve on include making an on-premise option available. In addition, many users have complained that this BI can be difficult users who are not accustomed to advanced software.
Logi Analytics business intelligence software is available for all company sizes and analytics has the option of being embedded into existing applications. This BI possess the ability to customize both CSS and JavaScript to reports.
Another great feature of Logi Analytics is that allows presentation of data in hosted in RDBMSes by using a metadata layer which is able to hide the complexity of joins and other physical database details from end-users and report / ad-hoc query developers equally.
The issue that Logi Analytics still has to deal with is that it is not suitable for non-SQL users. Additionally, it is currently missing the ability to automatically set attributes in a report.
1. QlikView
QlikView is a commercial business intelligence platform that possess some of the most sought-after features in the industry. It offers its customers a flexible chart design, and many properties for configuring charts. By using a expansion language, “SET ANALYSIS” it provides better control of data transformation and manipulation.
Additionally, QlikView BI provides its clients with a pleasant client server architecture so that the designed reports can be easily published on the web and the access easily controlled easily by using management console.
On the other hand, this BI still has some issues that most users would like to see fixed. First of all, the data management should be more user friendly, since currently it is presented in script editor. Secondly there should exist a better systematization of the many properties and configurations that QuickView BI has to offer.
