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Domo

FrontRunners 2024

Domo puts data to work for everyone so they can multiply their impact on the business. Our cloud-native data experience platform goes beyond traditional business intelligence and analytics, making data visible and actionable with ...Read more about Domo

4.3 (290 reviews)

5 recommendations

Grow

FrontRunners 2024

Grow is a cloud-based, business analytics and reporting solution suitable for small to midsize organizations. The solution allows users to create customizable dashboards for monitoring business workflows and key activities. Grow...Read more about Grow

4.5 (374 reviews)

4 recommendations

Wyn Enterprise

Wyn Enterprise is an embedded business intelligence (BI) platform that can be added to any internal or commercial app to provide interactive dashboards, BI reporting, scheduling, and distribution tools. With self-service designers...Read more about Wyn Enterprise

No reviews yet

3 recommendations

Hevo

Hevo is a no-code, bi-directional data pipeline platform specially built for modern ETL, ELT, and Reverse ETL Needs. It helps data teams streamline and automate org-wide data flows that result in a saving of ~10 hours of engineeri...Read more about Hevo

4.6 (90 reviews)

1 recommendations

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Clockspring

Clockspring is an Enterprise Automation Platform that provides a fast and flexible no-code integration capability to connect systems together to share and analyze data in hours instead of weeks. Using a Visio-like interface, Cloc...Read more about Clockspring

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1 recommendations

Jira

Jira Software is a business process management tool used by agile teams to plan, track and release software. Jira Software supports Scrum, Kanban, a hybrid model or another unique workflow. Jira enables users to create project r...Read more about Jira

Asana

Asana is a comprehensive project management tool that offers a range of technical features to streamline workflows and enhance collaboration within teams. With its user-friendly interface and robust capabilities, Asana provides or...Read more about Asana

Canva

Canva is a cloud-based graphic design tool used to create on-brand marketing content, sales presentations, training videos and more by companies of all sizes. This solution includes features such as drag-and-drop design and photo ...Read more about Canva

Google Analytics 360

Google Analytics 360 is an enterprise-level analytics platform with in-depth performance indicators, such as ROI analysis reports. The app's primary function is to provide insights into customer behavior interactions with websites...Read more about Google Analytics 360

ADP Workforce Now

ADP Workforce Solution is suited for businesses with more than 50 employees looking to streamline HR processes. ADP Workforce Now includes capabilities such as payroll processing and tax filing, performance management, compensatio...Read more about ADP Workforce Now

Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based CRM ecosystem for small, medium and enterprise organizations, with a focus on Sales, Field Service, Customer Service complete with strong integrations with Microsoft’s other Office 365 offer...Read more about Dynamics 365

monday.com

monday.com is an award-winning work and project management platform that helps teams of all sizes plan, prioritize, manage, and execute their work more effectively. The platform offers solutions for a wide range of use-cases such...Read more about monday.com

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a work execution platform and collaboration tool with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that helps teams plan, track, and manage projects in real-time. Smartsheet features include a range of project management to...Read more about Smartsheet

Visio

Visio, a Microsoft 365 solution, is a diagramming tool that can be used by businesses of all sizes to create visual charts for team collaboration. With Visio, teams can connect diagrams and charts to real-time data and automate wo...Read more about Visio

Zapier

Founded in 2011, Zapier has helped over 1.8 million individuals and businesses with their automation needs. Zapier moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. Build custom workfl...Read more about Zapier

Paycor

Paycor empowers leaders to build winning teams. Paycor’s human capital management (HCM) platform modernizes every aspect of people management, from recruiting, onboarding and payroll to career development and retention, but what r...Read more about Paycor

BambooHR

Instead of using fragmented spreadsheets, limited or clunky software, and physical paper, BambooHR helps you centralize your data and automate the way you complete key HR tasks. As you hire, onboard, and pay your employees, every ...Read more about BambooHR

Procore

Procore manages your projects, resources, and financials from project planning to closeout. The platform connects every project contributor with the owner and general or specialty contractor. The centralized dashboard allows manag...Read more about Procore

Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management platform for teams of 20+ that is suitable for both large enterprises and SMBs. It supports remote work for various teams. This solution comes with Gantt charts, calendars, workload view f...Read more about Wrike

Tableau

FrontRunners 2024

Tableau is an integrated business intelligence (BI) and analytics solution that helps to analyze key business data and generate meaningful insights. The solution helps businesses to collect data from multiple source points such as...Read more about Tableau

Buyers Guide

Last Updated: March 16, 2023

Business intelligence (BI) software has gained considerable traction since its introduction as "decision support systems" in the 1960s. Today, there are over 100 BI software companies selling business intelligence tools.

We put together this buyer's guide to help buyers understand the BI tools market. In this guide, we'll review:

What is business intelligence software?

Comparing business intelligence tools

Common Features of Business Intelligence Software

Data management tools

Data discovery applications

Reporting tools

What type of buyer are you?

Market trends to understand

What is business intelligence software?

Business intelligence software is data visualization and data analytics software that helps organizations make more well-informed decisions. Business intelligence tools connect to the business's data warehouse, ERP systems, marketing data, social media channels, Excel data imports, or even macroeconomic information.

The business intelligence market is growing rapidly because of the proliferation of data to analyze. Over the past few decades, companies that have deployed Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and other applications are now sitting on a mountain of data that can be analyzed. In addition, the growth of the Web has increased the demand for data analysis tools that can analyze large data sets.

One of the biggest trends in the BI market is the shift in software architecture and design to more user-friendly self-service applications. These applications are now being used by business users—not just IT staff—to pull ad-hoc reports, create interactive dashboards, and even allow end users to perform advanced analytics functions on the BI platform.

Medical practices and doctors looking for solutions that can function with their existing medical software might be interested in healthcare BI software

Comparing business intelligence tools

There are many popular BI solutions on the market, and it can be hard to know what distinguishes one product from another and which is right for you. To help you better understand how the top BI systems stack up against one another, we created a series of side-by-side product comparison pages that break down the details of what each solution offers in terms of pricing, applications, ease of use, support and more:

Top Qlik Sense Comparisons

Top Qlikview Comparisons

Top Tableau Comparisons

Qlik Sense vs. Qlikview Qlik Sense vs. Tableau

Qlik Sense vs. Qlikview Qlikview vs. Spotfire

Qlik Sense vs. Tableau Spotfire vs. Tableau

Top Spotfire Comparisons

 

 

Qlikview vs. Spotfire Spotfire vs. Tableau

Common Features of Business Intelligence Software

BI software can be divided into three broad application categories: data management tools, data discovery applications and reporting tools (including interactive dashboards and data visualization software). In the next section, we'll explain how these analytics platforms can help your organization's decision-making process become more data-driven.

The BI tool you'll need depends on how your data is currently managed and how you would like to analyze it. For example, if it is currently scattered across disparate transactional databases, you might need to build a data warehouse to centralize it and invest in data management tools that offer Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) functionality to move and re-structure it.

Once data is given a common structure and format, you can invest in data discovery solutions such as Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), data mining and semantic or text mining applications, with the capability to create custom, ad hoc reports. And because information is stored within the warehouse, users can quickly pull reports without impacting the performance of the organization’s software applications, such as CRM, ERP and supply chain management solutions.

We’ve illustrated this concept in the image below:

Business-Intelligence-(BI)-Software-Architecture

But this isn’t the only way to implement business intelligence software within your organization. If you’re only analyzing data from a single source, ETL and data warehouses are unnecessary. Alternatively, you might require multiple warehouses, and thus, require different tools to connect data between both these servers and other analytics tools that need access to this data.

Regardless of your unique business needs, any BI tool you buy should have some key features:

  • Data quality management

  • Extract, transform and load (ETL)

  • Data mining

  • Online analytical processing (OLAP)

  • Predictive analytics

  • Semantic and text analytics

  • Data visualizations

  • Interactive dashboards

  • Report writers

  • Scorecarding

  • Ad hoc reporting

Data management tools

Better decision-making starts with better data. Data management tools help clean up "dirty data," organize information by providing format and structure and prepare data sources for analyses.

Functionality

Description

Data quality management

Helps organizations maintain clean, standardized and error-free data. Standardization is especially important for business intelligence tools that integrate data from diverse sources. Data quality management ensures that later analyses are correct and can lead to improvements within the business.

Extract, transform and load (ETL)

Collects data from outside sources, transforms it and then loads it into the target system (a database or a data warehouse). Because primary data is often organized using different schemas or formats, analysts can use ETL tools to normalize it for use in analytics.

Data discovery applications

The ability to sift through data and come to meaningful conclusions is one of the most powerful benefits of adopting business intelligence tools. Data discovery applications help users make sense of their data, whether it be through quick, multivariate analysis during OLAP or via advanced algorithms and statistical computations during data mining.

Functionality

Description

Data mining

Sorts through large amounts of data to identify new or unknown patterns. It is often the first step that other processes rely on, such as predictive analytics. Databases are often too large or convoluted to find patterns with the naked eye or through simple queries. Data mining helps point users in the right direction for further analysis by providing an automated method of discovering previously neglected trends.

Online analytical processing (OLAP)

Enables users to quickly analyze multidimensional data from different perspectives. It is typically made up of three analytical operations: data consolidation, data sorting and classification ("drill-down"), and data analytics from a particular perspective ("slice-and-dice"). For example, a user could analyze sales numbers for various products by store and by month. OLAP allows users to produce this analysis.

Predictive analytics

Analyzes current and historical data to make predictions about future risks and opportunities. An example of this is credit scoring, which relies on an individual's current financial standing to make predictions about their future credit behavior.

Semantic and text analytics

Extracts and interprets large volumes of text to identify patterns, relationships and sentiment. For example, the popularity of social media has made text analytics valuable to companies with a large social footprint. Understanding semantic trends is a powerful tool for organizations evaluating purchase intent or customer satisfaction among users of these channels.

Reporting tools

In the words of John W. Tuckey, “the greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” Reporting applications are an important way to present data and easily convey the results of analysis.

Business intelligence users are increasingly business users—not IT staff—who need quick, easy-to-understand displays of information. In response, software vendors have been working to mask the complexity of these applications and increasingly focus on the user experience.

Functionality

Description

Visualizations

Helps users create advanced interactive dashboard representations of data via simple user interfaces. The ability to visualize information in a graphical format (as opposed to words or numbers) can help users understand data in a more insightful way. In addition, new interactive tools can help teams use analytics and manipulate reports in real-time.

Dashboards

Dashboards typically highlight key performance indicators (KPIs), which help managers focus on the metrics that are most important to them. Dashboards are often browser-based, making them easily accessible by anyone with permissions.

Report writers

Allows users to design and generate custom reports. Many CRM and ERP systems include built-in BI reporting tools, but users can also purchase standalone applications, such as Crystal Reports, to create ad hoc reports based on complex queries. This is especially helpful for organizations that constantly use analytics and need to generate new reports quickly.

Scorecarding

Scorecards attach a numerical weight to performance and map progress toward goals. Think of it as dashboards taken one step further. In organizations with a strategic performance-management methodology (e.g., balanced scorecard, Six Sigma etc.), scorecards are an effective way to keep tabs on key metrics. For example, a scorecard might establish a grade of “A+" to 40 percent year-over-year growth if the goal was set at 14 percent.

What type of buyer are you?

Before evaluating software, you must determine what type of buyer you are.

Business users and departmental buyers. These buyers favor small data-discovery vendors and BI tools over the big, traditional BI systems. Ease-of-use and fast deployment are more important than in-depth functionality and integration. They are usually business users rather than IT staff.

IT buyers. Traditional buyers are more focused on functionality and integration within their information infrastructure stacks or other ERP applications. Integration across different entities and departments is usually more important than ease of use.

Market trends to understand

As you begin your software comparison and evaluation, there are a couple trends to consider:

In-memory processing: OLAP systems of the past would pre-calculate every possible combination of data. These calculations would be stored in the “cube,” and users could retrieve them when they needed a certain analysis. Creating these cubes was very time-consuming—sometimes taking as long as a year—and required expertise. Today, computer processors and memory are faster, cheaper and more powerful overall. This same process can happen in-memory, rather than using a disk-based approach with cubes. Analytics software built on an in-memory architecture can retrieve data and perform calculations in real-time or on-the-fly.

Big Data: The Internet is rapidly creating vast amounts of data. This phenomenon is known as "big data" among IT and business leaders. Business analytics software companies are beefing up their data warehousing and analytics capabilities to keep up with demand.

However, according to Gartner, through 2015, 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will be unable to exploit big data for competitive advantage. The right BI tools can help harness the power of so much data.

Companies dealing with large amounts of data may also want to consider investing in dedicated IT security suites to support their computer security needs.

Business users to outnumber IT staff: This is a major trend playing out in the market. More business users—rather than traditional IT staff—are evaluating and purchasing software. So usability is becoming more important than functionality during software evaluations. As a result, small data discovery vendors that develop really good interactive visualization tools are gaining market share. Meanwhile, traditional BI vendors are parroting new market entrants by promoting ease of use.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): A growing number of organizations are considering SaaS or “cloud” BI software instead of traditional, on-premise software that you install on-location. Cost is a major driver of this trend. The poorly performing economy is motivating companies to look at lower-cost BI software from SaaS and open source vendors. Of course, perceived ease of use, faster implementations and reduced IT needs are also driving this trend. On-premise BI vendors are responding by committing development resources to cloud technology.

**[

Mobile BI applications:](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/mobile-business-intelligence-comparison/)** Proliferation of the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices is pushing vendors (e.g., Microsoft and Oracle) to develop on-the-go business intelligence applications. Analysts think mobile BI could expand the population of BI users to a larger, mainstream audience.