Best Business Intelligence (BI) Software

Do you intend to fuse business intelligence software into your growing business? Considered generally the third wing of Information Technology, the BI tools can be helpful to store and process a tremendous volume of information. Not just that, BI tools aid businesses to transform information into noteworthy insights and settling on data-driven choices progressively. To help enterprises meet these specific business needs, GoodFirms lists the best business intelligence software available in the market. The listed business intelligence tools are accompanied by platform details and verified customer reviews.

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A Complete List of Open Source & Free Business Intelligence (BI) Software tools with Latest Reviews

  • Dyntell Bi

    THE DEEPEST POSSIBLE UNDERSTANDING
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    Dyntell Bi, a smart business intelligence software designed for any sized business. Enter a robust visualization, analytics and prediction tool that was born from our ERP solution. Dyntell Bi takes your raw data and makes it come alive. Dyntell is an acronym for Dynamic Intelligence, “the real-world application of the most sophisticated level of human neural processing, as well as mental functio ... read more about Dyntell Bi

    Entry Level Price
    $50 Per Month
    Free Trial
    30 Days
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • eazyBI Cloud

    Easy Business Intelligence for Project Teams
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    Web-based easy-to-use, self-service Business Intelligence app in a Cloud—no servers, no downloads, no setup, no hustle. A hands-off SaaS solution for teams of up to 20 users. Create custom reports, charts, and dashboards with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop report builder. Create new tables, charts, reports, and dashboards with just a couple of clicks. Quickly discover new insights and opportunitie ... read more about eazyBI Cloud

    Entry Level Price
    $20 Per Month
    Free Trial
    30 Days
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • eccenca Corporate Memory

    Empower your business to become more self-determined and agile.
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    eccenca Corporate Memory provides a multi-disciplinary integrative platform for managing rules, constraints, capabilities, configurations and data in a single application. Overcoming the limitations of traditional, application centric (meta) data management models, its semantic knowledge graph is both highly extensible, integrative as well as interpretable both by machines and business users. The ... read more about eccenca Corporate Memory

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    50% in Business Intelligence Software
  • EntelliFusion

    Data and analytics solutions with the professional services that make it all work
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    Teksouth is large and sophisticated enough to deliver enterprise-class solutions, yet nimble enough to cost-effectively serve organizations with smaller requirements. Teksouth is uncomplicated and unpretentious, yet we recognize the tremendous responsibility our customers have placed in us to help them meet their needs and goals. Teksouth is a mature and trusted vendor with a long track record of ... read more about EntelliFusion

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    14% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Enterprise Enabler

    Stone Bond Technologies has an advanced data integration solution
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    Enterprise Enabler® 10 goes farther than unifying scattered sources; it enables and connects IT & Business Users. This update caters both to the tech-savvy and day-to-day business users by exposing the data in a user-friendly manner. The new middleware features including the enhanced interface are meant for all user to easily find what they are looking for no matter if they are a novice or exper ... read more about Enterprise Enabler

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Exactlly ERP

    LET'S CREATE YOUR GROWTH STRATEGY TOGETHER
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    As a business, the effectiveness with which you manage your resources is a key factor in your profitability and success going forward. ExactllyERP offers an array of cutting edge solutions to improve your business processes and eliminate inefficiencies within a number of key areas. From purchases, sales and project management to production, human resources and customer support, our ERP system soft ... read more about Exactlly ERP

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Execuvue

    INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
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    The challenge in managing today’s hotel business environment is gaining access to the information you need to make effective business decisions. The multiple spreadsheets we construct are from different legacy sources, software systems, and locations. This effort is time-consuming, and the result of the work is often disappointing. Execuvue is a web-based hospitality business intelligence applic ... read more about Execuvue

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • EzInsights

    Simply Search to Analyze Your Data
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    EzDataMunch is a fundamentally different approach to Business Intelligence. With EzDataMunch you explore data from multiple sources using everyday language. Just enter your queries in a search box to analyze your business data and get instant visual answers.Create powerful and well-prepared workforce by letting users explore data by themselves and giving instant and updated information anywhere, a ... read more about EzInsights

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Ezora

    GROW MORE EFFICIENT & PROFITABLE BUSINESSES
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    Ezora is a leading provider of web based business intelligence, analytics and reporting solutions. Ezora helps businesses to manage the key drivers of their corporate performance, make better decisions and improve their bottom line. Ezora enables businesses to manage the key drivers of their corporate performance, along with helping them make better decisions and improve their bottom line. By doin ... read more about Ezora

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Flashpoint Intelligence Platform

    Trusted Experts. Trusted Partners. Trusted Intelligence.
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    Flashpoint Intelligence Platform grants access to our archive of finished intelligence reports, data from illicit forums, marketplaces, chat services, blogs, paste sites, technical data, card shops, and vulnerabilities, in a single, finished intelligence experience. Our platform scales Flashpoint’s internal team of specialized, multilingual intelligence analysts’ ability to quickly provide res ... read more about Flashpoint Intelligence Platform

    Entry Level Price
    Contact vendor
    Free Trial
    30 Days
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • FT IS analysis

    For everyone who wants to know more .
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    FT IS analysis is a tool for free data analysis ; made for users who simply want to know more. With our web tools, we offer users appealing dashboards and the ability to carry out quick 360-degree analyzes. With FT IS Analysis , we also offer a desktop power tool that enables self-service BI in its purest form. Check master data, realize free analyzes in the entire data warehouse, bring together d ... read more about FT IS analysis

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Galigeo

    Predictive Location Intelligence - Predictive geomarketing - Analytics - Sales efficiency
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    Galigeo is the leader in Location Intelligence software for Analytics and CRM solutions. When the geographic dimension of organizations is ignored or underestimated, the operational performance and strategic potential are missed. By geo-locating business data and key indicators, Galigeo simplifies the visualization, aggregation and analysis of BI, CRM and repository data so territories reveal thei ... read more about Galigeo

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Gazelle.ai

    Spend More Time Closing, Less Time Chasing
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    Gazelle.ai is a highly capable toolkit that includes functionality to support business development professionals in every aspect of their work. But at its core the most revolutionary thing about Gazelle is its ability to sort through mountains of data to detect early-stage signals for companies that are about to start expanding aggressively. Our team of seasoned business development professionals, ... read more about Gazelle.ai

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • HCM Analytics

    Workforce analytics solution
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    Our platform includes advanced tech to put analytics exactly where you want it, when you want it. Full on-premise or hybrid SaaS/cloud capabilities. Data Gateways to securely control the flow of data from source systems. Full suite of APIs to programmatically control everything from users, dashboards, datasets, and more. Android and Apple mobile apps. Export to PowerPoint, PDF, or Excel. All ... read more about HCM Analytics

    Entry Level Price
    Free version
    Free Trial
    Available
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Health Intelligence Analytics

    WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE WITH UNCOMMON THINKING
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    Analytics Partners introduces Health Intelligence Analytics (HIA) ™, a powerful pre-built data warehouse and analytics solution for Healthcare organizations. HIA provides organizations with better visibility into healthcare expense and cost management. It delivers robust information across the company value chain and helps identify opportunities to enhance quality of care while reducing healthc ... read more about Health Intelligence Analytics

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Hotel Dashboard

    Your Hospitality Partner towards success.
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    The Hotel Dashboard is a Business Intelligence development that offers Hotel Management a predefined vision of their business and KPIs. The Hotel Business Intelligence is based on connectors with different applications such as PMS, POS, S&C, Finance, HR, etc., from Hotel Management software like Opera, MICROS, Delphi, Protel, SIHOT, Scala, Talentia, Concept Software System, Sage, SunSystems or SAP ... read more about Hotel Dashboard

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Hypersonix

    Powering the Intelligent Enterprise with AI-driven Augmented Analytics
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    Hypersonix is designed to help enterprises drive profitable revenue growth by providing a system of actionable intelligence. Explainable AI powered by data science, ML, and NLP allows our customers to enjoy a holistic understanding of what’s happening in their business, why it’s happening, and what they should do about it. Hypersonix AI has helped to deliver 3-5% profitable revenue growth to i ... read more about Hypersonix

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • LimeGear

    Inspire Results with Turnkey Business Intelligence
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    LimeGear provides out-of-the-box dashboards and reports to improve visibility and collaboration and increase productivity and efficiency across your mortgage company. LimeGear gives you a workable pipeline to track the progress of loans through the entire origination process without having to log in to your LOS. Alerts and notifications configurable to user preferences helps everyone stay out of t ... read more about LimeGear

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • LinearB

    Hybrid Remote Dev Teams deliver more with LinearB
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    Project delivery is complicated. To manage changing priorities, technical blockers and shifting availability, you need a lot of insight into what’s happening. LinearB is the first ever project board designed specifically for dev leads. You get all of the details you need to make decisions on a single screen. Asynchronously. Without interrupting your devs. There is a strong correlation between hi ... read more about LinearB

    Entry Level Price
    Free version
    Free Trial
    Available
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Lumenore

    Augmenting Human Decisions
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    Gain actionable insights from your data and become a data-driven business using the powerful analytical capabilities provided by Lumenore. The powerful AI driven AskMe understands the intent of questions asked and identifies what entities are involved in order to build the correct search algorithm and retrieve the desired result on screen. The Data Discovery capability within the Lumenore Platform ... read more about Lumenore

    Entry Level Price
    $2.49 Per Month
    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • IGXITE

    Transform Your Business Into a High Performance Company
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    IGXITE provides cloud-based business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) solutions that help transform your business and provide you with a competitive advantage by aligning your people, processes and data. Our enterprise-class platform automates the collection of data from all your business systems, and allows you to view operational and financial information most importa ... read more about IGXITE

    Entry Level Price
    Contact vendor
    Free Trial
    14 Days
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • InAppBI

    The fastest way to add Analytics to your application
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    Turn your application data into insightful analytics and new revenue streams. Whether you are developing an on-premise product or a SaaS-based cloud platform or a custom application, you can easily embed our BI components into your product to quickly build analytics solutions. Create operational reports and data visualizations without any IT support. Analyze data to make informed day-to-day decisi ... read more about InAppBI

    Entry Level Price
    Free version
    Free Trial
    Available
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • IndustriusCFO

    Grow your business & be more profitable.
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    IndustriusCFO is a leading provider of data services and business intelligence solutions. We help our clients to make better decisions based on the largest and most reliable financial benchmarking database of privately held companies. Set-up is a breeze. Invest less than 10 minutes to save dozens of hours you spend calculating this same information in Excel. Choose which report, from our suite of ... read more about IndustriusCFO

    Entry Level Price
    Free version
    Free Trial
    Available
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Info Touch

    Mobile technology for wholesale distributors
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    Info Touch gives you immediate, real-time access to your key Eclipse business information. Access your business summary instantly to monitor key metrics such as sales, gross profit, cost of goods sold, and account receivables. Identify performance trends in your business by creating graphs comparing general leger, sales source, and product types across branches and year-over-year. Access your busi ... read more about Info Touch

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • InfoCaptor

    Easy Business intelligence and Dashboard Reporting
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    InfoCaptor is simply a web based application that works on every platform [windows, linux/unix or Mac]. The application has built in login/authentication system that integrates with your LDAP. All activity including analysing data, development of charts and publishing of the dashboard occur within the browser based interface. ... read more about InfoCaptor

    Entry Level Price
    $39 Per Month
    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • INFOSUITE

    Get optimal overview and insight
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    InfoSuite's BI tool retrieves, transforms and presents your company's most important data. It gives you the full overview so you can run a more efficient business. And you get insight into business-critical data so you can make better decisions based on facts. InfoSuite Business Intelligence collects data from your company's many data sources and presents your business' most important insights in ... read more about INFOSUITE

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Inno

    Empowers education leaders to impact students and communities
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    Our all-in-one data, strategy and project management application Inno™ empowers education leaders to impact students and communities. Inno™ organizes the data you currently have in multiple systems or random spreadsheets into one custom designed dashboard. Inno™ guides you and your team through the strategic planning process and houses your organization’s strategy in the same place where y ... read more about Inno

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • FHIR

    The Data Activation Platform that powers it all.
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    The most comprehensive FHIR enabled Data Activation Platform to help you go from integrating data to powering innovation. We connect and manage integrations to clinical, claims, labs, and other healthcare data sources onto our advanced FHIR platform. We run 800+ analytical enrichments to clinical and claims data including risk, quality, cost, utilization, and many other metrics. We provide extensi ... read more about FHIR

    Entry Level Price
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    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software
  • Insight Enterprise

    Be confident in the accuracy, consistency and security of your data and reports
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    We provide an integrated suite of BI systems for insurance! It has actuarial, financial & operational analytics, including experience studies. It also provides IBNR & claims development, profitability & source of earnings, sales & marketing, reinsurance & in-force management, complete with data management & audit processes! With increasing regulatory and analytics requirements for PBR, IFSR and pr ... read more about Insight Enterprise

    Entry Level Price
    Contact vendor
    Free Trial
    N/A
    Category Focus
    100% in Business Intelligence Software

Buyer’s Guide

Introduction to Buyer’s Guide for Business Intelligence Software

The digital revolution has fuelled enormous opportunities for businesses to grow at an unprecedented rate.  The organizations that are marching on this growth path have become data-driven and are investing heavily in technologies to enhance their performances. They are harnessing data technology like business intelligence software to help them in engaging customers, optimizing operations, reducing business costs, improving product quality, and making better decisions. Not just large enterprises, but small and mid-size companies are showing the same anticipation for the data-intelligence software to solve their complex issues.

With AI, cloud computing, and big data, data intelligence software has become more powerful and accurate.  The organizations are now bracing up to take advantage of these new features and make them a part of their culture.  However, before they get their hands on new features, they must get familiarized with the business intelligence software selection and the need for advanced BI tools.

This buyer guide is intended to help business owners, executives, managers, data analysts, data scientists, and other data technology enthusiasts on the important aspects of BI software and parameters to consider while buying the software.  It envelops everything that business owners need to know about BI tools.

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is a technology-driven approach for analyzing business data and presenting actionable insights to help business executives, managers, and stakeholders to make informed business decisions. The BI technology includes tools, strategies, and processes to refine raw business data into meaningful data and present them in a most comprehensive format.

Why Is Business Intelligence Critical?

A business that consists of various departments like Accounting, HR, Sales, Marketing, etc., produces a large amount of data while performing daily activities. But these data are disorganized (stored at various places and in various formats) and unstructured and may not be of use until it is consolidated and streamlined. This is where business intelligence can be helpful.  Business intelligence uses technologies like data warehouses, data discovery tools, dashboards, ad hoc reporting, etc., to consolidate and derive valuable information from the data reciting across various business processes.     

In the data-driven world, data technology like business intelligence is very crucial in identifying new business opportunities and taking competitive market advantage. It gives organizations the power to access, analyze, understand, collaborate, and act on information.  With better insights about the working, trends, and analytics of the business process, organizations can identify risk elements that set them back and allow them to focus on the area for improvements. But to collect more in-depth and business specifics analytics, the enterprises have to resource end-to-end business intelligence software.

What Is Business Intelligence Software?

Business Intelligence Software is a tool that converts the raw business data (structured and unstructured) into valuable data insights for business owners or stakeholders to make an informed decision. The business intelligence tool extracts current and historical data related to business from various sources. They slice and dice these data to get a full 360-degree view of the business and generate the reports to analyze the business performance or any other metrics.

BI software is generally used by:

  • Managers and executives
  • Data Analysts
  • Front line worker
  • IT developers
  • Information workers
  • Suppliers, customers, and regulators

Business intelligence Software benefits are immense, and organizations can enhance their business efficiency by incorporating them into their infrastructure.

What Is the Difference Between Business Intelligence and Business Analytics?

Business Intelligence: Business intelligence is focused on descriptive analytics. It uses historical and present data to determine what has happened and what is happening.

Business Analytics: Business Analytics is a superset of Business Intelligence, and is focused on predictive analytics. It uses predictive models and machine learning algorithms to determine what will happen.

Why Does Business Intelligence Software Matter for Your Company?

  • Better decision: In a data-driven world, businesses can reap more benefits with BI software.  It helps to dig deeper into the business process and derive valuable insights from it. They can use these insights for making crucial business decisions.
  • Compare data with competitors:  Organizations, big or small,  can use a BI tool for conducting customer surveys and collecting data about how customers feel about the competitor’s product or what are their expectations from the product.  These insights can be used in the future to get a competitive advantage.   
  • Track performance:  BI software with a detailed report on business activities can help the organization track its business performance.  
  • Executive Scorecards and Dashboards: The top business intelligence tools provide business executives with detailed scorecards and dashboards to track business performance and capture essential business events. 
  • OLAP analysis: The best bi tools with OLAP help businesses to perform data analysis efficiently. It is due to OLAP structure and nature the business analyst can derive quick information from the database. OLAP helps in fast query execution, which means the data are available in a short time for making a rapid decision.
  • Ad hoc reporting: Ad-Hoc reporting is the process of creating reports on the fly.  The best business intelligence companies provide this feature in their tool, and it allows businesses to fetch reports on any particular activity and speed up the decision-making process. Unlike a structured report, ad hoc reporting does not require experts and thus reduces the IT workload.
  • Operational reporting: Operational reporting is a rapidly developing area of business intelligence.  Operational reporting software can either be used as a stand-alone or can be used in combination with BI solutions.  The operational reporting allows businesses to view data of their daily activities in real-time and in multiple ways.
  • Forecasting market trends: Data mining is an integral part of top business intelligence software, and it allows industries to predict the market trend. 
  • Customer relationship: With detailed insights about business activities, the business owner can study customer behavior and purchasing habits. Based on those insights, users can design their customer retention strategy and build better customer relationships.
  • Identify the bottlenecks: The best business intelligence companies could help in identifying the bottlenecks in the business process.  The BI dashboard displays intuitive reports about the business in detail, which makes it easy for business executives to study the obstacles in the system.  He can also determine how frequent and how long the problem persists within the business process.

What Are the Key Categories of Business Intelligence Software?

There are varieties of tools that fall under the BI software category.  

  • Dashboards: Dashboard is an integral component of BI software and is widely used to display important business metrics, track KPIs, and critical data points relevant to an organization. Dashboards enable organizations to make complex data easily understandable and approachable for non-technical users. It is restricted to one –page. Dashboards are elaborate and mostly focused on more narrow aspects of an organization. It can be updated in real-time.
  • Visualizations: Data visualization software enables users to put data in visual form and communicate information efficiently.
  • Reports: Reports are static documents that include data in text and table form, and sometimes it may involve graphs and charts.  It features data that is already cleaned and sorted. Unlike dashboards, the reports are sprawled to multiple pages.
  • Data mining: Data mining is the process of sorting and analyzing a large set of data that helps companies to solve problems and mitigate risks.
  • ETL: The process of ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) plays a significant role in data integration strategies.  It also helps in migrating data between various sources, destinations, and analyzing tools; therefore, it is very important from the point of business intelligence.
  • OLAP: OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing.  It is software that performs multidimensional analysis at high speeds on large volumes of data.
  • Data warehouse: A data warehouse is an analytical database that sits on top of transactional databases for analytic purposes.  The data warehouse selects, organizes, and gathers data for efficient comparison and analysis.
  • Business activities monitoring: Business activity monitoring (BAM) software allows managers and executives to monitor business processes in real-time. The BAM system compiles all the business-related information in one place so that the data can be consulted anytime, anywhere.

What Are the Benefits of Business Intelligence Software?

There are numerous benefits of a business intelligence system, but it largely depends on how organizations want to use it.

  • Faster, relevant, and accurate reporting: BI software pulls in data from various sources into a data warehouse, and then analyzes the data based on user queries, reports, and dashboards. The BI software facilitates real-time reporting and populates accurate data on various business events.
  • Visual analytics: BI tools present data in visual forms that are comprehensive and understandable.
  • Data-driven business decisions:  Business intelligence tools enable users to gather data from various sources and clean up data for better visualization. With quality business data in hand, it becomes easier for the business owner to make a smart decision.
  • Understand customer expectations: The top business intelligence software can help understand customer expectations and deliver better service.  The business owner can anticipate customer needs by analyzing the purchasing pattern and customer behavior.
  • Identifying marketing trends:  With the help of quality data, businesses can establish a new strategy that complements the market trend. For instance, the marketing team and sales team can build their future strategy based on the reports populated by the BI tool.
  • Streamline Operations: By having exact information or data, the organization can identify the error within the business operations and can take steps that can streamline the processes.
  • Reduce financial loss: Business often incurs financial loss due to wrong decisions, but with BI software, the business owner can have better insight into the data, which allows them to make the right decision and take calculated risks.
  • Increased organizational efficiency: The BI tools collect data from all relevant sources, which helps the organization to unlock the treasure in the business data.  It also saves time for business owners and managers on accumulating data with the traditional method.
  • Real-time updates: Some BI software provides a customized alerts option.  The users can set automated alerts to send emails to management or departments related to it. 

While the above-mentioned benefits of the business intelligence system may convince organizations to buy business intelligence tools, there are a few things to consider before boarding it. Follow the below section for the same.

Things to Consider Before Buying a Business Intelligence Software

  • Evaluate Software Need: Evaluate the software capacity before finalizing the BI software. The user must see whether the software fulfills the business requirement and find out whether the software can help to solve the problem.   
  • Support multiple data sources:  The top business intelligence software should support multiple data sources; since the modern business operates on a wide scale, the data may be scattered on multiple platforms and databases. It should be able to fetch data from anywhere and in any format.
  • BI Software Costs: Analyze the BI software costs from all angles like setup cost, technical support, and training, hiring experts, hidden charges, and software upgrades.
  • Integration: While performing business intelligence tools comparison, the business owner must verify the integration capabilities of the business intelligence tools.
  • Usability: Some business intelligence software requires an instruction or training program for its successful transition into companies’ infrastructure.  If the software does not gel well with the current working system or requires additional training, then it needs to get configured.
  • Support Collaboration Tools: The BI software must support collaboration features like the ability to share insights, share reports, comments, and collect feedback.
  • Customization: Customization is an important factor for BI software, and it should allow business owners to configure the software as per their needs. The best BI vendors generally provide customization options to their software users.
  • Role-based access: The BI software could be valuable assets for decision-makers, and there are many people in the organization that may need access to the BI software.  The BI software should have features to control the software access.
  • Real-time BI: Most of the business executives and stakeholders are keen on real-time information. Real-time BI software enables users to stay abreast of the competitor’s activities and market trends.
  • Responsive and user-friendly interface: If the user interface is complex, the money invested after BI software could be a complete waste.  The user interface of the BI software should be easy to comprehend and must support all devices. 
  • Deployment options:  The BI software should allow users to choose the deployment option. The users with dedicated IT teams may prefer on-premise software deployment, but with rising cloud technology trends, the user can switch to cloud infrastructure.   
  • Scalability: The BI software should be scalable, and it should easily adjust itself to the growing needs of the business.  It is always recommended that when a business executive or manager is scrutinizing the business intelligence software list, they should always consider scalability.
  • Technical support: Not all business intelligence software requires technical support, but if the BI software deployment is done for a large enterprise, then it may need technical support. Technical glitch is quite common in large enterprises dealing with a huge amount of data, so the best bi companies must deliver robust technical support.
  • Powerful reporting capabilities: The goal of BI software is to produce sensible reports that give a clear understanding of business activities.  The BI software lacking in powerful reporting features may fail to communicate the business insights to decision-makers. 

These factors can help business executives to select the top business intelligence tools; however, they can also shortlist the tool by comparing the features, deployment options, costs, and other factors.

Time-Saving Features of Business Intelligence Software

  • Ad-Hoc reports
  • Advanced security
  • Executive dashboard
  • Mobile access
  • Ranking report (Pivot tables)
  • Built-in ETL
  • White labeling
  • Intelligent alerts
  • Multi-tenant security
  • Geospatial mapping
  • What-if analysis
  • Seamless data and application importing
  • Collaboration tools
  • Predictive models

Emerging Trends in Business Intelligence Software

  • Voice-activated assistants:  Voice-enabled business intelligence makes it easier to collect insights, reports, and dashboards.  It has created a curiosity among BI experts about transcribing voice assistant data into an intelligent report. It can reinvent the data-analysis process by eliminating the traditional approach and reducing the time to generate business insights.    
  • Data discovery:  With data discovery, it is easy to find specific patterns and trends in a data-sets. With the advanced data visualization tools interlaced with features like heatmaps, geographical maps, and pivot tables, the data discovery becomes even more informative.  There is an evolving trend in data discovery referred to as “smart discovery” or “Augmented intelligence.”  It facilitates the AI capabilities to find the trend and relation in data, which helps to speed up the decision-making process. 
  • AI and NLP: It is fascinating that computers/ voice assistants have started decoding human language and responding to queries with high accuracy.  It is because of AI and NLP.  NLP is one of the most intriguing aspects of artificial intelligence, and it has a wide scope in Business Intelligence.  The NLP technology enables even a non-techie executive to analyze data without any support from any IT experts.
  • Data governance: Data governance defines the process of maintaining regulatory compliances and policies for managing data assets across the organization. In the coming years, data governance would become the top priority for all types of organizations. The data governance will ensure that data is acquired from the approved sources, processed for the defined purpose, shared among authorized personnel, and discarded as per the norm.   
  • Collaborative business intelligence: Collaborative BI is about bringing subject matter experts and stakeholders together to make better decisions.  By merging BI software with collaboration tools, including web 2.0 and social media, the business team can share their view or responses online. By documenting those communications, it would be easier for an organization to make a faster decision. In the future, the collaborative business intelligence tool will envelop more users and communication platforms.
  • Self-service BI interfaces: Self-service BI interface is rapidly getting its hold in business intelligence solutions. Today, the best business intelligence companies have introduced the self-service version, and in the future, there will be more efforts to make BI software completely self-reliant.    
  • Predictive analytics: Most of the BI software uses historical and real-time data to identify trends and answer questions related to what has happened and does not tell why something happened. With predictive analytics, BI tools can predict future outcomes. Generally, the BI tools do not always provide predictive analytics functionality, but in the coming days, they would be capable of predicting well in advance.
  • Better, faster, and cheaper: The amalgamation of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data with the top business intelligence tools is going to become better, faster, and cheaper.  By implementing cloud computing, users can reduce infrastructure costs as well as improve data storage efficiency. On the other hand, artificial intelligence and the neural network will ensure the data fetching process, and data visualization process gets quicker and easier.

In a few years, several related advanced technologies would allow users to truly discover the benefits of a business intelligence system.

How to Implement BI Software Successfully?

Step 1) Identify Requirements: The best BI software vendors today have the flexibility to customize their offerings to the users. But, still,  prospective buyers should figure out the existing business requirements and match their requirements with the business intelligence tools list.   

Step 2) Make Raw Data Available: Make sure all the raw data are available, and define the strategy on how to import raw data into the BI software.

Step 3) Shortlist BI Vendors: Once the organization has completed all the basic BI software implementation processes, they can shortlist the business intelligence tools and hire the best BI solution provider. The software buyer should compare the business intelligence software list on parameters like customer support, secure integration, database support, training programs, etc.

Step 4) Implement software and team member's training: The next step is to implement top business intelligence tools into the business infrastructure and see whether the team members require any training for it.

Step 5) Monitor the software performance:  The business executives or managers should monitor the performance of the software. They need to see whether the software behaves as expected and if not, then does it allow them to make some changes to measure particular performance metrics.

What Is the Average Cost of Business Intelligence Software?

The business intelligence software list is very broad and versatile in its offerings. The price may vary based on the software capabilities and features. The price of the software could be as low as $3/month or may raise to $1000/month or even more. 

Business Intelligence Tools For Start-ups or Beginners:  The startups or budding entrepreneurs working with minimum risks and budget can opt for low-cost software. Few options for such business intelligence solutions are Lumenore which comes with a starting price of $2.49/month, BusinessQ with a starting price of €2.0/month. Both tools offer a free trial.

Business Intelligence Tools for Mid-Size and Large Enterprises: For organizations that want to churn out in-depth information from the most unstructured data source, then mid-size and large enterprise business intelligence tools are highly recommended.  Mid-range tools like Zoho Analytics with a starting price of $23/month and Redash with $49/month are good alternatives. Both the business intelligence solution providers offer a free trial, and users can upgrade their plans as they grow with their business and data volumes.  Some best BI tools that fall in the same category include DataHero, flex.bi, and DyntellBi.  In case the business owners are more inclined towards advanced features like inspecting customers' behavior or discovering data patterns with a machine learning algorithm, a tool like Kubit with a basic price of $999/month is a perfect solution. The price range may exceed $7999/month as per the user’s requirements  The other premium range business intelligence solution providers include Trevor.io with a starting price of $270/month, whose price may exceed depending on the types of database (Snowflake, Redshift, MySQL) and data rows to export. The tool also provides a free trial version. The best BI tools that offer similar services include SharePoint Vitals, Planhat, and illuminis. The business intelligence tools list can go endless, and it all boils down to business priorities.

There are business owners that see plenty of opportunity in business intelligence tools and put their efforts into developing new features through free and open source business intelligence software. Here is the list of some best free and open source business intelligence software that can further enhance the organization's efficiency with its exceptional features.

Why Refer to Goodfirms' List of Best Business Intelligence Software?

GoodFirms is a prominent review and rating platform for IT solutions. It has been listing various software products from different sectors to help consumers choose the right software for their organization and fine-tune the business processes.  With more than 60000 services and software companies listed on the platform, it makes it easy for consumers to compare software on various parameters and select the software that fits into their budget and requirements.

Conclusion

The companies realizing the role of data in accelerating business growth are actively adopting data intelligence technology and software in their infrastructure.  It helps them to tackle complex problems by making smart decisions. Since there are tons of business intelligence software available in the market, it is challenging to pick the best Business Intelligence Software. GoodFirms is here to help you with this task. Do not miss to check the list of best business intelligence software to empower your business with the most insightful data.

Comparison of Business Intelligence (BI) Software: Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Looker, Qlik Sense and Zoho Analytics

FeatureMicrosoft Power BITableauLookerQlik SenseZoho Analytics
Company BackgroundDeveloped by Microsoft, offering a suite of business productivity tools, including Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform.Developed by Tableau Software, acquired by Salesforce, known for its data visualization and analytics software solutions.Developed by Looker Data Sciences, acquired by Google Cloud, providing a cloud-native BI and analytics platform.Developed by Qlik, known for its data discovery and visualization software, offering a range of analytics solutions.Developed by Zoho Corporation, offering a suite of cloud-based business software solutions, including Zoho Analytics for BI and analytics.
Target AudienceBusinesses of all sizes, particularly Microsoft usersBusinesses of all sizesMid-sized and large enterprisesBusinesses of all sizesSmall and medium businesses
PricingFreemium, paid plans start at $9.99/month per userPaid plans start at $10/month per userCustom quote, typically high costPaid plans start at €30/month per userFreemium, paid plans start at $29/month
Ease of UseUser-friendly for Microsoft users, learning curve for othersModerately complex learning curve for beginnersComplex requires technical expertiseUser-friendly, intuitive interfaceUser-friendly, drag-and-drop interface
FeaturesData visualization, self-service analytics, mobile access, strong integration with Microsoft productsPowerful data visualization, advanced analytics, and storytelling featuresData exploration, data modeling, embedded analytics, governed self-serviceAssociative engine, in-memory analytics, real-time data explorationBasic to advanced reporting, dashboards, self-service analytics, mobile access
StrengthsAffordable, strong Microsoft integration, user-friendly for existing usersRenowned for powerful visualization and storytelling, flexible deployment optionsScalable, secure, governed self-service analytics, advanced capabilitiesUser-friendly, in-memory analytics, real-time data explorationAffordable, good for basic reporting and self-service analytics
WeaknessesLimited data source connectivity compared to some optionsIt can be complex for beginners, with higher cost for advanced featuresHigh cost, complex, requires significant technical expertiseLimited customization compared to some optionsFeatures not as comprehensive as enterprise-grade BI tools
Best forBusinesses using Microsoft products seeking an affordable and user-friendly optionBusinesses prioritizing data visualization and storytelling with diverse data sourcesLarge enterprises requiring advanced analytics, data governance, and scalabilityBusinesses seeking a user-friendly and in-memory analytics platformSmall and medium businesses needing basic reporting and self-service analytics
Deployment OptionsOffers cloud-based deployment through Microsoft Azure, with desktop and mobile apps for accessing reports and dashboards, as well as on-premises deployment options for businesses requiring data sovereignty and control.Offers cloud-based deployment through Tableau Server or Tableau Online, with desktop and mobile apps for accessing dashboards and reports and on-premises deployment options for businesses with specific requirements.It offers cloud-based deployment through the Google Cloud Platform, with web-based access to reports and dashboards and on-premises deployment options for businesses with data privacy and compliance needs.Offers cloud-based deployment through Qlik Cloud Services or Qlik Sense Enterprise, with web and mobile apps for accessing analytics and on-premises deployment options for businesses with specific requirements.Offers cloud-based deployment through Zoho Cloud, with web-based access to reports and dashboards and on-premises deployment options for businesses requiring data control and compliance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Business Intelligence Platform?

A business intelligence platform is a software application broadly used by businesses to assemble, sort, and analyze actionable data and convert them into meaningful insights to make intelligent business decisions.

Who is the best-rated business intelligence software on GoodFirms?

We have listed 345+ best business intelligence tools on our platform based on reviews & ratings. Here are the top business intelligence tools, including:

Who are the free business intelligence (bi) tools on GoodFirms?

The free business intelligence (BI) tools on GoodFirms, based on verified client reviews and ratings, include:

Who are the open source BI tools on GoodFirms?

The open-source BI tools on GoodFirms, based on verified client reviews and ratings, include:

Who are the cloud-based BI tools on GoodFirms?

The cloud-based BI tools on GoodFirms, based on verified client reviews and ratings, include:

Who is the best dashboard business intelligence software on GoodFirms?

The best dashboard business intelligence software on GoodFirms, based on verified client reviews and ratings, includes:

Who are the best bi tools for data visualization on GoodFirms?

The best BI tools for data visualization on GoodFirms, based on verified client reviews and ratings, include:

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