Business intelligence tools, what you need to know
Business intelligence is an essential asset for businesses in every industry. It is a pillar that gives organisations the ability to extract, analyse and glean valuable insight from data. In doing so, it highlights areas of opportunities, but also may tackle internal challenges and bring efficiencies. Here we explore what business intelligence tools are and why they are essential for the success of your company.
What are business intelligence tools?
Business intelligence tools are often referred to as BI tools. They are a set of solutions that aim at extracting, transforming and presenting data to support business analysis. They are instrumental to identify trends, analyse state of play and even predict growth. As such, BI tools play a crucial role in strategic decision making. They also may lead to the optimisation of operations, better purchasing and much more. To give more perspective on how BI tools work, here are the core capabilities of those solutions:
Data integration capabilities
The first steps when it comes to data are to collect it, consolidate it from different sources and store it in a usable format. This process is referred to as data integration, and it may be more or less complex depending on the volume of the data involved, and the sources it is extracted from.
Data cleansing and data transformation capabilities
Data cleansing and transformation are essential steps to be able to use the content. Business intelligence tools play an essential role in improving the quality and usability of data.
Data visualisation capabilities
Data visualisation is the final output of business intelligence tools. It gives meaning to the data by giving it a visual form that is easy to understand for the recipient. From large datasets it is possible to extract meaningful KPIs or insight that can facilitate decision making. This final output is also referred to as reporting, which is the final presentation of the data in a form of a dashboard or a report that can be delivered to stakeholders.
Related: What is data literacy and how it can benefit employees
Why BI tools are essential for your toolkit?
Harnessing the potential of data is often synonymous with driving business success. This may seem like an exaggeration, but the use of BI tools is pivotal and brings the following benefits:
Provides a single source of truth with centralised data
Data centralisation is key to data analysis. With a BI tool in place, you can extract and consolidate data from different sources. By doing so, you increase the accuracy of the data and create a single source of truth.
Allows trend extraction and analysis
Analysing historical data and current data allows you to make comparisons and understand what, if anything, is changing. With the visualisation of past data versus actual data, you can extract trends and patterns that help gain an understanding of the state of play in terms of customer behaviours, business strategies or industry dynamics.
Enables data-driven decision-making
Strong decision-making is always supported by accurate meaningful data. Data-driven decision making is enabled by the use of business intelligence tools. It is a key asset for organisations as it allows them to optimise their operations, develop their marketing strategies, identify growth opportunities and mitigate risks amongst other benefits.
Related: What is a decision matrix? Definitions and examples
Boost efficiency and productivity
BI tools allow for the automation of final output. Reporting is automatically pushed to users in a visual format. With the solution, manual handling of the data is reduced, which translates into significant efficiency gains and increased productivity.
Related: How to measure productivity in employees
Accelerate issue resolution
BI tools play a role in identifying issues in a company. By identifying these challenges and bottlenecks early in the process, the business is able to address the issue rapidly and to find a resolution.
Other benefits of BI tools
There are many more benefits to the use of business intelligence solutions. BI tools positively impact all aspects of the organisation. This holistic impact leads to fast, informed, smart accomplishment of business goals. Below are a few examples:
Facilitates prediction and forecasting
The combination of past and present internal data with market trends aids in predictive analysis. Forecasting plays a big part in decision-making, as it allows users to generate insight on what may happen based on certain criteria. It may lead to the anticipation of certain disruptions or the development of new solutions that will make the business more competitive.
Reduces costs
The key to BI tools is that they automate and streamline data processes end-to-end. This means, the analysis, cleansing and aggregation of data are automatically processed. But BI tools go beyond, they can analyse customer behaviours and forecast sales, among other benefits. The holistic insight provided by BI tools means that businesses can work more effectively, and that people can focus on decision-making, thus saving time and reducing costs.
Leads to self-sufficiency
Through automation and visualisation, BI tools make data accessible to the entire company. Analytical expertise or data crunching qualifications are no longer required for employees to be able to use the data.
Four Business intelligence tools you need to know about
There are many BI tools available out there. Identifying which one is best for your organisation will depend on your internal needs. To get you started, we have extracted some information on the top four business intelligence tools.
Tableau
Tableau is well-known in the BI world. This solution is highly user-friendly and provides visual analytics. The system has a drag-and-drop function that makes it easy for users to create their own desired visualisation. There are many data sources supported by the tool with, for example, Microsoft Excel, Box, PDF files and Google Analytics.
Power BI by Microsoft
Power BI by Microsoft is also at the top of the list when it comes to business intelligence solutions. This software is downloadable, and the analysis can be conducted on the cloud or on the server. This solution can synchronise data from sources like Facebook, Oracle and many more. The software also has some artificial intelligence capabilities that can come in handy.
QlikSense
QlikSense supports a wide range of analytics. It encourages a self-service approach and has a user-friendly interface. This solution is ideal for touchscreens and incorporates artificial intelligence on a high-performance cloud platform. With the functionalities, users can ask questions and discover actionable insights.
Sisense
The key strength of Sisense is its simplicity and its fast data processing combined. Also, this solution is fully customisable, and users can share reports and dashboards easily.
As stated, there are many more BI tools to consider, among which we can find Zoho Analytics, Oracle BI, SAS Visual Analytics, Domo, Yellowfin BI, HubSpot, SAP Business Objects, Clear Analytics, Board, MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos Analytics, Tibco Spotfire, BIRT, Google Data Studio and Looker. All have different strengths and are powerful solutions that provide user-friendly and lightweight dashboard builders for data visualisation. Your choice will depend on your business’ needs and how you aim at using the data available to you.
Please note that none of the companies, institutions or organisations mentioned in this article are affiliated with Indeed.
