What Is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to the tools, technologies, applications, and practices used to
collect, integrate, analyze, and present an organization’s raw data in order to create insightful
and actionable business information. BI as a discipline and as a technology-driven process is
made up of several related activities, including:

 Data mining - is the process of sorting through large data sets to identify patterns and
establish relationships to solve problems through data analysis. 
 Online analytical processing - is a computing method that enables users to easily and
selectively extract and query data in order to analyze it from different points of view.
 Querying - is a request for data or information from a database table or combination of
tables. 
 Reporting - is a concise summary distilled from a larger set of data intended for a specific
audience. 

What is the purpose of business intelligence in a business?

The purpose of business

intelligence in a business is to
help corporate executives,
business managers, and
other operational
workers make better and
more informed business decisions. Companies also use business intelligence to cut costs,
identify new business opportunities, and spot inefficient business processes.
How is business intelligence used?
Business intelligence has as positive a impact on an organization's people as it does on
performance, projects, and decisions. Business Intelligence is used to turn data into
actionable information for leadership, management, organization and decision making.
The following are some of the ways organizations are learning to use business
intelligence:

 Analysing customer behaviours, buying patterns and sales trends

 Measuring, tracking and predicting sales and financial performance
 Budgeting and financial planning and forecasting
 Tracking the performance of marketing campaigns
 Optimising processes and operational performance

 Improving delivery and supply chain effectiveness

 Web and e-commerce data analytics
 Customer relationship management
 Risk analysis
 Strategic value driver analysis

How do I know when to use business intelligence for my business?

All organizations will benefit from business intelligence, but here are some clear
indicators that you should look into a business intelligence technology for your business:

 The need to integrate data from multiple business applications or data sources
 Lack of visibility into the company’s operations, events, news, finances, and other
areas
 The need to access relevant business data quickly and efficiently
 Increasing volume of users requiring and accessing information and more end-
users requiring analytical capabilities

 Rapid company growth or a recent or pending merger/acquisition

 Introduction of new products
 Upgrades within the IT environment.

How Does Software Tools Optimize Business

Intelligence?
Business Intelligence software systems provide historical, current, and predictive
views of business operations, most often using data that has been gathered into a
data warehouse or a data mart and occasionally working from operational data.
Software elements support reporting, interactive “slice-and-dice” pivot-table
analyses, visualization, and statistical data mining. Applications tackle sales,
production, financial, and many other sources of business data for purposes that
include business performance management. Information is often gathered about other
companies in the same industry which is known as benchmarking.

What Are Examples of Business Intelligence

Software Solutions?

1. Sisense

Sisense is a business intelligence platform that lets users join, analyze, and picture
out information they require to make better and more intelligent business decisions
and craft out workable plans and strategies.
Sisense currently occupies one of the highest spots on our list of top 10 business
intelligence apps. After a thorough analysis of its features, our software review
experts concluded that this business intelligence solution gives you one of the easiest
ways to create insights and business value from complex data. You can read
their detailed review of Sisense, discussing its features, pricing and user experience
at length.

Sisense won our Best BI

Software of 2018 Award

Our score 

9.7

User satisfaction 

99%
The vendor also offers a great free demo plan that lets you try out all the key
features first. You can easily sign up for Sisense free demo here.

With Sisense, users can unify all the data they ever need and want into visually
appealing dashboards via a drag and drop user interface. Sisense basically allows users
to turn data into highly valuable insights and then share them with colleagues,
business partners, and clients via interactive dashboards.
Sisense is the leading business intelligence software for many companies, ranging
from startups and developing enterprises to Fortune 500 giants including eBay, Sony,
ESPN, Comcast, and NASA.

2. Looker
Looker is a data platform with insights for every department. It’s a data-discovery app
that provides an intuitive approach to data exploration. It offers a web-based
interface that business users can utilize to tap into the expertise of their data
analytics team.
They can build and share reports on the fly, so other functional groups can benefit
from the questions they’re asking and the knowledge they’ve created. Thus, Looker
can help all companies use data to drive their business decisions and activities in the
right direction.
With a little bit of SQL knowledge, you won’t have any issues making Looker work for
you or building your own analytic modules. You can design visualizations with a single
code, as complexity depends only on how far you intend to go to refine your
experience.
Looker’s ML code is there to help you produce and optimize your queries, which is
particularly handy as most BI systems expect you to be an expert in the area.
The vendor offers a free demo where you can examine all the crucial features of the
software. You can easily request Looker demo here.

3. Datapine
Datapine gives you BI and data visualization to help you makes sense of your
organization’s data. With its capabilities, you’ll be able to unravel actionable so you
can make smart business decisions, craft and implement effective strategies, and
realize corporate goals in the most efficient manner.

The software offers limitless dashboards, intuitive drag and drop interface, and a
large selection of charts to help you dig deep into your data and visualize it.
Datapine’s centralized data management allows you to connect every source of data
in your company, whether internal and external, and consolidate them in one
location.

Having a single data warehouse makes it easy for the software to process and analyze
trends and patterns and visualize results for specific data. Its modern and responsive
dashboards will show you insights and information you need to guide you in business
decisions and next-step actions.

Datapine integrates with nearly two dozen third-party apps and services including
CRM, online storage, web services, analytics platforms, and SQL servers. You have the
option to use it on-cloud or on-premise. You can take it for a spin. Just sign up for a
Datapine free trial here.

4. Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is the data analytics app in the Zoho software family. It was formerly
known as Zoho Reports which was re-engineered into a more robust cloud-hosted
platform which comes complete with online reporting, drill down analytics, and self-
service business intelligence. The software is designed to process big data, track KPIs,
identify trends, and discover insights.

Zoho Analytics provides tools and capabilities to give you a complete picture of your
business’ health and performance across the various units in your organizations. It is
able to consolidate data coming from different sources and give you reports through
dashboards and visualizations. The software comes with a smart assistant named Zia
which harnesses AI natural language processing to give you answers through reports
and KPI widgets in response to your questions.

The BI solution integrates with most other Zoho apps as well as with dozens of
external software and services. Although primarily a cloud-based platform, you also
get the option to have Zoho Analytics deployed locally on your computer. You
can sign up for a Zoho Analytics free trial here if you want to take the software for
a test drive.

5. Yellowfin
Yellowfin is a BI and analytics software built to speed up the process of providing you
actionable insights and data-driven forecasts on your business’ performance. The
software offers three main tools – Assisted Insights for automatically giving you’re the
“why”; Yellowfin Signals that instantly notifies you if changes happen; and Yellowfin
Stories which provides narrative and context that you can share. The BI solution helps
you analyze data and discover actionable information for better understanding of your
organization’s processes and performance.

The integrated analytics platform specializes in giving you detailed explanations on

why you got the results after its analysis of your data. In doing so, you get a clearer
picture of your company’s situation and makes it easier to come up with intelligent
business decisions. Also among Yellowfin’s offerings are collaboration features,
automated reporting, and web-based ETL and visual-data preparation tools for
accelerated data analysis.

Yellowfin can integrate with your other apps and can report on virtually any data
source regardless if you deploy it on-premise or in the cloud. You can sign up for a
Yellowfin free trial here if you want to test it for yourself.

6. AnswerDock
AnswerDock goes beyond basic analytics by utilizing natural language programming
and artificial intelligence to instantly give you answers to your business questions. All
you have to do is type your query, just like when you’re doing a web search, and the
system will automatically run its powerful data mining algorithms and search-based
analytics to give you answers in easily understandable visual forms like charts, graphs,
and tables.

In contrast to conventional analytics tools, the cloud-hosted solution delivers intuitive

and comprehensive tools and capabilities such as data governance, insights discovery,
automated data indexing, and automatic chart selection. It is able to combine data
from multiple sources whether internal or external to give you an integrated view of
your organization and the business environment. Get hands-on with this software.
Just sign up for an AnswerDock free trial here.

7. Hotjar
Hotjar is a cloud-hosted analysis and feedback solution designed to give you a deeper
understanding into the behavior of your users, visitors, and customers. Its purpose is
to give you total visibility on user interaction and engagement so you can leverage
their experiences to increase conversion rates. Two primary tools are offered –
analysis and feedback. The first lets you observe and gauge user behavior while the
seconds allows you to see the actual user activity on your site. Other tools and
features included in the software are form analytics, heatmaps, visitor recording, and
conversion funnels.

Enabling you to further feel the pulse of your audience are tools designed to help you
listen to what your users say. You can roll out surveys, polls, surveys, user testers,
and incoming feedback. There are also advanced feedback tools settings for more
control over your feedback widgets. Hotjar integrates with over a dozen third-party
apps and supports up to 40 languages.

8. ReportPlus
ReportPlus is data visualization software built for enterprises and can be deployed
on-premise or via a private cloud. This is a self-service business intelligence software
designed with accessibility and ease of use, allowing users to create, edit, and share
their dashboards within a few clicks without IT assistance. Its drag-and-drop
functionality and fuss-free touch-enabled swiping to switch among a wide selection of
visualization types make it easy to create vivid visualizations on any device. On-the-
go accessibility ensures that even field employees are equipped with up to date and
real-time information at all times.

ReportPlus can be utilized by various types of industries. This includes businesses

under finance, insurance, marketing, manufacturing, operations, retail, and sales.
Real-time data can be accessed and connected through integrations with various
third-party applications such as Google Drive, Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft Excel,
SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics, and much
more.

9. QlikView
QlickView lets you discover rich insights by allowing you to build your own guided
analytics apps without the need for IT or programming skills. This way you get a
shorter time to value and the ability to respond quickly to changing business
requirements. You’ll be able to create customizable guided analysis paths for
discovering business-driven data as well as control analytic experience for helping
employees make intelligent decisions. QlikView offers an Associative Data Indexing
Engine to unravel patterns and hidden trends which can be used as a guide for making
quality business decisions and proper next actions.

QlikView provides custom or default data connectors and open database connectivity.
It can integrate with all software ecosystems, eliminating the need to use various
data processing systems. You can also choose to deploy the software in the cloud, on
your local computers, or both. Likewise, it offers collaborative tools for sharing data
and insights with your team or with stakeholders.

10. Tableau
Tableau is a desktop BI system intended to help you visualize and understand your
company data. Instead of a chart builder, it gives you a live visual analytics tool for
unlimited data exploration. Together with interactive dashboards, you can identify
visual patterns fast, discover hidden insights quickly, and reveal everyday
opportunities that you can take advantage to improve decision making and company

performance. The software is able to connect to multiple data sources – spreadsheet,

SQL database, cloud apps like Salesforce, on-premise reports – regardless of data size.

You can display and publish results with dashboards and share them with anyone. If
you’re already using Tableau Online or Tableau Server, data can flow and move
seamlessly from one platform to another. This facilitates self-service analytics from
whatever device, letting you get instant answers for your business questions