7 Useful Pieces of BI Software

Oscar WaterworthSenior Editor
Oscar is a writer and a senior editor over at Bizzmarkblog.com. He enjoys reading and writing about marketing, technology, and business.
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A list of useful business intelligence software.
The term “business intelligence” was first used in the late 1950's, and was first used to denote a set of technologies called decision support systems. Since then, the term has grown and is now linked to the rise of “big data”. Business intelligence helps businesses make better decisions by tracking and compiling market, human, and environmental data and to transform them into meaningful pieces of information.
  
Business intelligence refers to various applications and covers a wide range of technologies. By using them, businesses can gain a competitive edge by improving their decisions and basing them on insightful and relevant information. Without the BI software to make this job easier, businesses could easily get lost in the huge pile of data that needs to be processed. Everybody deals with data processing in the Information Age, and you need to uncover all the useful information the data provides. 

How does a BI software function?

BI software uses one central database (data warehouse) to store all the disparate compiled data. Other applications can quickly access them by using the extract-transform-load method. Simpler versions of data warehouses are called data marts, which focus on specific subsets of data and are useful to smaller enterprises. 

Data comes in 3 main forms: unstructured (the most common), semi-structured, and structured. The data is then analyzed through: data mining (uncovering inconsistencies and patterns in large sets of data through automated and semi-automated analyses), predictive analysis (forecasting future events based on historical and current data by drawing connections between data sets), and text analytics (combining unstructured data sets to find patterns within large sets of textual data). 

The reasons for investing in business intelligence are numerous. Business intelligence software are simplified and accessible and those who use analytics are five times more likely to make faster decisions, while the software will allow your business to be more dexterous. Without further ado, these are some of the best BI software on the market that can help you to improve the productivity of your business. 


MicroStrategy


MicroStrategy runs against data stored in data warehouses, operational databases, and ERP systems (e.g. SAP and Oracle):
 
  • Save data on-site or in the cloud via Amazon Web Services;
  • Users may operate it on their desktop computers or via mobile app;
  • There is a free 30-day enterprise evaluation edition which allows you to test the software.

The one primary goal of MicroStrategy BI is helping organisations find informed and timely answers to their questions by leveraging data. Easy-to-understand reports, which are created by powerful dashboards and data analytics, are designed to monitor trends, boost cost-efficiency, improve productivity, fortify client relationships, and forecast new opportunities.


Panorama Necto


  •  Accessible to anyone in your organisation due to its visual approach and straightforwardness;
  • Provides dynamic reports on changes and trends through interactive infographics;
  • Leverages and integrates social decision making and power of automated intelligence.

Its visual interface provides its users with a completely customised, interactive and intuitive analytics output in an infographic format, and is the first solution of its kind. Panorama’s AIDEN (Automated Intelligence Driving Engine) automatically provides each user with relevant data and insights by learning user’s unique behaviour. 


Adaptive Suite


  •  No tech know-how or programming is required;
  • The Adaptive Suite integrates four CPM and BI solutions: Adaptive Discovery, Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Reporting, and Adaptive Consolidation;
  • The tool has flexible drill-down capabilities within and across multi-dimensional and multi-source data.

The only Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions suite that allows one to build from the “cloud up” is the Adaptive Suite. Adaptive Insights is very powerful, integrating web and MS Office reporting, collaboration, and a wide variety of other features that are made accessible via the mobile or web app.


SAS Business Intelligence 


  •  The need for IT support and coding is eliminated by auto-charting;
  • Enterprise and business IT solutions create centralised metadata, scalability, and governance
  • ​Big data and related insights are easily understood thanks to data visualisation.
 
SAS business intelligence is a self-serving tool that helps businesses with inputting the right information, under the right circumstances, at the right time, and to the right people. The tool provides real-time analytics throughout your whole organisation network, allowing any decision-maker or collaborator to monitor and analyse the metrics required for making effective and informed decisions.


Jaspersoft


  •  Available in the cloud or on-premise;
  • Available to anyone thanks to its scaled architecture and can be integrated into a mobile device or app;
  • Use a web-scalable platform to embed anywhere or download for your device.

Jaspersoft is another business intelligence self-service tool, which means that it generates powerful data insights with little IT intervention. It enables an organisation to make faster decisions by providing them timely and actionable data inside business processes and apps through an analytics platform and embeddable BI reporting. 


InduSoft Web Studio


  • Cloud-based data accessible from mobile devices or desktop;
  • Easily integrated into “back-office” systems and ERP via built-in relational database connectivity;
  • More than 200 drivers, as well as TCP-IP, OPC (client and server), and PLC are supported by a flexible platform.

Indusoft Web Studio’s supercharged tools to develop various business intelligence solutions take automation to the next level. Its users are enabled to develop customised solutions that can be deployed across MS-supported platforms (Mobile, Windows CE, Server editions or XP Embedded) due to a combination of InduSoft’s Microsoft platform and graphic and design tools. 


Microsoft SharePoint


  •  Easily accessible data stored in the cloud;
  • SharePoint experience enhances by many add-on apps to creating custom solutions;
  • Easily integrates with Yammer, Microsoft Dynamic solutions, and similar tools.

This business intelligence software is among the most common and popular choices for businesses around the globe. Microsoft SharePoint is a management and analytics solution that is an especially great pick for organisations that already use an SQL Server for storing their information. The tool enables collaboration, makes it easy to share, analyse, and sync company data, and provides security for data labelled as ‘sensitive’.
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Oscar WaterworthSenior Editor
Oscar is a writer and a senior editor over at Bizzmarkblog.com. He enjoys reading and writing about marketing, technology, and business.

Comments (1)

Oscar WaterworthSenior Editor

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Commented:
I have a habit of writing in Google Docs. I will make sure not to copy from it again.

Thanks for the feedback!

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