The current trend of digitalization is unstoppable, and huge productivity is hidden behind the massive data, business intelligence tools provide a perfect one-stop solution. At present, companies of all sizes are facing huge challenges in the process of conducting business processes. The emergence of BI makes decision-making more efficient and scientific.

Here, we will explain what a BI tool is, discuss what its value is, and provide a list of the top 12 BI tools on the market.

BI (Business Intelligence) tools are a class of software tools used to help companies better understand their data, assets, and operations. Based on opening up enterprise data islands and realizing data integration and unified management, BI uses data warehouse, data visualization, and analysis technology to transform specific data into information and knowledge to meet the needs of different groups of people in the enterprise for data query, analysis, and mining, providing data basis and decision support.

Integration of Information Islands - Through the integration capability of BI, businesses can solve the problem of information silos by consolidating data scattered across different systems, departments, and data sources onto a unified platform. This integration process not only simplifies the steps involved in data acquisition but also ensures data accuracy and consistency. Decision-makers can utilize this holistic data view to comprehensively analyze information from various aspects, enabling a better understanding of the company's operational status and market trends.

Improving Business Decision-making - Business Intelligence (BI) can transform data into valuable knowledge, thereby assisting the decision-making process. Through BI, decision-makers can make faster and more accurate decisions and introduce revolutionary management ideas to the enterprise. Decision-makers can utilize the drill-down capabilities provided by BI tools to delve into the underlying reasons behind the data results, going beyond surface-level analysis and uncovering opportunities within them, such as how to accomplish tasks at lower costs, faster speeds, and higher quality. This enables managers to continuously innovate amidst questioning and gain a distinct competitive advantage.

Data Mining Forecasting - Business Intelligence (BI) tools enable the mining of accumulated big data through data visualization and graphical representations, uncovering underlying patterns and trends. This aids businesses in gaining a deeper understanding of the data and revealing hidden patterns and trends for making future predictions. Due to the complexity of algorithms, statistical models, and the abundance of data required, supporting large-scale data processing capabilities, such as parallel algorithms and grid computing, becomes essential. Business Intelligence allows for a long-term analysis of problems and exhibits a forward-thinking perspective.

Assisting Businesses in Risk Alerting - Predicting and assessing risks is extremely crucial. Business Intelligence (BI) provides an effective way for enterprises to timely identify potential risks. Within the BI system, businesses can set thresholds for data alerts. Once the data exceeds the set thresholds, the system notifies administrators through various means, ensuring that the enterprise can control risks and reduce the occurrence of security vulnerabilities. This helps businesses gain real-time insights into the risk landscape, enhance their ability to identify, and manage risks, and thus maintain stable operations.

Improve Work Efficiency - Before the advent of BI tools, employees had to write a large number of complex SQL statements and generate numerous reports to meet business requirements. Decision-makers also faced the challenge of dealing with a massive pile of report data. However, BI has completely changed this situation. BI tools can extract, transform, and load data from multiple sources and automatically perform data analysis and visualization. This makes it easier for businesses to access and analyze data and facilitates the discovery of insights hidden within the data. As a result, the efficiency of the enterprise's work is improved.

Enhance the Competitiveness of Enterprises - By utilizing business intelligence (BI) tools, enterprises can gain an in-depth understanding of their business operations, identify areas for improvement, and explore business growth opportunities. This enables companies to quickly adjust based on market changes and enhance their competitive edge. Enterprises that effectively harness the abundance of data generated through BI tools often stand out from their competitors. BI tools provide essential knowledge and functionalities to efficiently manage business data, thus driving productivity and growth. Making informed strategic decisions is a valuable benefit that organizations across industries can derive from using the right BI software.

FineBI is a modern big data analytics & BI software designed for everyone who needs data analysis. Staff without knowledge of SQL or any programming language can use FineBI to easily establish professional BI dashboards, perform self-service BI data analysis, gain useful insights, and thus drive your business forward. FineBI provides interfaces for commonly used features, making it easier for custom development. And, clients are enabled to reuse customized features via the plugin market.

Key Features:
Multi-source Data Management： FineBI has a powerful data preparation functionality, supporting over 30 different database tables and SQL data sources. It also supports various file data sets such as Excel and txt files, as well as multidimensional databases and procedural data sets. It is suitable for data analysis scenarios with high real-time requirements.

Convenient Data Processing： In FineBI, data processing is also very convenient. Through functions such as filtering and merging calculations in FineBI, data can be processed quickly without writing SQL statements or other codes.

Extensive Range of Data Visualization Tools： Including charts, graphs, tables, and dashboards, which enable users to explore and analyze data from various perspectives. FineBI also has excellent dynamic effects and a powerful interactive experience. Various features can be set according to the needs during use, and can also be self-adjusted and displayed on the mobile terminal and large LED screen.
 

Intelligent Chart Recommendation： FineBI's intelligent chart recommendation can automatically recommend suitable chart types based on current types and numbers of fields, making your data analysis simple and efficient.

Collaborative Analytics： FineBI offers collaborative analytics, allowing teams to work together on the same data set and provide insights to each other. With fine-grained access control, data can be easily shared with different stakeholders securely and efficiently.

DataPine is a business intelligence (BI) software that allows businesses to connect, analyze, and visualize data from multiple sources. It offers advanced features such as predictive analytics, an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, interactive dashboards, and AI-powered insights. It has a long learning curve and users may need some time and training to take full advantage of its features.
Key Features:
Data Connectivity: DataPine provides seamless data connectivity with quick and effortless integration of various data sources within seconds.

Intuitive Drag-and-drop Interface: With a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, effortlessly transform your key performance indicators (KPIs) into professional dashboards without the need for IT assistance or complex coding.

Interactive Dashboard Features: Explore every aspect of your dashboard with a range of interactive features, enabling a thorough data discovery process.

SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is a widely used statistical analysis software. It provides a complete suite of data analysis and management solutions, including data processing, data mining, statistical analysis, predictive modeling, and report generation. SAS is commercial software with relatively high licensing costs, making creating analytic reports less cost-effective for individual users or small businesses.

Key Features:
Scalability: SAS supports processing large-scale data with powerful computational and storage capabilities, making it suitable for complex analytical tasks and large datasets.

Multi-Domain Application: SAS is extensively applied in various industries and domains, including finance, healthcare, marketing, manufacturing, and more, catering to diverse analytical needs.

Advanced Analytics: SAS offers a rich set of advanced analytics features, including regression analysis, clustering, time series analysis, experimental design, and more, enabling users to uncover patterns and trends hidden within data.

Tableau is a subsidiary of the software giant Salesforce. It is positioned as a lightweight data visualization tool. The purpose of the product is to help people view and understand data. Tableau has relatively weak data preprocessing capabilities, and complex data cleaning and transformation tasks may require additional tools.

Key Features:
Real-Time Data Updates: Tableau supports real-time data connection and updates, allowing users to view the latest data and perform instant analysis, keeping them informed about business dynamics.

Powerful Analytical Capabilities: Tableau provides a wide range of analytical capabilities, including clustering analysis, trend analysis, predictive analysis, etc., helping users dig deeper into data and discover hidden patterns and trends.

Interactivity and Sharing: Tableau enables users to interact with data through filters, parameters, and actions to explore data, and it also facilitates easy sharing of analysis results and dashboards with other users.

Power BI is a business intelligence tool developed by Microsoft for data analysis and visualization. It features an intuitive interface, powerful data integration, and processing capabilities, and supports real-time data updates. Its advanced features require a premium license and potential limitations in data processing speed.

Key Features:
Extensible Chart Library： Power BI offers a wide range of charts, dashboards, and reporting options, enabling users to create interactive and dynamic data visualizations based on their needs, as well as generate visually appealing reports for better understanding and communication of data.

Multiple Ways of Display: Power BI provides a variety of ways to browse anytime, anywhere. Team members can see your finished dashboard through a shared link. The RLS function of Power BI supports setting various permissions for management. It also supports mobile use.

Qlik Sense is one of the BI applications offered by Qlik and belongs to the new generation of lightweight BI products. Qlik Sense focuses on rapid development and guided cloud analytics applications and dashboards. It relies on the size of memory for data processing, which puts it at a disadvantage in handling large volumes of complex data scenarios.

Key Features:
Interactive Visualization and Exploratory Analysis: Qlik offers a wide range of visualization options, allowing users to explore and analyze data through an intuitive interface and interactive operations, quickly gaining meaningful insights for their business.

Self-service Querying and Self-service Capabilities: Qlik supports self-service querying and self-service functionality, empowering users to perform data queries, analysis, and report generation without relying on technical teams or programming knowledge, thus improving work efficiency.

Domo is a comprehensive business intelligence software platform that offers a range of features to manage and analyze data. It facilitates data connectivity and provides pre-built and customizable apps from the Domo Appstore for extending data functionality. Domo supports data lakes, warehouses, ETL tools, and integration with R or Python for predictive modeling. 

Key Features:
Extensive Pre-built Cloud Connectors: Domo enables connectivity to over 1000 pre-built cloud connectors, on-premise systems via Domo Workbench, file uploads including Excel and Google Docs, proprietary systems, and federated connectors for querying data where it's hosted.

Magic ETL Feature: With Domo's intuitive drag-and-drop Magic ETL, users can easily transform and prepare data without the need for SQL expertise.

Domo Appstore: The open cloud platform of Domo features a diverse ecosystem of pre-built apps, connector APIs, and dashboards tailored to specific business needs. Users can also build and share their own apps on the Domo Appstore.

Oracle Business Intelligence is a comprehensive collection of technology and applications designed to offer complete solutions. It is particularly advantageous for enterprises dealing with extensive data volumes, both from Oracle and non-Oracle sources, as it provides a highly robust solution.

Key Features:
Security: Oracle BI Delivers incorporates mechanisms to regulate data access and usage, ensuring comprehensive control over the handling of sensitive information. It enables users to receive alerts through dashboards, emails, or mobile devices.

Scalability and Performance: Oracle addresses the need for database scalability and optimal performance through key features such as Real Application Clustering and Portability. These capabilities allow the database to seamlessly adapt to varying usage demands, ensuring efficient resource allocation based on workload.

Sisense focuses on providing business intelligence and data visualization solutions for enterprises. The software helps users quickly explore, analyze and share large and complex datasets.

Key Features:
Attractive Visualizations: Sisense offers dozens of sophisticated and beautiful data visualizations, allowing users to create interactive and visually appealing dashboards and reports.

Environment for Managing Complex Data Models: Use this tool to easily handle datasets of all sizes.

Yellowfin BI is a leading business intelligence tool that combines machine learning and data visualization, providing an end-to-end analytics platform. With mobile accessibility and flexible deployment, you can monitor and understand dashboards from anywhere. Plus, Yellowfin BI offers a no code/low code development environment to enhance dashboards and visualizations effortlessly.

Key Features:
Reporting: Yellowfin BI offers a user-friendly reporting interface, catering to both self-service and standard reporting needs. Users can effortlessly create reports using various graph and chart formats, along with scorecards to track key performance indicators (KPIs).

Self-Service: With Yellowfin BI's search functionality, users can easily explore global datasets and uncover valuable insights. It empowers users by allowing them to share reports and data they create within the BI tool, as well as outside of it, leveraging other collaboration platforms.

Board offers an intuitive data analytics solution that combines a self-service approach with enterprise-wide data governance to build interactive dashboards, run effective analyses, and generate impactful reports. Board focuses on providing end-to-end support for critical decision-making processes in large and medium-sized enterprises.

Key Features:
Flexible Web-based Development Environment: The board supports the creation of dashboards, reports, analytics, planning, and predictive and advanced analytics applications.

All-in-one Decision-making Platform: Combining CPM with BI and analysis functions, providing business executives with an easy-to-use and no-coding toolkit to build customized CPM and analysis applications in a technically homogeneous environment.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a cloud-based business intelligence software that provides support for artificial intelligence through the entire analysis cycle. You can ask questions in plain English to communicate with the software while creating dashboards and reports.

Key Features:
Digging Deep into Business Data: IBM Cognos Analytics allows companies to perform data analysis, create multiple scenarios, and evaluate the risks and returns of alternative actions and strategies.

Strong Collaboration Abilities: Capable of generating impressive reports and creating beautiful interactive dashboards to track key data points, such as metrics, KPIs, and other operational processes, departments, and business performance.

As big data continues to flourish, business intelligence (BI) and business analytics tools are gradually becoming an indispensable part of modern enterprises. They possess the functions of cohesion, stability, agility, and predictability, injecting powerful capabilities into data management, thus truly transforming data into a key driver of productivity. We aim to give you a more comprehensive understanding of the best BI tools on the market and hope you have found a perfect fit for your company or department. 

You are more than welcome to try FineBI, its powerful features, sleek interface, and great support team will surely help your organization unleash the full potential of its data.

Keen to explore the full potential of BI tools? Dive in with our comprehensive guide:

Top BI Tools: A Comprehensive Guide for 2024