- Better business decisions
- Faster and more accurate reporting
- Improving operational efficiency
- Identifying new revenue opportunities
Top business intelligence tools: compare & find what works best
A BI guide to help you pick the best solution for your business.
What are business intelligence tools?
Business intelligence (BI) tools help a company gather, consolidate, and make sense of their raw data. BI tools allow companies to analyze their data in depth, improving decision making from the C-suite level down.
To help you make the best business analytics decision for your company, we’ve created a BI guide, complete with features and reviews of top-rated BI and reporting tools to help you get started.
What are the benefits of BI tools?
Business intelligence reporting and data analytics tools provide your company with a wide array of benefits.
- Gaining a high-level view of operational efficiency
- Streamlining internal decision-making and processes
- Pinpointing areas for improvement
- and more
Key features for business intelligence tools
Business intelligence combines a complex set of analysis and reporting tools to help you streamline company operations. When you’re on the hunt for the top business intelligence software, keep an eye out for these must-have features:
Real-time data
Don’t settle for anything less than data on demand. It’s time everyone has access to fresh, reliable data. Drill deeper. Ask more. Share easier. Integrate new data, keeping key decision makers informed, minute by minute.
Data visualization
The best business intelligence software should make data as easy to understand as possible. BI analytics software should include the ability to transform data sets into charts, graphs and tables with beautiful data visualization.
Security
Data security and data governance should be central to any BI tool set, where one single source of truth is available to all users. When comparing BI tools, choose a solution that prioritizes user safety and privacy, keeping hackers and competitors at bay.
Reports & dashboards
BI reporting tools and dashboards take your company’s raw data and transforms it into crisp visuals for easier decision making. Save time and focus on what really matters with better data visualization.
Customer & technical support
Confused about a feature? Looking for a quick answer to a pressing question? As with any software or tool, at some point, you’ll need extra support. Select a data analytics software program that gives you reliable access to technical and customer support.
Ease of use
Not everyone is a trained data analyst. From C-suite executives to account managers — the easier your software is to use, the more they’ll use it and continually gain fresh insights as a result.
Evaluation criteria for business intelligence & reporting tools
Every company is different and has different needs. When comparing business intelligence and analytics platforms, keep in mind your company size, as well as long-term and short-term goals when choosing a BI tool.
Small businesses and startups
Entrepreneurs and their teams are pressed for time and resources. Find a BI solution that scales, flexes, and adapts as your company and business environment changes and grows.
Mid-size businesses
As your business grows, you’ll need to make certain that your data workflow stays organized and efficient. You’ll need a business intelligence tool that can meet the needs of your company’s business users, analysts, and developers while simultaneously helping speed up analysis with interactive visual dashboards and reports.
Enterprise businesses
Enterprise businesses need to support massive datasets from a wide range of sources. Whether you need to answer an investor question in a matter of hours, understand your customers, or scale productivity of business users and data analysts, you’ll want a business intelligence platform that allows your team to take immediate action.
Infrastructure & architecture
Technology is changing quickly — don’t get left behind. Choose a data platform that is fast, scalable, and continuously incorporating new features and technologies as they emerge.
Self-service analytics
Market trends have shifted toward tools that are easy to access and encourage collaboration among users. Seek out software that allows for self-service BI. You’ll also need ad hoc querying, which allows you to obtain data and analysis as needed.
Integration & connectivity
Whether this is your first foray into BI or if you’ve used other software in the past, you likely have databases or applications you’ve created in house. Seek out BI software that gives you the ability to integrate current and future data sets. It will save time and energy, and ensure a quick transition into your business’ workflow.
Advanced analytics
Access to predictive analytics, data mining and semantic and text analytics are important to any growing business. Look to the future with BI software and tools that can mine company data and use that information to predict growth, areas of concern and opportunities for improvement.
Private Labeling/OEM
The ability to private label your business intelligence software is an excellent opportunity for your company. After all, BI is a tool, and you’re making it your own. You should be able to present it as your own, too.
Embedded analytics
Embedded analytics are essential to any of the top BI programs. These powerful tools work within your current systems — and seamlessly integrate those systems into one another to help navigate your company’s data.
Scheduling & alerts
You can’t afford to spend your days clicking through BI reports and checking for changes. Operationalize insights with automated alerts and actions, choosing BI tools that lets you know when underlying data and business operations have changed.
BI software comparison tools & reports
Make the best decision for your organization by comparing BI tools using trusted resources we’ve organized below, including rating and reviews from real customers and industry experts.
Gartner for Analytics and BI Platforms
Gartner regularly produces reports on business intelligence, among other topics. Sift through their unbiased analyses for better business intelligence comparison of platforms. Criteria include critical capabilities, leaders in the field, research on BI vendor abilities and more.
G2 Crowd Grid Report
G2 provides consumer-focused reviews for business capabilities across a wide array of fields including staffing firms, legal service providers, cybersecurity firms and BI intelligence providers.
BARC's The BI Survey
BARC’s The BI Survey is the world's largest and most comprehensive survey of business intelligence (BI) software users, providing feedback from over 3,000 respondents across 95 countries using 36 BI solutions.
Why choose Looker as your BI tool?
Looker was created with businesses in mind. We provide accurate, reliable analytics for everyone — from data analysts to C-suite executives, program managers to department heads. Looker was built from the ground up as a modern data platform to not only use, but to seamlessly incorporate the latest technological advances to improve your business. Count on Looker to help you make sense of your data when you need it most.
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Define and update metrics with ease. When you change a metric, our BI tools will update across reports and dashboards to keep you up to date
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Streamline reports and internal communication
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Distribute reports on apps like Slack or Google sheets using Looker’s API
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Harness the power of data and encourage company-wide use
Explore data freely and easily
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Leverage looker’s unique modeling language to make all of your data available to everyone in the organization
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Process data with beautiful, meaningful visualizations
Customize dashboards to suit your needs
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Connect to your information with data blocks to accelerate analytics
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Store your data in a performant, less-structured database
Find out more about the Looker difference.
From start-ups to enterprise organizations, all businesses are becoming more data-driven. In order to thrive in an increasingly competitive market, decision-makers need to have real-time data to make fast, informed decisions. The best business intelligence tools can help them do just that.
Eager to take your data and transform it into actionable insights? Harness the power of BI software to start making better decisions and stay ahead of the pack.
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