What is Business Intelligence Software? Analysis of Features, Benefits, Types & Pricing

Posted on 19th Nov 2018

Article By: Finances Online

Companies use business intelligence for strategic goals including the following:

  • Identify SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
  • Measure KPIs
  • Deploy resources cost-effectively
  • See relationships between datasets for more informed-decisions
  • Plot business health across overall goals
  • Generate insights for quick decisions

Another advantage of business intelligence software is that it leverages big data and cloud-computing to simplify complex data analysis and helps companies adopt business intelligence practices across departments. Today’s BI solutions are easy to deploy, use and integrate with existing systems. They can be standalone applications or as part of an enterprise suite like ERP, CRM and ecommerce systems.

Beyond the definition of business intelligence software, we’ll walk you through the key aspects of these tools in our guide. Specifically, you’ll learn the following:

  1. Examples of Business Intelligence software
  2. Benefits of Business Intelligence
  3. Types of Business Intelligence
  4. Features of Business Intelligence
  5. Factors to consider
  6. Pricing of Business Intelligence
  7. Potential issues
  8. Latest trends

The market shift from IT-led to business-led analytics is spurring the growth of BI software. Typical users of BI solutions today are business owners, senior executives, managers and frontline staff like sales, support and purchasing. This cross-departmental shift makes BI software both a strategic and tactical tool.

What are examples of business intelligence software?

BI solutions come in various forms. Some act as standalone applications while others are part of an enterprise suite. Some are targeted at large enterprises, still others are primarily for small businesses. To give you an idea how they are packaged, here are some examples of business intelligence software that are popular on the market:

  1. Sisense – A leading BI software known for robust features and advanced technologies like its InChip engine and single-stack architecture. If you need a reliable Sisense alternative check out our other comparison articles.
  2. GoodData – Features a growth-centric advanced analytics ideal for finding new revenue streams or understanding customer behavioral trends
  3. Looker – A data discovery app with intuitive data exploration tools that let users build and share reports on the fly. It’s a solid GoodData alternative.
  4. Tableau – A highly visual BI platform with extensive access across devices from PC to iPad, this software leverages its Tableau Service for smooth data flow across platforms
  5. Domo – Features a wide range of self-service BI tools with extensive data connectors and social collaboration features which make it a worthwhile Looker alternative.
  6. Klipfolio – This simple yet very powerful business data platform that allows businesses to turn their company data accessible and visible to their people, with all information updated constantly for real-time accuracy.
  7. Engtics – a behavior tracking, engagement, and analytics suite that helps you view and assess your users and how they relate to the performance of your products, websites, applications, and more.
  8. Artivatic – an end to end plug-in-play business intelligence with neuroscience focused automated decision making advanced AI/ML platform.
  9. GroupThinq – a cloud-based project management and business intelligence software designed primarily for consulting firms and professionals, helping them manage their processes and grow their business.
  10. Qubida – an end-to-end business intelligence and big data integration platform that enables businesses and enterprises to prepare, analyze, and visualize data without having to rely on multiple data platforms and systems.

Why use business intelligence software?

Now that you know the answer to what is business intelligence software it’s also important to understand why you should use one.

IDC predicted that big data and business analytics will grow to $187 billion global market in 2019, an impressive 50% jump from 2015. Clearly, more companies today understand the myriad benefits of BI solutions across the organization and overall business competitiveness. Here are the main benefits of a business intelligence software:

  1. Gain insight for growth. This is the main definition of BI. You can optimize business intelligence for sales opportunities, lead generation, market analysis, customer segmentation, etc. Combining relational database and multidimensional data models with real-time data and cross-departmental collaboration, you can manipulate huge volumes of data and surface insights in almost unlimited ways.Among others, you can identify growth areas, assess supply and demand, measure product viability and determine your market position. Moreover, data is sourced in real-time and analyzed through collaboration, further enhancing your market knowledge. For instance, customer-facing staff like support and sales can share feedback updates with top-level management, giving the latter an accurate picture of current market behavior.
  2. Address urgent issues. Crises can be immediately addressed if you have the right information. BI solutions feature ad hoc reporting that let you input data and generate insights in minutes, if not seconds. You can take a more informed action before a crisis further escalates.Through a wizard interface, these solutions let you locate and extract critical data off volumes of datasets and generate reports on the fly. This alone saves you time from mindlessly browsing through databases. Does a social media rant affecting your whole market or is it limited to a segment? Which branch has inventory surplus you can reallocate to a needy branch in the next hour? How much a sudden current event set to impact on your project? These questions need answers now and a BI solution makes that happen.
  3. Ground data is immediate. Instead of waiting for weeks or months to collate and process raw market data from frontline departments like sales, marketing and support, you can now access real-time ground movement. BI solutions are equipped with powerful multidimensional analytics that can be simultaneously used by teams. Data is dynamic and moves with market events as they happen.Moreover, because many BI solutions today are intuitive for non-tech users, data analysis is widely adopted across the organization. Ground data sourced by your frontline employees can be immediately cleansed, sorted and added to the central repository, empowering the company with the latest information. Likewise, most BI solutions feature collaboration tools that allow sharing of insights and best practices.
  4. Get the big picture. Dashboards and scorecards are typical features in BI solutions. They give senior executives a bird’s eye view of the company’s overall performance. Metrics can be customized to align with your key performance indicators and reports generated in real time.With dashboards you can plot the business health across a threshold range. Automatic alerts can be triggered if you reach a minimum or maximum tolerance within the range. Meanwhile, scorecards can be set to deliver periodic snapshots of your company’s progress vis-a-vis its goals. Metrics and milestones are customized to align with your objectives and overall strategy.
  5. “See” the future. The more advanced BI solutions feature predictive analytics and forecasting that enable you to anticipate future outcomes. These tools leverage historical, recurring and current patterns to churn out calculated forecasts. The ability to anticipate events lends to your company agility and flexibility, critical factors in highly disruptive industries like tech, retail and entertainment.

So, the next time someone asks you,“Why use a business intelligence software?” lay down these clear benefits, instead of simply discussing the features of business intelligence software.