5 Business Intelligence Tools You Need to Know

Just like a handyman needs a toolbox equipped with hammers, nails, and screwdrivers, individuals pursuing careers in business intelligence (BI) must be familiar with specific software tools. Business intelligence involves companies' functions, strategies, and tools to collect, process, and analyse data.

Business intelligence tools can identify new opportunities for businesses to improve return on investment (ROI) and competitive advantage based on insights found. These tools are used across all departments, industries, and business users, so consider exploring one to accelerate your career.

Here's a look at the benefits of BI tools and five of the most commonly used tools.

What is a business intelligence (BI) tool?

Business intelligence tools collect, process, and analyse large amounts of structured and unstructured data from internal and external systems. Data sources might include documents, images, emails, videos, journals, books, social media posts, files, and more. BI tools find this information through queries, which can present the data in user-friendly formats, such as reports, dashboards, charts, and graphs.

The tools can perform functions like data mining, data visualisation, performance management, analytics, reporting, text mining, predictive analytics, and more. As a result, employees can harness this information to make better decisions based on predictions, market trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Benefits of BI tools

BI tools can help your business take smart, agile steps toward accomplishing bigger goals. 

Centralised data: All of your data is in one place. Companies collect data from numerous databases, portals, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and more. To make sense of it all, you'll need business intelligence tools to pool the data together and deliver particular views (issues, trends, analytics) based on your queries or what you want to know. 

Self-sufficiency: Data no longer just belongs to your company's IT team. Any employee without technical expertise—even interns—can access and analyse data necessary for their respective teams. They can generate reports on all electronics sales in 2020 or visualise patient records to identify COVID-19 cases in 2022.

Make predictions: With access to so much data from the past and present, employees can make evidence-based decisions. Predictive analytics and forecasting enable users to generate insights based on a product or service's performance history. If a business condition changes, intelligent tools can automatically figure out the anomalies, and you can react to disruptions as they arise. 

Automatic reports: Many BI tools are automated instead, so you don't need to manually input data into Excel spreadsheets or toggle between different tools. If you need a report on a product over a specific time, the tool will generate that for you. If that information is significant, and you want to add it to a presentation, you can create interactive visualisations and download any charts or graphs you may need. 

Reduces business costs: BI tools can do so much—from analysing consumer behaviour and sales forecasting to real-time process monitoring—that analysing, planning, and reporting processes are way more efficient and accurate than ever. More than 50 per cent of BI tools users said these benefits helped them reduce costs and increase revenue [1].

Top 5 business intelligence tools

Dozens of BI tools are available today. To determine the top five, these were commonly cited among websites that ranked the top BI tools in India. These five BI tools are not ranked in any particular order.

1. Microsoft Power BI

One of the most popular BI tools is Power BI from software giant Microsoft. This downloadable software allows you to run analytics on the cloud or in a reporting server. This interactive tool syncs with sources such as Facebook, Oracle, and more to generate reports and dashboards in minutes. It includes built-in AI capabilities, Excel integration, and data connectors. It also offers end-to-end data encryption and real-time access monitoring.

2. Tableau

Tableau is known for its user-friendly data visualisation capabilities, but it can do more than make pretty charts. Their offering includes live visual analytics, an interface that allows users to drag and drop buttons to spot trends in data quickly. The tool supports data sources such as Microsoft Excel, Box, PDF files, Google Analytics, and more. Its versatility extends to being able to connect with most databases.

3. Qlik

Qlik is a BI tool that emphasises a self-service approach. It supports various analytics use cases, from guided apps and dashboards to custom and embedded analytics. This tool also offers a user-friendly interface optimised for touchscreens, sophisticated AI, and high-performance cloud platforms. Its associative exploration capability, Search & Conversational Analytics, allows users to ask questions and uncover actionable insights, which helps increase data literacy for those new to using BI tools.

4. Dundas BI

Dundas BI is a browser-based BI tool that's been around for 25 years. Like Tableau, Dundas BI features a drag-and-drop function that allows users to analyse data independently without involving their IT team. The tool is known for its simplicity and flexibility through interactive dashboards, reports, and visual analytics. Since its inception as a data visualisation tool in 1992, it has evolved into an end-to-end analytics platform that can compete with today's new BI tools.

5. Sisense

Sisense is a user-friendly BI tool that focuses on being simplified and streamlined. With this tool, you can export data from sources like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and more. Its in-chip technology allows for faster data processing compared to other tools. 

Key features include the ability to embed white-label analytics, meaning a company can fully customise the services to its needs. Like others, it has a drag-and-drop feature. Sisense allows you to share reports and dashboards externally with your team members.

Other popular BI tools include: 

• Zoho Analytics

• Domo

• Datapine

• Yellowfin BI

• Looker

• DataBox

• Oracle Analytics Cloud

• Freshworks CRM

• Pentaho

• Infor Birst

• Intercom

• Google Data Studio

• HubSpot

List BI tools on your CV

You can learn from one or more BI tools independently or on the job. Many top companies use them, so you can benefit from listing the most common ones in the skills section of your CV if it makes sense for the role and industry in which you're applying. Hiring managers may specifically look for applicants with experience with specific BI tools, especially if referenced in the job description.

Read more: How to Select and List Key Skills for Your CV

Explore business intelligence with Coursera

Dive into Business Intelligence Concepts, Tools, and Applications to learn how to work with large data sets using MicroStrategy's Online Analytical Processing and Visualisation capabilities to create visualisations and dashboards. You can use these skills to support strategic decision-making across any business sector.

If you're interested in pursuing a career in data analytics as a data analyst, data scientist, or data warehouse specialist, consider enroling in Google's Data Analytics course. You'll gain the skills needed to analyse, manage, and visualise data for business insights and launch your career in business intelligence.