15 Top Business Intelligence (BI) Tools in 2024

Summary: Business intelligence tools can help organizations consolidate unstructured data from multiple sources and present it in an easy-to-read format. What types of tools are available for this purpose? Get more information in the article below!

Business intelligence & analytics are basically data management software solution implemented in organizations to get present as well as previous data, and analyze new, raw information using statistics. These are used to deliver detailed insights for making better decisions in future.

What is Business Intelligence and Business Analytics?

• Business Intelligence – It deals with what has happened in the past and how it happened that has led to what the present situation is. Therefore, business intelligence can spot trends and patterns.

• Business Analytics – It deals with the reasons of what has happened in the past and why. It analyses the factors that has caused it and why has it happened. This information is then used to predict what is going to happen in the future.

How Business Intelligence Tools Can Help?

Business Intelligence tools for big data analysis help in multiple ways. From reporting to analysis and building intuitive reports it can help you perform a lot of things. It can provide:

• Accurate and fast reporting
• Business insights
• A complete analysis of past, present and future
• Accurate decision making
• Customer satisfaction
• Improved data quality
• Spotting trending market trends
• Higher efficiency
• Increase in revenue

15 Best Business Intelligence Tools List for Beginners & Small Business

• SAP Business Intelligence
• Yellowfin BI
• MicroStrategy
• Zoho Analytics
• SAS
• IBM Cognos Analytics
• ClicData
• Microsoft Power BI
• GROW
• Clear Analytics
• Tableau
• Oracle BI
• Board
• SeekTable
• Pentaho

The following are the top business intelligence tools that are suitable for startups and small businesses. They have all the necessary features that a BI tool needs to have. Let’s have a look at them:

1. SAP Business Intelligence

USP: Combines analysis and storytelling together

SAP Business is an integrated business Intelligence (BI) software which can be used at an enterprise level. It has the latest standards to provide one of the best BI software solution. It allows you to create high level database system which combines both transactions and analytics.

SAP Business Intelligence Basic Features

• Highly flexible software
• Transparent solution for businesses
• Can be integrated with any system using SAP
• Easy space and setup utilization
• Supports cloud as well as on-premise deployment
• Simple architecture for data warehouse
• Integration with non-SAP as well as SAP applications

SAP Business Intelligence Primary Features

• Creates role-based dashboards to share data insights with members
• Supports the analysis of large-scale data
• Easily customizes both 2D and 3D charts and graphs
• Offers enterprise reporting system for managing business intelligence strategies

Highest Rated Features of SAP Business Intelligence

• Multiple visualization tools to represent data
• Supports cross-enterprise sharing of data insights
• Offers SAP Analytics Cloud to use the tools on the cloud
• Supports Ad hoc reporting to address random business questions and share the findings

Limitations of SAP Business Intelligence

• Limited options available for data transformation
• The processing of data queries is quite slow

Pricing of SAP Business Intelligence: SAP Business Intelligence pricing is available on request.

2. Yellowfin BI

USP: Combines analysis and storytelling together

This business intelligence (BI) platform is an integrated solution specially made for companies across industries. Now monitor and examine data easily with Yellowfin BI. It can be accessed from anywhere with the help of the World Wide Web or company intranet.

Basic Features of Yellowfin BI

• The dashboard can be accessed by anywhere
• Mobile BI features can be mapped easily
• Smarter decision-making features
• Data represented with interactive presentations and reports

Yellowfin BI Primary Features

• Supports real-time collaboration to work on multiple data sets
• Finds and reports the known changes in data with alerts
• Extracts data from several sources via web APIs
• Integrates the data findings in several workflows
• Data insights can be reused in multiple dashboards

Yellowfin BI Highest Rated Features

• Identifies and notifies about unknown changes in data sets via AI-driven signals.
• Develops data-driven reports and presentations
• Offers advanced Report Builder, Quick Charts, and Guided Natural Language Query to generate reports
• Offers embedded BI to discover insights from data present in any app or website
• Offers a free form dashboard to customize layout, grid style, charts, etc.
• Manages the entire ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process

Limitations of Yellowfin BI

• Users do not find its visualization tools intuitive
• The dashboard builder procedure is tiresome for users

Yellowfin BI Pricing: Available on request on its official website.

3. MicroStrategy

USB: Supports mobile BI

Microstartegy BI Tool is enterprise analytics software helps people to make better decisions and improves their way of doing business. You get advanced features as well as analytics.

Basic Features of MicroStrategy

• Easy maintenance
• Predictive analytics
• Easy to use
• Advanced analytics
• Big data solutions
• WYSIWYG real-time report design
• Multi-functional dashboard

Primary Features of MicroStrategy

• Supports object-based semantic graphs
• Offers unlimited customization with advanced visuals, branding colors, open APIs, etc.
• Enables you to create and deploy apps on both cloud and on-premises
• Provides role-based security filters to restrict the data access for protection

Highest Rated Features of MicroStrategy

• Offers embedded analytics to integrate the analytics in various apps
• Uses machine learning to identify data patterns and provides insights
• Offers cloud-agile analytics for any type of data and reporting
• Generates freeform SQL reports
• Easily integrates with DevOps procedures and CI/CD pipelines.

MicroStrategy Limitations

• Supports data import from visualizations having compound grids
• Consolidating unstructured data in this software is challenging.

MicroStrategy Pricing: Available on request on its official website.

4. Zoho Analytics

USP: Best BI tool for Mac

Zoho Analytics self-service analytics and BI platform create interactive dashboards with data represented visually. AI-powered assistant is also available which lets users to ask questions, and in-return expect intelligent answers. It is one of the best BI tools for Mac.

Basic Features of Zoho Analytics

• Visualization options like tables, charts and widgets
• Hundreds of readymade connectors available for different apps, drives as well as databases
• Analyze data from multiple source with unified analytics system
• ML and AI powered assistants that understand queries in NL (Natural Language)
• Portals for embedded analytics and BI.

Primary Features of Zoho Analytics

• Helps manage roles and permissions to access the data
• Supports real time collaboration to work on different data sets
• Identifies and marks the data columns as PII (personally identifiable information for security)
• Enables you to customize reporting dashboards with the brand logo
• Generates private links for sharing files and documents

Zoho Analytics Highest Rated Features

• Transforms and enriches data via data preparation and management
• Offers augmented analysis to get data insights with AI, machine learning, etc.
• Offers slideshows to represent data in the story form
• Comes with APIs for data integration, modeling, custom styling, etc.
• Offers visualization options like tables, charts and widgets

Limitations of Zoho Analytics

• Users find it difficult to integrate this software for the white label use
• Limited customization options available for visualization

Pricing of Zoho Analytics: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 960 /month billed annually.

5. SAS

USP: Includes location intelligence

SAS Enterprise Miner is known for giving the right information at the right time. It can mine as well as alter data from different sources. You can retrieve that data and manage it while doing proper analysis on it.

Basic Features of SAS

• Users and data sources can be connected with high quality data connections
• Business data can be protected with security resolution and issue identification
• Centralized governance and scalability is provided
• Data can be visualized with interactive designs.
• Real-time analysis can be done with self-service reporting.

Primary Features of SAS

• Rewrites or updates data irrespective of its location
• Controls and manages different data sources and keep them secured
• Adds geographical content to data to identify location specific business opportunities.
• Supports conversational AI and chatbots for data interaction
• Processes data in a distributed, parallel SAS environment

SAS Highest Rated Features

• Manages data from various resources
• Deploys complicated projects’ analytics into workflows
• Automatically develops data insights with data models and explanations
• Summarizes KPIs through interactive dashboards
• Develops and changes predictive data models via in-memory processing
• Designs advanced data management workflows
• Offers predictive analysis to find possible outcomes from data

SAS Limitations

• Deployment of data models takes a lot of time
• Offers limited options to export data

Pricing of SAS: Available on request on its official website

6. IBM Cognos Analytics

USB: Enables users without any technical knowledge to analyze data

IBM Cognos Analytics is an interactive BI tool that allows gaining data-driven insights in a controlled environment. It has the ability to create impressive dashboards and reports. This BI suite is a web-based tool and is developed by IBM.

Basic Features of IBM Cognos Analytics

• Analyze data with the specialized toolsets receive detailed insights.
• Create personalized dashboards and read or write information anytime anywhere.
• Get cloud support as well as full governance over your data
• Generate accurate reports online as well as offline
• Perform cross-departmental analysis.

IBM Cognos Analytics Primary Features

• Customizes and shares data reports
• Supports time series forecasting to gain valuable insights
• Offers web-based data modeling
• Provides drag and drop functionality to insert data in graphs and charts

Highest Rated Features of IBM Cognos Analytics

• Extracts data from CSV files, spreadsheets, SQL databases, Google BigQuery, etc.
• Prepares data with AI and adds calculated fields, merges data, generates tables, etc.
• Creates compelling dashboards and auto-generates data visualizations
• Intent-based processing model available with predictive analysis
• Offers AI assistant to identify data patterns

IBM Cognos Analytics Limitations

• Does not provide details on any data error
• Users find it difficult to change a report’s layout and font.

Pricing of IBM Cognos Analytics: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 822.22 /month/user

7. ClicData

USB: One of the best BI tools for healthcare sector

ClicData BI tool is specifically designed to use by SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses). This tool like all other BI tools specializes in generating dashboards and reports. You can share data insights reports and various other metrics with individuals and groups. It is one of the best BI tools for healthcare.

Basic Features of ClicData

• Import, sort, and connect data in one platform.
• Track the complete health of your business with this BI tool.
• Share insights and metrics with individuals and groups.
• Create data warehouse which is cloud-based.
• ClicData can create reports regarding the progress of your projects.
• Get live notifications in your dashboard
• Perform extensive manipulation your data.

ClicData Primary Features

• Stores different types of data for analysis
• Supports data versioning to create data history
• Creates dashboards and find data anomalies with insights
• Supports data fusion and merging from several sources

Highest Rated Features of ClicData

• Integrates data from over 250+ sources
• Converts data into structured form through data management
• Offers the option to plug-in native data analyses tools
• Offers templates to visualize data and generate reports
• Provides an API to refresh data in real-time
• Integrates machine learning algorithms into the data flows to segment data, perform regression analysis, classify data, etc.

Limitations of ClicData

• Frequent error occurs while reloading data
• Limited options available to secure data

ClicData Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 6,165.41/month

8. Microsoft Power BI

USP: Best for integrating data from various sources 

Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform to extract, visualize, and analyze different data sets.

With this, you can consolidate data from several sources, visualize them via graphs and charts, and gain valuable insights via AI. It can also be used for customizing the reports with the brand logo and color.

Microsoft Power BI Basic Features

• Offers embedded analytics
• Creates paginated reports for sharing and collaboration
• Extracts and transforms data from various sources
• Creates data flow for direct query, linked and computed entities, etc.

Primary Features of Microsoft Power BI

• Offers 100 TB of cloud storage
• Support application lifecycle management
• Offers metrics for content creation, publication, and consumption
• Encrypts all the data at rest and in transit for security
• Microsoft Power BI Limitations
• It does not process big data sets properly

Highest Rated Features of Microsoft Power BI

• Shares reports in popular MS Office apps
• Refreshes data sheets every 48 hours
• Supports AI visuals to process and analyze data sets
• Supports Advanced AI for text analysis and image detection
• Offers 500+ free connectors for data extraction

Microsoft Power BI Pricing: Desktop version is free | Paid plan starts from INR 823.96/user/month for SaaS product.

9. GROW

USP: Best BI tool for SQL server

GROW cloud-based BI software allows business users and data analysts to control and find relevant information from their data. It is hosted on the Grow cloud and constantly supported by the development team of Grow. It is one of the best BI tools for SQL server.

Basic Features of GROW

• Over 115 data connectors are used for different systems.
• Various data visualization elements to create customized dashboards
• Create unlimited no. of user accounts.
• Manage SQL with an easy-to-use UI.
• Easy intra and inter team communication facilities.

Primary Features of GROW

• Customizes different data sets
• Connects to a data source to identify the data type you need to pull
• Sets the timeline to refresh data in real-time
• Supports different metrics to address problems related to data
• Generates sharable links to view the data

GROW Highest Rated Features

• Extracts data from social media to gain insights on engagement
• Imports data from Google Sheets, OneDrive, etc., via integration
• Offers PostgreSQL query for exploring advanced data structures, such as arrays, JSON, etc.
• Automatically creates different data pipelines
• Provides data explorer to visualize data in several formats

Limitations of GROW

• Limited options available to customize dashboards
• Offers very few options to export data and reports

Pricing of GROW: Available on request on its official website

10. Clear Analytics

USP: One of the best BI tools in Excel

Clear Analytics BI software is an excel-based application that can be used by everyone having just the basic knowledge of Excel.

It is one of the best BI tools in Excel. Get features like automating, creating and analyzing with Clear Analytics. You can easily extract information from large reliable data sources and create innovative reports.

Basic Features of Clear Analytics

• Automate process so less human resource is required.
• Create dashboards easily.
• Easy graphical representation of data.
• Get key performance indicators.
• Indicating issues become easy.
• Create strategic plans.
• Get predictive analysis with this software.

Primary Features of Clear Analytics

• Manages role-based permissions to access reports and queries
• Shares the data directly to PowerPoint, OneDrive, etc.
• Creates a query builder in Excel to explore data in different databases
• Restricts access to sensitive data

Highest Rated Features of Clear Analytics

• Aggregates data from multiple resources
• Supports integration with Microsoft Power BI for visualizing and analyzing data
• Integrates existing data into the Excel directly
• Offers full audit trail for data sources
• Centralizes all the spreadsheets at one place
• Supports version control for data files

Clear Analytics Limitations

• Limited capabilities for predictive analytics
• You do not get OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) functionality with it.

Pricing of Clear Analytics: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 2,384.28/month

11. Tableau

USP: Available free of cost

Tableau BI tool is used for data visualization and discovery. You can analyze and visualize data without any professional help.

Multiple data sources are supported like GA (google analytics), MS Excel, MS SQL and Oracle. Tableau offers standalone products like Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server that can be used as well.

Basic Features of Tableau

• Tableau is a free to use BI tool.
• Supports mobile BI strategy.
• Data visualization and exploration possible with in-memory architecture.
• Add and access data from different sources.
• Can be integrated with Microsoft SharePoint
• Get one click rapid reporting with Tableau

Tableau Public’s Primary Features

• Generates portfolio of visualizations
• Offers an author’s community to connect with other users
• Enables you to create data visualizations offline
• Generates customized maps, charts, graphs., for data visualization

Tableau Public’s Highest Rated Features

• Supports data querying
• Offers geospatial data visualization and analysis
• Creates data reports in several formats including Excel and CSV
• Enables you to share visualizations with anyone publicly
• Offers a repository of creative data visualizations to explore the data on any topic

Limitations of Tableau Public

• The work created cannot be stored in the local storage
• You can only save 10 GB of data with this software

Pricing of Tableau Public: Free business intelligence tool

12. Oracle Business Intelligence

USP: Helps make mobile enabled business decisions

An enterprise-level BI, Oracle Business Intelligence is can give its users all the necessary BI capabilities. This includes mining data, creating dashboards, sending alerts, and many more capabilities. Oracle is excellent in analyzing large data volumes from various sources because of its robustness.

Basic Features of Oracle BI

• It utilizes OBIEE for reporting, query analysis and much more.
• Oracle uses Common Enterprise Model for business analytics (BA) and calculations.
• Access information and maintain a collaborative workplace.
• Accurate and in-depth insights.
• Get agile data discovery with Oracle Endeca Discovery.
• Balance IT collaboration with business.
• Access non- traditional and traditional data analytics data.
• Make accurate business decision

Oracle BI Primary Features

• Offers 35 built-in connect to aggregate data from various sources
• Automatically prepares data for analyses and identifies any anomalies
• Provides open analytics solutions to unify analytics within the organization
• Generates interactive dashboards to represent different data sets
• Creates different reports with pre-configured templates

Highest Rated Features of Oracle BI

• Create interactive data visualizations without any code
• Explores and searches the data both verbally and visually
• Supports machine learning to study data patterns and identify outcomes
• Navigates through the data via custom map analytics
• Builds data models to represent metrics and KPIs

Limitations of Oracle BI

• Transporting data to the cloud is time consuming
• Users find it difficult to consolidate data from multiple sources

Pricing of Oracle BI: Available on request on its official website.

13. BI Board

USP: Ideal for predictive analytics & performance management

BI Board intelligent tool combines features of corporate management and business intelligence. It is a toolkit which has business analytics (BA) and business intelligence (BI) in a single package.

Ad-hoc querying and multi-dimensional analysis help to make strong business decisions

Basic Features of Board

• Simulate, analyse and plan within a single platform.
• Drill-down and drill-through functionalities are available.
• Maintain planning and analytical applications.
• Reporting can be done by accessing multiple data sources.
• It is possible to put ad-hoc query
• Multi-dimensional analysis is possible.

Primary Features of Board

• Schedules and sends data reports in multiple formats
• Restricts access to the data and reports via role-based permissions
• Quicky uploads, merges, or models your data via data modeling features
• Supports different file formats to import and export data insights
• You can include Excel like formulas in reports for analyses

Board Highest Rated Features

• Creates and deploy reports on any device via HTML 5 technology
• Advanced charting options for data visualization
• Offers a virtual repository to manage the findings
• Supports predictive analysis to find future opportunities
• Offers simulation to create and analyze scenarios for data
• Supports real-time data modeling

Board Limitations

• It does not produce high quality presentations
• Configuring security profiles with it is time consuming

Pricing of Board: Price is available on request on its official website

14. SeekTable

USP: Best BI tool for MongoDB

Perform data analytics and operational reporting that too with live charts and tables only with SeekTable. Get a user-friendly report builder for building charts, tables and datagrids. It is one of the best BI tools for MongoDB.

Basic Features of SeekTable

• Expand or collapse and drill-down data exploration capability
• Calculate running totals and percentages.
• Data restriction possible.
• Customizable formula-based dimensions and metrics.

Primary Features of SeekTable

• Consolidates data from different sources into a single report
• Generates interactive dashboards through HTML layout, custom visuals, etc.
• Supports customization of data sources
• Automates reports sending via Zapier, Subscriptions, etc.

SeekTable Highest Rated Features

• Builds interactive reports with filters and sorting
• Exports data to PDF, Excels, plain HTML
• Live reports can be generated
• Offers white labelling for customizing reports with the company’s logo
• Provides report parameters to customise database query filtering
• Publishes the saved reports directly to the web

Limitations of SeekTable

• You can upload CSV files only up to 500 MB.
• Limited files exporting options available

SeekTable Pricing: Free plan available for its cloud plan | Pricing starts from INR 2,056.40/month/user for team sharing feature and INR 41,045.79/month for self-hosting

15. Pentaho

USB: Best BI tool for Ubuntu

Pentaho is a business analytics platform as well as data warehousing. This software can be used to discover, access and merge different types of data sets. It is one of the best BI tools for Ubuntu.

Features of Penatho

• It is an enterprise platform used to accelerate the pipeline.
• Efficient development with the community dashboard.
• No coding needed for big data integration.
• Embedded analytics
• Data visualization with customizable dashboards
• Can be used in mongo dB

Pentaho Primary Features

• Generates interactive dashboards and data visualizations
• Offers data mining to identify patterns in data sets
• Offers Embedded OLAP Engine to perform multi-dimensional data analysis
• Easily integrates data in different business applications

Pentaho Highest Rated Features

• Supports codeless data pipeline development
• Offers connectors library for data extraction
• Offers the report designer tool to develop visualizations
• Supports embedded reporting
• Manages the entire Extract, transform and load (ETL) process

Limitations of Pentaho

• Data modeling takes a lot of time
• Limited options to customize data visualizations

Pentaho Pricing: Pentaho Community Edition is free to use | Pentaho Enterprise Edition pricing details are available on request on its official website.

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Features & Capabilities of Business Intelligence Tools for Data Visualization

The features and capabilities of the best BI tools for data visualization are endless. Let’s have a look at a few of them.

• Data Collection: The data is collected in the BI software with the help of a variety of internet monitoring social media tracking channels. Business Intelligence tools can perform this by using algorithms to sort out unstructured data and removing duplicate entries.

• Data Analysis: After converting the raw and unstructured data into proper structured data sets, the BI tools can analyze the same. “What-if” analysis can also be done to predict the future impacts.

• Reporting: Have a detailed view of the best as well as worst performing areas in your business. Get a view across multiple dimensions with the best BI tools for reporting.

• Data Visualization: Visuals ranging from bars to pie charts are used to depict the information set present in hand. This helps because the mind processes visual data faster than plain text.

• Integration: It has the ability to work in coordination with other software applications as well. BI software can work with existing infrastructure which includes 3^rd party warehouses and SQL server configurations.

• User Security: BI applications can also restrict particular users to access certain data sets. It allows you personalize different features to groups and individual users.

Suggested Read: Best Open-Source Reporting Tools

Why Use Free Business Intelligence Tools?

Free business intelligence tools can help businesses in transforming their unstructured data, consolidate it from multiple resources, and visualize it in different graphs and charts. Some of the reasons to use free BI tools include:

• Assists in gaining insights on overall profit and loss through analysis.
• Helps in accurately representing data and eliminating inaccuracies.
• Data analysis helps in finding growth opportunities and creating strategies.
• Helps in performing competitive analysis to find gaps in company’s existing strategies.
• Makes it easier to export data within and outside the organization.
• With it, you can manage the entire data ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) procedure

Conclusion

Consolidating and representing big data sets manually is a cumbersome procedure and may lead to inaccurate data entry, compliance issues, financial issues, and so on.

However, by using a reliable BI tool, you can accurately present and manage data in a single repository that will help in better data analysis and improved decision making.

FAQs