The quality of the decisions you make in a business setting correlates directly to the quality of the data on which you base them - and that’s pretty much always the case. If the information or data you’re using is incorrect or partial, it is certainly more likely to lead to the wrong decision. For these reasons, today's companies aiming for recovery and resilience cannot avoid applying a data-driven approach to every business area.
Business intelligence (BI) software is tasked with collecting all this data, analyzing it, and returning information that is useful for devising solutions to issues and planning long-term strategies - so you can imagine how useful it currently is.
What to look for in business intelligence software for an enterprise
No software is optimal for all businesses. This is also true for business intelligence software, which should be selected based on several parameters. Among the main ones are objectives, usage skills, size of the company, and budget. It goes without saying that since many parameters are changeable over time, one of the main features to look for in open source BI solutions is scalability, which allows the company to adapt to changing circumstances without major setbacks. Beyond that, ease of use, i.e., intuitive data navigation, and flexibility to respond readily to the organization's needs are top factors.
The key features of business intelligence software for an enterprise
There is no doubt that the strength of BI software lies in its ability to extract (data mining), select, and analyze vast amounts of data, generate analysis about the past and present, and provide comparative analysis and predictive insights about the future. The more data you’re handling, the more processing capacity the software demands. Around this core functionality, others have been developed that contribute to making BI platforms leading strategic tools because of their great ability to efficiently automate tasks previously handled manually. The latter category is particularly useful if you’re looking to create and distribute reports quickly from datasets that are always growing.
Another function prioritized today to make it easier to understand complex analyses is data visualization. It’s got the ability to create customized dashboards that provide easy-to-understand KPIs and summary information regularly.
BI software for small businesses
Even small businesses benefit from using Business Intelligence software as a facilitator of data-aware business management. Of course, more than ever before, it is critical that when choosing a platform, the focus falls on three elements: scalability, to keep pace with the business's growth; simplicity, to make it easy to use within the organization without the need to hire Data Scientists specialists, including, for example, through the use of self-service tools; and affordability. These features need to be present across the whole platform, which will have to be equipped with the key functionalities mentioned above.
Advanced Business Intelligence Software for Large Enterprises
That’s great for small businesses, but what about when they get bigger? When the amount of data reaches a considerable size, it becomes necessary to use advanced business intelligence software. "Advanced" BI software in use in large enterprises enables the management of large volumes of data from various sources, such as enterprise databases, IoT devices, and software applications.
These tools must possess specific characteristics, some of which overlap with those already discussed. They must still be scalable to cope with growth, and flexible enough to change configuration. In many cases, these tools will also need a multi-country mode, enabling data sharing and collaboration among different business teams with access, control, and permissions features, plus the support and service to ensure proper implementation and use of the software.
Implementing Business Intelligence Software
The process of implementing BI software requires careful planning and careful management. The first step the company must take is to analyze its business processes and identify areas where data analysis needs to be improved. Having identified the needs, the company should look for BI software that will satisfy them and fit within the budget. Once chosen, the software should be installed and integrated with other business applications.
Whichever BI software you choose, it’s also vital to make sure you can link it up with other business tools like CoPilot, or anything else that’s crucial for the business’s functioning. It is in integrating with other software within the enterprise information system, such as CRM, HCM, ERP, and e-commerce, that evolved Business Intelligence platforms best express their full potential. This involves creating integrated reports and dashboards that use data from different enterprise tools. Software integration enables strategic business insights through data analysis, which would be difficult to achieve if platforms did not communicate with each other.
Overview of major platforms
The range of Business Intelligence software offerings is vast indeed. Help finding your way around comes from Gartner's annual Magic Quadrant, dedicated to Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. Three major solutions available are: Microsoft Power BI, Salesforce Tableau, and Qlik's Qlik Sense. Others to keep in mind are Alibaba Cloud's Quick BI, Amazon QuickSight, Oracle Analytics Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAS Visual Analytics, Google's Locker Studio, Sisense Fusion, TIBCO Spotfire, Zoho Analytics' SaaS and the Domo, Incorta, MicroStrategy, Pyramid, Tellius, ThoughtSpot, and Yellowfin platforms - so there are lots of options to consider.
Last Updated 2 months ago
