Essential BI Truths from Coaches and Experts

Business Intelligence tools push your products and services to be more data driven for answering crucial business questions and give you a winning edge over your competition.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) helps you analyze your raw Big Data and presents you with insights for better informed business decisions. It transforms the problem of your organization drowning in an influx of data into an opportunity. An opportunity to encompass various Business Intelligence tools, applications, and strategies to make sense of your Big Data and empower you to get data driven. And this has been the underlying concept of BI since ancient times. Mankind has created procedures, systems and instruments for gathering and investigating insights to facilitate basic decision making.

But have you explored the significantly evolved Business Intelligence tools to make the best possible decisions?

What are the benefits of BI tools

The benefits of Business Intelligence tools outweigh the investments. From valuable insights to growth, addressing concerns, collating data and forecasting.

• Root-cause analysis (ability to drill down on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to a more detailed report)
• Time-Series analysis (ability to track and analyze key metrics over time to identify trends and exceptions)
• Predictive analysis (ability to forecast, model, and analyze complex relationships) predicting user intent can boost your customer experience in ways you can never imagine.
• Segment analysis (ability to define, manage, and understand the behavior of business groupings such as strategic customer segments, departments, and regions)
• Statistical process control (ability to monitor and track variables via control charts and statistical analysis, commonly used in quality control programs such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management)
• You can adapt to market shifts swiftly and efficiently, steer out of roadblocks and pivot in a new direction.
• This sense of clarity Business Intelligence provides, gives you an edge over your competition because you move forward with decisive actions rather than just gut instincts.
• Your managers are happier because they don’t have to micromanage as employees are given more responsibility in a transparent environment.
• There is a lasting change that occurs from bottom up rather than the other way around as the company is guided by well by the bottom line.

More and more business organizations are now looking up to Business Intelligence software for growth.

According to a recent survey:

• Companies using BI are more likely to make decisions up to 5 times faster.
• The BI & Data Analytics industry will grow to up to $20 Billion by 2019.
• Over 50% of companies plan to deploy Business Intelligence tools soon.
• Cloud Segment is expected to have highest “Compound Annual Growth Rate” (CAGR).

The top BI tools you should consider

• Sisense
• Looker
• Yellowfin
• Tableau
• Microsoft Power BI
• QlikSense
• Google Analytics
• Klipfolio
• Birst
• Datapine
• SAP Crystal Reports
• BDB

But when it comes to choosing the tool that works best for you, it is difficult to separate facts from fiction. After all, each vendor tries to sell his tool as the best.

We can help you determine the functional value of some of the primary tools and run you through the pros and cons, so you don’t have to flip through loads of pages of partial reviews to make an informed decision.

QlikView: Is a popular Business Intelligence tool for its

• Flexibility
• Uniqueness
• Easy data cleansing functions
• Automatic manipulation of data associations which enhances the speed of dashboard development
• Great handling of data input by longer retainment in the memory.

Although Qlikview’s dashboards are easy to navigate, it requires a higher level of skills and expertise in default SQL to build reports. It is also one of the most expensive BI tools in the industry.

Klipfolio: is a Business intelligence solution that doesn’t require any desktop application and resides 100% on the cloud. The BI tool enables

• Efficient data processing.
• Enhances real time solutions and optimization.
• It supports connectivity to multiple data sources both online and offline.
• It can be accessed through various technological platforms like mobiles, smart TVs and tablets.

The flipside here is that there is a steep learning curve involved to operate this Business Intelligence tool. Features don’t include ad hoc reporting and analysis as well as predictive analysis and reporting.

Tableau- It is a big player in the world of BI. It aims to easily create and distribute interactive dashboards.

• What sets it apart from its competitors is its unique feature of data blending.
• The ability to collaborate in real time.
• It helps to communicate data in a very clear and interactive way.
• It is the easiest BI tool to use compared to the other tools.

Power BI Dashboards: Power BI Is a Business Intelligence Solution Formulated by Microsoft.

• It is concise and simple yet very powerful.
• It offers a similar interface for Window users. Power BI dashboards are not only related to other products, but closely integrated with the Microsoft tools like MS Excel, Azure Cloud Service and SQL Server.
• It also has a free version to let you explore if first to decide.

Google Data Studio- we cannot ignore the youngest BI tool in the market. Google has tried to nail it by striving to create a very simple and intuitive Business Intelligence tool.

• Sharing is straightforward and similarly to google drive so there is no time wasted on getting accustomed. However, the challenges reside in some aspects of data manipulation and since the tool is still in beta, many things are not supported.

How are you going to keep up with the evolved Business Intelligence tools that are the future of all businesses?

• Educate your employees to acquire a certain level of business and data analytics skills to make data driven decisions better. You can avail from the free courses and online content to create a broader base of analytical skills to let your organization thrive in this data-driven economy.
• When you start using BI, you adorn the role of an analyst. So, for allowing the Big Data to find you instead of the other way around, use the latest technology to apply the right amount of data in the right visualized format, within the proper setting daily. This lets Business Intelligence become a seamless part of your applications.

Decision Foundry is here to help

Dashboard Development

From letting you visually explore data better (if you already have a BI tool), to helping you migrate from Excel (if you don’t have a BI tool), we develop interactive dashboards using homegrown tools, that fulfill all your Business Intelligence requirements. With extensive experience in creating both client-facing and internal dashboards, we will make it easy for you to work with all kinds of data sources (HR, Retail, CRM, Ad Campaign), and seamlessly deploy data however and wherever you want.

Managed Services

Receive automated reports in a timely manner in a variety of output formats. Set your own custom frequencies and receive reports that are error-free, customizable and efficient. Ensure data harmonization every time you add new data sources. Continuously keep track of all API integrations (and other ad hoc changes) to your Business Intelligence universe, to avoid misinterpretation and distortion of data.

Business Intelligence offers direct access to the bloodline of any organization. Welcome aboard the third generation of BI and gear up your business with the evolved Business Intelligence tools with speed and confidence to make the best, transformative, data analytics and business analytics decisions.

For more information please visit – our website or write to us at support@decisionfoundry.com