BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICAL TOOLS
Business intelligence tools (BI
tools) are a way for companies to monitor data and generate business insights –
necessary components in making smarter, better decisions that drive results.
But once you start research BI, you realize there are many types, from
analytics and big data statistics to reporting tools and dashboards that offer
at-a-glance information across indicators.
When choosing the right business
intelligence tools for your organization, consider your company, your
employees, your departments and teams – and the success factors that drive your
decision-making.
Select tools that allow you to
visualize and analyze relevant data, combining and eliminating and customizing
to generate information that helps you better understand your data. The goal:
to make fact-based and insightful decisions that will improve company
performance.
1.
SAP BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE
SAP BI is a full-functional tool designed
to cater to a diverse set of needs, satisfying the requirements of everyone in
your organization – IT professionals, senior management, and end users
included. The tool’s robust infrastructure hosts wide-ranging functionality in
one integrated platform.
A single, integrated platform
pulls together applications and reporting to provide a detailed snapshot of
your organization. Visualization makes it easy to understand your data.
2.
ORACLE BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE ENTERPRISE EDITION
For businesses with serious BI
needs, OBIEE is an incredibly powerful business intelligence tool. The
Enterprise Edition integrates many of Oracle’s most useful components,
including BI Server, BI Answers, BI Interactive Dashboards, BI Delivers, BI
Publisher, the MS Office Plug-in, Hyperion Interactive Reporting, Hyperion SQR
Production Reporting, Hyperion Financial Reporting, and Hyperion Web Analysis.
OBIEE provides comprehensive BI tools that inform and inspire better decisions
across the organization. Interactive dashboards make reporting and data
visualization simple.
3.
MICROSTRATEGY
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
MicroStrategy Business
Intelligence has one primary goal: leverage data to help organizations find
timely, informed answers to any question. Powerful dashboards and data
analytics transform your company’s information into easy-to-understand reports
designed to improve productivity, boost cost-efficiency, optimize revenue,
monitor trends, forecast new opportunities, and fortify client relationships. MicroStrategy
runs against data stored in ERP systems (e.g. SAP and Oracle), operational
databases, and data warehouses. This software saves data on-site or in the
cloud via Amazon Web Services.
4.
QLIKVIEW
QlikView is a user-friendly
platform that straddles the gap between tech-savvy BI tools and traditional
productivity apps, creating a solution that’s available to all. QlikView’s
primary goal is to enable business users to leverage their data to discover new
solutions and opportunities, and it does so with a clean and straightforward
interface. This self-service tool allows for data analytics, insights and
existing data manipulation. Visually appealing dashboards present data in an
easy-to-understand format.
5.
TABLEAU
Tableau’s intuitive BI software
makes it easy for anyone, regardless of technological know-how, to connect with
data and create visual reports. The platform is as simple to use as Excel, but
is very feature rich – shareable dashboards, interactive reporting, flexible
features, and scalability make for one-click access to any data you need to
analyze. This software lets you choose between the on-premise Tableau server or
cloud-based Tableau Online. It’s one click reporting gets the answers in
seconds.
For the weighted decision matrix,
we will be using the following criteria:
1. Data sourcing: The crux of analysis of any BI tool is its
ability of fetching data. Data can be from text files, csv files, databases,
servers, other ERP systems, etc. The popularity of the BI tool is majorly based
on the number of sources from which it can access data and the ease of
connecting the data sources to the BI tool.
2. Cost per user/business: Cost is an important
component in selecting a business tool. Costs are of course relative in nature
and vary depending on the size and complexity of the business model of the user
or the company using it. Yet, we can score the tool based on the cost-to-features
model that the tool proposes.
3. Filtering and visualization: The user should be able to
drill down to the lowest level of granularity of the data they are seeking. This
can be achieved using selection criteria, filters, sorting algorithms, and the
acumen of the software in understanding the requirement. The next step of data
filtering and sorting is to display it in a way that is easily understood to
the business in order to make informed decisions. If a tool allows the user to
see data in terms of graphs or charts and then allow drilling down, that tool
is intuitive.
4. Reporting: An important requirement of any BI tool is
its ability to make useful reports. Reports should be customizable based on
user selected criteria and the tool should allow exporting reports in different
formats. The reports should be easy to read and should provide graphical
outputs along with the basic rows and columns matrix. The tool should be able
to export these reports onto everyday products like Microsoft Excel, Word, PDF,
etc.
5. Deployment: The BI tool in question should be compatible
with a variety of operating systems as well as enterprise level ERP systems like
SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc. It should be easy for the users to integrate the
tool into their current systems without having to go through a major shift in
the business process.
Based on these criteria, we now
use the weighted analysis model to determine the standing of each of the BI
tools described above.
For reference, we would be using
the weighted analysis model on these BI tools:
4.
QLIKVIEW
5.
TABLEAU
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