There are words and phrases that gain acceptance in the business market while others… not so much. Business Intelligence, or BI, is one of those that has gained acceptance while others, such as knowledge management, have had mixed reactions. One of the key aspects of business intelligence is the management of knowledge and big data analysis. Companies produce mountains of data and if they don’t make use of it, all of it can go to waste.
Having the right BI software is one way to ensure that all of that data doesn’t go to waste. It can also assist with quite a few other things. Let’s take a closer look at some of the options when it comes to business intelligence software.
Best of the Best Software
The 3 most popular BI softwares are:
- Tableau
- QlikView
- Microsoft Power BI
All three of these options give you complete mobile access and they all offer visual querying. Not all of them do it with the same functionality. They also all offer storyboarding and feature geospatial integration. They all have their drawbacks, too.
Tableau is not the one for you if you are looking for a full-fledged solution for BI. In fact, beyond the front-end operations, it does very little. You might not be completely satisfied with the information management features.
QlikView has a learning curve that is quite steep. It has a vast range of BI tools that can take you quite a while to learn, but it does come with a vast assortment of how-to guides, tutorials, and the like.
Microsoft Power gives you a broad analytic landscape when you combine it with other offerings from Microsoft, such as R–analytics, real-time data streaming, SQL Server Analysis, and Azure. However, Power by itself does not offer extensive visualizations or analytics for your segmentation analysis.
Business Intelligence and Outsourcing
You might not be aware of it, but these two things can go hand in hand. BI is also thought of as decision support computing and it should not be considered as implementing a new tool anymore, or as only the mass production of reports or information. Rather, think of it as offering customers a concept in which each indicator has to have an impact and make an effect on your business. Outsourcing the designing of your bespoke BI can do quite a few things for you. It can:
Consult and analyze your data and design a data warehouse fulfillment while in the design stage. In the build stage, outsourcing can help with the collection of data, consolidation and cleansing and with the production of reports. Finally, in the run stage, it can host your data, while providing a scalable and flexible platform that can be accessed with complete security no matter where you go.
Of course, no every business can afford bespoke software, and so the ones that are already on the market will also work quite nicely.
Small Businesses and BI
Yes, small businesses can also benefit from using this type of software. In essence, business intelligence is simply looking at the data you have in order to make better, more informed business decisions. When you look at it like that, you will know that even without the software, you are making decisions using business intelligence on a daily basis. The software just puts the data together in more effective ways so that we can see all aspects of it instead of just seeing it in one way. Here is a look at some of the ways that it can benefit small businesses:
- It can assist small businesses when it comes to being able to increase market share or to compete with larger businesses.
- Vendors are now making software that is both affordable and easy to use.
- Business intelligence vendors are beginning to cater to a crowd that is younger.
- The use of the cloud means that non–IT users are now able to be in the driver’s seat.
- BI is yet another thing that is becoming increasingly mobile.
You need to realize that, whether you have a large or small business, Excel is no longer your only option. The other thing is that if you do not have access to quality data that is operational, BI software probably isn’t the thing for you to avoid failure modes and effects.
Preparing For BI Software
If you are thinking of bringing business intelligence software to your business, you need to be prepared. Thankfully, there are online business intelligence courses available that will help you make the best corporate resolution for your organization’s future. These business courses will help you to become familiar with the fundamentals of business analytics. This will help you to use only the best analytic strategies for business to improve your business performance. Make sure that you prepare and take a course or two to get the most out of your BI software.
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