business intelligence tools power bi manufacturers

Choosing the right business intelligence (BI) tool for your company can be a time-consuming process with many options that have similar features. A smart strategy for evaluating tools like business intelligence software is to have a clear understanding of why your business needs it and a solid set of criteria to help you review your choices.

Since the main function of BI is to help you analyze data for decision making, this is an important question. As you evaluate business intelligence tools, you’ll need to know details about your data. Is it structured or unstructured or both? Will your business intelligence software deploy your analytics on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid of the two? What pre-built connectors does it offer?

Much like with data integration, BI tools work seamlessly with software that users are already familiar with such as Microsoft Excel. Make a list of the commonly used tools that your BI software needs to connect with—don’t forget to include third-party apps, plug-ins, extensions, and connectors that your business regularly uses.

These are important factors to consider when evaluating business intelligence tools, especially if you work in a regulated industry like financial services or healthcare. Make sure your BI software includes features that: Allow IT to create a secure, governed environment.

Because business intelligence is versatile and can be used across the organization, many companies prefer a combination of self-service and enterprise BI tools that work for technical and non-technical users.

Next, take a look at how findings are presented through data visualization and data storytelling. These features typically use charts, graphs, and maps to surface insights that are hard to see on a spreadsheet. The best data visualization tools have an intuitive interface that lets users explore and present data in multiple ways, regardless of their technical skills.

For example, some BI tools let users make annotations right in the software, quickly embed reports into messaging and collaboration tools, and set permissions to distribute findings inside and outside of your organization.

Mobile features provide access to real-time data and allow you to make data-informed decisions on the fly when working remotely. Talk to your employees who work in the field or distributed locations to find out what level of mobile access they need. It could range from basic viewing of dashboards and reports to creating and editing analytics with mobile tools. You should also make sure the tool’s features are aligned to your company’s broader mobile strategy.

The goal is to find a cost-effective solution that provides business intelligence tools to your organization at the scale you need and has flexibility to grow with your organization.

As you evaluate BI tools, look for customer stories and case studies based on company size and industry. As you review customer challenges and solutions, you’ll get a better idea of whether or not this tool is effective for businesses that are similar to yours. You may also discover new ways to use business intelligence after reading the success stories of other organizations.

The fundamental purpose of leveraging Business Intelligence tools is to understand trends and derive actionable insights from your data, allowing you to make more strategic and tactical business decisions. The popular features offered by Business Intelligence tools are Visual Analytics, Data Visualization, KPI Scorecards, and Interactive Dashboarding to name a few. They also allow users to leverage predictive analytics and automated reporting features on a self-service basis.

Microsoft offers several Business Intelligence tools to cater to your needs. In this article, you will learn about the 4 key Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools: Power BI, Power BI Embedded, Azure Analysis Services, and Azure Synapse Services in great detail.

In layman’s terms, Business Intelligence tools are application software, involved in collating and processing unstructured data from external and internal systems. The results obtained from Business Intelligence tools help increase operational efficiency, identify market trends, zero in on new revenue potentials, and identify new business opportunities.

Business Intelligence tools like Power BI are generally used for business reporting of data and simple querying of results, but they can also combine various data analysis applications like OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), Cloud and software as a service Business Intelligence, real-time Business Intelligence, and location intelligence to name a few.

Microsoft BI is a technology-driven Business Intelligence Tool developed by Microsoft that helps analyze and visualize raw data to produce actionable insights. It integrates Business Analytics, Data Visualization, and Best Practices to assist organizations in making data-driven decisions. It provides an easy-to-use interface for end-users to create their own Reports and Dashboards. You can leverage it to extract data from various Cloud and On-premise systems and build Dashboards that track the most important metrics to you and your business. Apple, Exxon Mobil, Walmart, and Toyota Motor North America are some of the prominent names that leverage Microsoft Power BI for Business Intelligence.

The Microsoft Business Intelligence Suite is a suite of tools designed to make data processing easier. The complete range of tools helps businesses direct data through IT systems, create expansive reports on the current status of various departments, and identify and isolate data. It includes SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services), SSIL (SQL Server Integration Services), and SSAS (SQL Server Analytical Services). Microsoft Business Intelligence platform functions by moving data from various disparate data sources to a centralized architecture where the rudimentary data can be reconfigured. Here are a few benefits of Microsoft Business Intelligence tools:

Elimination of Manual Tasks: Previously, Business Management relied on static presentations and spreadsheets. Microsoft Business Intelligence tools eliminate the endless amount of columns & rows and facilitate the automation of processes. Be it a dashboard with real-time data or interactive presentations, Microsoft Business Intelligence tools have got you covered.

Reduction of Business Costs: Microsoft Business Intelligence tools enable faster analysis, planning, and reporting processes for customer behavior analysis, sales planning, and real-time optimization. Since these tools bolster the efficiency of your operations, it helps you cut back on costs and make more profitable adjustments.

Key Predictions: Microsoft Business Intelligence tools allow any business user to generate actionable insights for future scenarios through the incorporation of forecast engines. This helps companies adjust current strategies to deliver the best possible results.

Easy Data Access: By providing data access to every individual within a company, Microsoft Business Intelligence tools significantly reduce the need to request reports from the IT department. A self-service BI approach as mentioned here allows enterprises to gain a competitive edge. Since every employee is equipped with the appropriate data analytics skills, it helps save the company’s resources and time while easing the burden on the IT department. This frees up more time which can be focused on more critical tasks.

A fully managed No-code Data Pipeline platform likeHevo helps you integrate data from 100+ data sources(including 40+ Free Data Sources) to Power BI in real-time in an effortless manner. Hevo with its minimal learning curve can be set up in just a few minutes allowing the users to load data without having to compromise performance. Its strong integration with umpteenth sources provides users with the flexibility to bring in data of different kinds, in a smooth fashion without having to code a single line.

Power BI is not the name of a single application, but the umbrella term for a collection of applications. The types of Microsoft BI tools are explained in detail.

Power BI Desktop: It is the most basic application. As the name suggests, it can be installed in standalone mode on a desktop. It is offered free of cost and can be connected to various data sources. It enables users to analyze data and derive insights from the data. It can connect to on-premise as well as cloud-based data sources. Power BI Desktop is not available via the web and is an independent stand-alone analysis tool. Beyond the ad-hoc analysis tool use case, it also acts as the development environment for creating reports and dashboards that can be deployed later.

Power BI Report Server is a web application that can be deployed on-premise to let the users in an organization view the reports and dashboards. The reports and dashboards that are designed through the Power BI Desktop can be deployed in the report server. It supports a level of interactivity for the reports and dashboards.

Power BI Service is the cloud-based business intelligence tool that is available based on a subscription from Microsoft. It lets the users take advantage of Power BI Analytics features without having to spend time with deployment or maintenance. It can connect the most common on-premise and cloud-based data sources. In the back end, it works based on Microsoft Azure compute clusters. This enables it to handle large data volumes and streaming data. It is offered based on different subscription plans like premium and pro depending upon the feature sets.

Power BI Mobile is Microsoft’s attempt to bring Power BI to mobile devices. In the back end, it also makes use of the Power BI Service. All the actual data processing happens in cloud servers and the mobile application serves as the front end for displaying interactive dashboards and reports.

Power BI Embedded helps users to enable Power BI features in their custom web applications. It enables developers to control the user experience while letting their customers have access to the power of analytics in a familiar environment.

Microsoft Business Intelligence tools provide a convenient solution to handle the vast amount of crucial Business Intelligence information continually by modern companies. In this section, you will get a glimpse of the 4 key Business Intelligence tools that are a part of the Microsoft Business Intelligence Suite.

Microsoft Power BI is the top Microsoft Business Intelligence tool that is a mix of SaaS, Cloud-Based, and Desktop tools. The central focus of Power BI is data mining, exploring, and reporting. Power BI is mainly used for achieving reporting tasks through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The elegance of Power BI comes from its near-limitless ability to mine data from diverse sources. It can extract insights from traditional databases as easily as it can extract data from newer SaaS architectures, for instance, GitHub and Zendesk.

Convenient Reporting of Data: You can start working on building elegant reports once the right data sources have been mined and relevant insights extracted. Power BI also supports third-party custom visuals.

Transformation of Data: Once you have put aside the sources you want to import, Power BI gives you a preview window. In this preview window, you can choose columns or other classification features for better organization of data. The Query Editor allows you to change, shape, configure and restructure data in various ways.

Discovery of Data: The primary purpose of Power BI is data mining. It looks for information in as many sources as instructed. You can do this by either importing data to Power BI or leveraging Direct Query, based on the size of your desired report.

Creation of Dashboards: A key proponent of collaboration is a dashboard. It allows a user to view and interact with the report. Power BI is flexible enough to let you create a live report feed so that all memos and documents get uploaded to the dashboard.

Power BI is built on the back of Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform and infrastructure. The Power BI service architecture is based on two clusters: the Back End cluster and the Web Front End (WFE) cluster. The WFE cluster focuses on the initial authentication and connection to the Power BI service, while the Back End cluster deals with all the subsequent user interactions.

User Identities are stored and managed by Power BI by utilizing Azure Active Directory (AAD). The data storage is managed by Azure BLOB and the storage of metadata is managed by leveraging Azure SQL Database.

Power BI Embedded is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that enables developers to embed dashboards and reports to an application for their customers. Power BI Embedded allows you to build top-notch analytics without having to develop them yourself. With Power BI Embedded, you can reduce developer resources by automating the management, monitoring, and deployment of analytics.

The embedding is carried out through an hourly metered, capacity-based model. Coupled with a REST API, Power BI Embedded lets you develop elegant apps in any language. Here are a few features of Power BI Embedded:

Control User Experience: With hundreds of visuals to choose from, Power BI Embedded ensures you have full control over how to deliver analytics to your users. It does this through several actions like:Turning on Q&A sessions to ensure users get their answers immediately.

Faster Business Growth: Power BI Embedded helps you create differentiated offers, new revenue streams, and data products to improve customer interactions and get to market faster.

Power BI Embedded takes user security very seriously. This is evident from the following features of Power BI Embedded that ensure a secure and robust front when it comes to data security:

The total cost of Power BI Embedded depends on the number of nodes deployed and the type of node you choose for your operations. The node types differ based on RAM and the number of V-cores as follows:

Azure Analysis Services can be used to define metrics and secure your data in a trusted tabular data model. This data model provides a faster and easier way for users to perform ad hoc data analysis using tools like Excel and Power BI. Here are a few key features of Azure Analysis Services:

Azure Analysis Services offers three tiers to choose from. The pricing for the three tiers will depend on the chosen tier and instance. Within each tier, the prices will differ by QPUs, processing power, and memory size.

Integrated AI and BI: For a complete end-to-end analytics solution, you can establish integrations with Power BI, Azure Cognitive Services, and Azure Machine Learning.

It’s easy to forget that there are other MS BI solutions when Power BI provides so many distinct data processing functions. It’s part of a collection of tools, many of which can be used as SQL Server Integration Services Sources (SSIS). They help with data extraction and integration in order to provide usable, useful Business Intelligence.

Since it speeds up the transportation of data through Microsoft-based software processes, Azure is a big hit for the company. It’s a flexible architecture that allows you to build Cloud-native apps. Azure may be used in conjunction with Power BI and other apps to create more self-contained data platforms that are not limited by hardware.

It’s also quite simple to learn, which makes it an excellent foundation for new enterprises. Users with little training will find it less daunting because most people have used it at least once before. You can also construct dashboards with it, similar to Power BI. For the reasons stated, the interface isn’t always as seamless, but Excel is still capable of manipulating massive amounts of data.

It’s a good idea to get the PowerPivot add-on if you wish to utilize Microsoft Excel for self-service Business Intelligence. This is how you’ll be able to create custom dashboards. It’s here that you can share and pin reports derived from various data sources. There’s also a robust data reporting feature that allows for complex DAX calculations.

This blog talks in detail about the different Microsoft Business Intelligence tools that the software giant has to offer. For each of the tools discussed here, the features, security measures, and pricing are highlighted.

Power BI is a range of software services, apps, and connectors that work in conjunction to turn unrelated data sources into insights that are cohesive, interactive, and visually immersive. The data may be a collection of cloud-based data warehouses, on-premise hybrid data warehouses, or an Excel spreadsheet. The Power BI tool allows easy connection to the data sources; it also allows the visualization and identification of what is important, and share that with anyone.

The way to use Power BI depends on one’s role in a project or team. People may use Power BI differently according to preference. Power BI can be very flexible for users in this way.

For instance, Power BI can be used for viewing reports and dashboards. It can also be used for number-crunching and generating, publishing, and viewing business reports. A sales professional can use the Power BI phone app to monitor progress on sales quotas and drill into the details of a new sales lead.

Power BI developers may use Power BI APIs to push data into data sets or embed reports and dashboards into custom applications. It is also possible to create a new visual according to one’s ideas and share it with others. One may also implement each element of Power BI at different times depending on the end goal of a project.

As you can see, the usage of the Power BI tool can vary depending on the feature or service that works best for the situation. For example, Power BI Desktop helps in creating reports and statistics, monitoring the progress of manufacturing in a real-time dashboard in the Power BI service, viewing inventory, etc. Based on a Power BI data set, one can also create a paginated report of mailable invoices.

Power BI is a cloud-based BI service that was released by Microsoft in 2014. It uses years of experience in SQL Server, Access, MS Excel, etc. It enables businesses to clean and transform data into meaningful insights by thoroughly analyzing the data.

Power BI has a very easy-to-use interface. Even without prior knowledge and experience in programming, one can use Power BI. Its inbuilt intelligence allows one to choose attributes for reports by suggesting the best reporting element.

Here is an example of how easy is Power BI. After choosing the right data source, when opting for sales and category, the tool will identify the column chart on its own. Similarly, for sales and location, it will pull out the map chart automatically.

The user interface (UI) in Power BI is very simple and easily connects to the data source. On selecting the data source, a simple drag and drop allows the selection of attributes for the report.

Additionally, QA makes it extremely convenient and easy for one to have their written questions answered by Power BI through values or graphs based on the question asked. For example, a question like “What was this year’s revenue by month?” will return a graph showcasing the monthly revenue.

Power BI was built based on the founding platform of MS Excel and follows a similar approach for designing reports. Excel is a widely used software around the world, which makes Power BI easy to pick up as well. Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access database served as the foundation for

Power BI comes with options that make it really easy to collaborate. Users can collaborate with others to compile interactive reports and dashboards in app workspaces.One can even publish them to a larger audience. Sharing these dashboards or reports with a smaller audience is even possible over the mobile app with Power BI.

The reports can be printed by the user as well as exported in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. The reports and dashboards can be published to public websites and anyone in the world can access and interact with them.

Power BI Desktop is available for free and the user can create simple or complex reports and dashboards. Not only that, but the pro licenses of Power BI are quite affordable at US$10 per month). For a larger audience, Power BI has a premium option allowing customization of cost based on usage.

Power BI comes with a wide array of connectors for data sources like MySQL database, SQL Server database, Oracle database, IBM Informix, Microsoft Excel, IBM DB2 database, MailChimp, Facebook, GitHub, IBM Netezza, PostgreSQL database, SAP HANA, Sybase database, Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Analysis services database, Azure Blob Storage, Salesforce, and many more.

Visualization:Microsoft’s SDK in Power BI contains a huge library to create custom visualizations. This allows the users to customize the UI as per their requirements.

Data shaping:Power BI’s Query Editor tool is very flexible and comes with a ton of features. It is self-documenting and offers the opportunity to go deeper in the DAX language for data modeling.

Data modeling:The data modeling options offered by Power BI are very efficient. It is derived from experiences in SQL database and Cube technology, and this makes Power BI a powerful solution.

If you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant again, you will see that there are quite a lot of competitors of Power BI such as IBM Watson Analytics, Google Analytics, Sisense, and ZOHO reports to name a few; but, Power BI stands tall in the market mainly because of its ease of use and prompt help available from Microsoft.

Ultimately, Power BI is able to drive better decision-making in businesses through its ability to provide insights in visually impressive and interactive reports. It established a data-driven culture with BI for everyone. Additionally, it keeps the data secure and includes end-to-end encryption and sensitivity labeling as well as provides real-time access monitoring.

We’ve researched the best business intelligence software according to user popularity and major features. Compare the top BI tools in the chart below, and read on to learn more about how these data analytics tools can improve your enterprise outcomes. For a custom set of recommendations of the best BI software for your company, try our Product Selection Tool at the top of the page.

Business intelligence (BI) software is a set of business analytics solutions used by companies to retrieve, analyze, and transform data into useful business insights, usually within easy-to-read visualization like charts, graphs, and dashboards. Examples of the best BI tools include data visualization, data warehouses, interactive dashboards, and BI reporting tools. In contrast to competitive intelligence that analyzes data from outside sources, a BI solution pulls internal data that the business produces into an analytics platform for deep insights into how different parts of the business affect one another.

As big data — the tendency for companies to collect, store, and mine their business data — has gained in prominence, so has the popularity of BI software. Companies generate, track, and compile business data at a scale never before seen. And the ability to integrate cloud software directly with proprietary systems has further driven the need to combine multiple data sources and take advantage of data preparation tools. But all this data is nothing if we can’t make sense of it and use it to improve business outcomes.

Business intelligence has traditionally taken the form of quarterly or yearly reports that report on a defined set of key performance indicators (KPIs), but today’s BI reporting software is backed by data analytics tools that work continuously and at light speed. These insights can help a company choose a course of action in a matter of minutes.

BI software interprets a sea of quantifiable customer and business actions and returns queries based on patterns in the data. BI comes in many forms and spans many different types of technology. This business intelligence tools comparison of software vendors breaks down the three major stages data must go through to provide business intelligence, and provides considerations for purchasing BI tools for different sized businesses.

Business intelligence tools and platforms come in several forms for varying business needs. Companies looking to provide data services to business users will find self service BI software will meet the needs of most of their users. Data visualization tools are helpful for teams that are dipping their toes into data analytics but may not have lots of extra development resources available. Data warehousing tools provide the underlying infrastructure that can house and cleanse data before serving it up through visualizations. And BI tools provide end-to-end dashboard tools to store, cleanse, visualize, and publish data.

Some business intelligence platforms pull data for analysis directly from the source applications via a native API connection or webhook. Other business intelligence tools require the use of a cloud data storage system to aggregate diverse data sets in a common location. Small businesses, single departments, or individual users may find that a native connection works well, but large corporations, enterprise companies, and companies that generate large data sets will need a more comprehensive business intelligence setup.

Regardless of whether businesses choose to store their data in a data warehouse, a cloud database, an on-premise server, or run queries on the source system, data analysis and the resulting insights make the field appealing to business users. Data analytics tools vary in terms of complexity, but the general method of combining large amounts of normalized data to identify patterns remains consistent across business intelligence platforms.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of BI, advanced analytics features like predictive and prescriptive analytics function as a subset of data mining. The tools use existing data sets and algorithmic models to help companies make better business decisions.

Unstructured data can’t be stored in neatly categorized sets of similarly-formatted data rows or columns, which makes it impossible for traditional data mining software to analyze. However, this data is often crucial to understanding business outcomes. With so much data in unstructured form, text analytics should be a key consideration when researching the best business intelligence tools.

Natural language processing (NLP) software, also known as text analytics software, combs large sets of unstructured data to find hidden patterns. NLP is particularly interesting for businesses that work with social media. Using the right software mix of data ingestion and AI, a business can set up rules to track keywords or phrases — a business’s name, for example — to find patterns in how customers use that language. Natural language processing tools also measure customer sentiment, provide actionable insight into lifetime customer value, and learn customer trends that can inform future product lines.

For example, a supply chain’s data metrics can include location, SKU, date of purchase, salesperson, and expiration date. OLAP tools can provide the analysts with a clear picture of any combination of these metrics. That provides analysts with the power to surface insights that would otherwise be hidden within two or three-dimensional spreadsheets.

Not every business user needs full access to everything available in the dashboard. Most employees only need access to a dashboard of their most important metrics. It gives at-a-glance access to a range of predefined visualizations. While each company can define its own dashboards based on custom business needs, some possible dashboard tools provide:

Some BI solutions also offer interactive dashboard tools where business users can manipulate the data visualizations, dig for a more detailed view, and zoom out for more context.

BI applications promise to clarify data analytics tools for the most non-technical of employees, which has driven the demand for embedded BI. These features let companies build data visualizations within their cloud BI software, and dynamically serve those visualizations to internal and external customers within company apps.

Visualizations, reports, and dashboards that are embedded in a company webpage or cloud app save companies thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars they would otherwise use to build BI reporting tools and analytics dashboards from scratch to track business performance. These tools now give business users access to custom, plug-and-play visualizations, greatly speeding the time to market.

QlikView business intelligence from Qlik is a powerful tool trusted by huge corporations such as Cisco, Raymond James, and KitchenAid, and it’s easy to see why. User-friendly interfaces and flexible customization make the tool an ideal self-service BI for your team to use, and users report excellent customer support and training.

Best suited for enterprise-level businesses, Birst offers a user-friendly experience for both developers and end-users, including a complete API that allows you to integrate other tools and automate simple tasks. Birst also provides both governance and agility in its platform, allowing for centralized, controlled data while also letting you source data from multiple points across your business.

Standout feature: Birst is one of the only BI tools that offers governance and agility in one platform, giving companies the power to keep a single source of truth for data while remaining nimble.

Looker is another bi tool that’s grown in popularity in recent years. The tool offers easy and attractive reporting, but unlike many other BI tools, Looker updates dashboards regularly, providing you with the most up-to-date information in real time.

As a pioneer among business intelligence tools, MicroStrategy was one of the first BI tools to be picked up by large corporations after McDonald’s signed a $10 million contract with the company in 1992. The tool continues to deliver today, offering fast and comprehensive reporting tools and best-in-class security features.

While it is best known as one of the top business intelligence tools on the market, BOARD also offers performance management, analytics, and data discovery solutions all in one platform. Combine its all-in-one approach to business intelligence with clear data visualization tools, and it’s easy to see why BOARD is among our top picks for business intelligence solutions.

Consistently recognized as one of the best BI solutions around, Microsoft Power BI offers flexible plans for businesses of all sizes and integrates with your Microsoft office tools such as Excel. In addition to sourcing data from a variety of cloud and on-premise sources, Power BI can also collect data from IoT devices.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are computing trends that have touched nearly every corner of the technology industry because of their abilities to spot patterns and learn from existing data. BI in particular is ripe for the growth of ML products because the tools thrive in high data-density environments. AI and ML algorithms can be used on existing data to learn, predict, and better forecast for businesses.

Cloud computing — and the databases that it produces — give companies thousands of daily data points to train machine learning algorithms. Companies that use BI will find that data integration between AI tools and their cloud data warehouses is often the logical next step.

In-memory database processing utilizes RAM instead of disk or hard drive processing in order to read information. Accessing information in this manner increases the application performance exponentially. The increasing power of RAM in our cloud or on-premise computing environments coupled with the demand for more agile systems means this software has a large stake in the future of BI. Dramatic drops in memory prices are making it a more popular option than running data analysis through multidimensional databases and cubes.

More and more, BI users aren’t IT staff; they’re employees with a standard amount of technological savvy that want to harness the power of cloud BI to get a competitive advantage.

Comparing all the features these tools offer side by side can be a daunting task, but we can help you shave hours off your software search. Contact us today or fill out the form at the top of the page to start the process. We’ll send you a set of recommendations that fit your feature requirements and data needs.

There’s a broad spectrum of business intelligence (BI) tools out there, from highly technical and powerful platforms to user-friendly and lightweight dashboard builders. Choosing the right one depends on where your business is today, where you want it to end up, who needs access to the data, your tech stack, and so on.

Microsoft’s Power BI is a business intelligence tool whose main differentiator is the fact that it sits within the larger Microsoft ecosystem, integrating with Excel, Azure, Access, and more. While these integrations are a plus for many, Power BI has proven to be difficult for some to learn—and it has some unique quirks.

It’s not the easiest business intelligence tool to set up and maintain, so teams with little capacity to spare may want to look elsewhere. Once set up, it has a reputation for being more malleable than other massive business intelligence tools. One user on Quora used this comparison: Tableau is like iOS, while Power BI is like Android. The result is good modeling functionality that, again, requires some expertise to set up and utilize.

If you’re fully fluent in Excel, you won’t have to work too hard to understand Power BI. As Alainia Conrad of SelectHub says, “Users with experience in [Excel] will be able to adapt to [Power BI].”

Users of Power BI tend to praise its ability to handle the flow of data as well as its modeling capabilities. In their comparison between Power BI and Tableau, user Grovbolle on Reddit says, “Power BI is very strong on the data modeling and infrastructure, a bit less on visualization.”

Power BI has a steep learning curve, and it requires expert knowledge to set up. “You need to work with an IT person to interface Power BI with existing systems,” says Shreshthi Mehta in her TrustRadius review. On G2, Xinito L. says, “This is not an application for amateurs.”

It also has some quirks that’ll cost you time, as the good people of Reddit are quick to point out in r/PowerBI. Here is the top-rated post of all time in that community:

Jason Harris at Panoply explains it this way: “While [Chartio] may not have all the functionality that your data analysts are looking for, it’s well suited to business users.” On G2, one executive in financial services says, “[Chartio] has relatively fewer features than the other primary tools out there, like Tableau. I think in part, that’s what enables it to be user-friendly, so it’s a trade-off rather than a downside.”

Looker is a powerful tool for modeling data using its proprietary language, LookerML, that has limited visualization capabilities and data inputs. Google Cloud Platform acquired it in 2019, moving it into the Google walled garden, which means it may get combined with Google Data Studio in the near future,as explained in-depth here.

LookML provides a powerful modeling layer that some veterans enjoy. On Reddit,user rlaxx1 says, “The modeling layer allows you to basically turn SQL into object-oriented code.”

Google Data Studio has perhaps the lowest bar of entry for the business intelligence tools listed here. But it lacks deeper data functionality, relying on other Google services like BigQuery to fill in the gaps.

Tableau Desktop is the standalone data visualization tool from Tableau, a legacy giant among other business intelligence tools. Tableau was one of the first BI tools to lower the bar for entry into data visualization but still remains out of reach for the average business user due to its older feature set designed for large, expert data teams.

It’s very flexible in how you manipulate and use data, making it a powerful data visualization tool. One Capterra reviewer says, “The quality and variety of graphics that can be created with Tableau is vast, and that’s the best part of it.”

While Tableau has some very good legacy BI features, like visualization, it lacks some important features other business intelligence tools have innovated that have become fairly commonplace. Tristan Handy, CEO & founder of Fishtown Analytics, puts it this way: “Tableau, for all its impressive visualization capabilities, can’t really deal with production data: its drag-and-drop capabilities just don’t allow users to express the complicated business logic that is required in real-world BI.”

In particular, Domo targets the busy executive with its mobile-first philosophy and its segmentation tools by team. It’s good for large companies looking for data distribution over data analysis that can afford the sticker price and the time spent to get Domo’s system fully up and running.

Its laser focus on dashboard tools makes it a lifesaver for some, but a major pain for those looking todive deep into data. For companies with a solid data infrastructure already in place, it may be a good fit to help business users visualize data, but it’s not for those who need a tool dedicated to data.

It can also leave behind power users, as Peter Weinberg of Panoply says: “Advanced SQL users may find it tricky to learn the SQL-but-not-quite style data interface, but it’s not designed for them.”

All the business intelligence tools listed here have some form of a free trial, so it’s easy to dive in and try them out. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but we encourage you to try out as many as you can. We guarantee one will feel much more natural to your business than the others.

Transforming your business into an insight-driven operation starts with a modern business intelligence tool, and choosing the right tool is critical for success. Not all BI tools are created equal. To make the right choice, organizations must consider how business intelligence will drive value, which users will be doing the driving, and the full spectrum of costs associated with deploying the solution.

Before getting into feature/function discussions, make sure you’re considering business intelligence tools that offer a solid foundation to support data-driven digital transformation. At the core of this foundation is intuitive data access, robust governance, and broad deployment options. An effective BI tools comparison process will help you gauge the ability of any solution to effectively democratize data and drive data literacy throughout your business.

Power BI is a cloud-based business intelligence tool by Microsoft. It consolidates data from different sources into one platform. Then, it lets you use that data to create reports and dashboards that help you visualize and understand what’s happening with your business.

Power BI can consolidate data across different sources and software programs, even if the programs aren’t integrated. For example, you can pull sales data from Intuitive and financial data from an accounting system, like QuickBooks, and merge it into a sales management dashboard.

BI tools make it simpler to corral the right data and visualize it in ways that enable us to understand what it means. But how simple that process gets, and how you can visualize the data depends on the tool: Picking the right one for your needs becomes important.

Board International combines three tools in one: BI, predictive analytics and performance management. While it aims to offer something for everyone, it predominately focuses on finance-oriented BI. It has modules for finance (planning, consolidation), HR (skills mapping, workforce planning), marketing (social media analysis, loyalty and retention monitoring), supply chain (delivery optimization, supplier management), sales (cross-selling and up-selling analysis) and IT (KPIs, service levels). The company is Swiss, but the software is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Italian. The latest version of its platform has replaced its multidimensional online analytical processing (MOLAP) approach with an in-memory calculation engine.

Domo is a cloud-based platform focused on business-user-deployed dashboards and ease-of-use. It offers business intelligence tools tailored to various industries (such as financial services, health care, manufacturing and education) and roles (including CEOs, sales, BI professionals and IT workers). CIOs might start by checking out how it handles data from AWS, Jira, GitHub, or New Relic before looking at how over 500 other integrations can help the rest of the enterprise.

Dundas BI from Dundas Data Visualization is used predominantly for creating dashboards and scorecards, the company’s historic strengths, but it can also perform standard and ad-hoc reporting. Analysis and visualization are performed through a web interface that can adapt to users’ skills: Power users and standard users see different features. The latest version has a new in-memory engine, a new natural language query capability, and adds point-and-click trend analysis, support for Linux, and an application development environment for customized analytic applications. Dundas BI has been tailored for 19 industries, including clean tech, mining and construction, in addition to the usual suspects such as banking and healthcare. It sells to large enterprises but specializes in embedded BI.

With the Power BI Desktop app for Windows, users can analyze and visualize data from local or cloud sources, publishing their reports to the Power BI platform. It offers data preparation, visual-based discovery, interactive dashboards, and augmented analytics. The free Power BI Desktop version suits isolated users; the Pro version makes collaborative analysis easier, for a monthly fee, leveraging Microsoft Office365, SharePoint and Teams to control access to raw data and published reports. For enterprises that want to go all-in, the Premium tier makes self-service data prep possible with prebuilt connectors to corporate data held in Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or third-party sources such as Salesforce.

MicroStrategy targets the enterprise BI market in a broad range of industries with cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployment options. It features a drag-and-drop interface to help users create customized data visualizations and build personalized, real-time dashboards. MicroStrategy touts federated analytics that allow customers to leverage existing investments in data sources such as Tableau, Qlik and Power BI, and blend the data to build reports and insights. It also features enterprise semantics graph, which indexes data assets to enrich data silos with location intelligence and real-time telemetry. MicroStrategy offers a free, 30-day full platform trial.

Oracle has spent the past several years bulking out its Oracle Analytics Cloud offering, launched in 2014 as an outgrowth of its flagship Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition suite. In 2020, it added a Cloud HCM offering to provide self-service workforce analytics to HR executives, analysts and line-of-business leaders. Oracle has focused on making its cloud offering intuitive and user-friendly, with powerful reporting and machine learning features. Key features include data preparation, data connectors, visualizations, predictive analytics, a native mobile app, and support for embedded analytics.

Sisense’s BI software stack covers everything from the database through ETL and analytics to visualization — and it claims its In-Chip database engine is faster even than in-memory databases. It is best known for embedded BI uses. The latest version adds new machine learning capabilities. Sisense is available on premises or in the cloud. There are solutions for finance, marketing, sales, HR and IT, as well as customer service and operations and logistics departments. Sisense also makes it possible to offer the analytics tools to users outside the enterprise by embedding them in web applications. Sisense acquired Periscope Data in September 2019 and is in the process of integrating advanced analytics capabilities gained through the acquisition.

Formerly known as Einstein Analytics, Salesforce rebranded the offering as Tableau CRM in October 2020. Tableau CRM integrates Einstein Analytics’ advanced analytics capabilities — including predictive and prescriptive analytics — into Tableau’s full range of offerings. The goal is to extend self-service access to data to users across the business. Users can build predictive models for their data. There are industry-specific templates, and tailored tools for sales, service, marketing, and IT departments. The first fruit of the newly integrated offering is Einstein Discovery in Tableau, an AI and machine learning platform for predictive and prescriptive analytics. More integrations are planned. Salesforce is working on connecting Tableau natively to the Einstein Analytics data store, which will take advantage of the performance optimizations and native Salesforce security integration. That’s planned for release later in 2021.

Tibco Spotfire is a self-service, AI-powered data visualization platform for dashboards, interactive visualization, data preparation, and workflow. The platform offers machine learning-based data preparation capability to support building complex data models. It is deployed across many verticals, including financial services, energy, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, government, travel and logistics, healthcare, and life sciences. The latest version adds support for Python.

Power BI is a Microsoft business analysis platform, launched in 2015. The launch of ecosystem services and data refinement applications has ushered in a new era in Market Intelligence.

The launch of ecosystem services and data refinement applications has ushered in a new era in Market Intelligence. That’s where Business Intelligence tools (or just BI tools), like Microsoft Power BI come in, one of the main consoles of integrated data analytics solutions on the market.

It was the twilight of market intelligence tools like Microsoft Power BI. It has now become widely used around the world and a precursor of a new era in Business Intelligence. Say goodbye to spreadsheets.

Business intelligence (BI) tools are types of application software that collect and process large amounts of unstructured data from internal and external systems, including books, journals, documents, health records, images, files, email, video, and other business sources.

While not as flexible as business analytics tools, BI tools collect data to help users find information through queries. These tools also prep data for analysis, allowing you to create reports, dashboards, and data visualizations.

The results give both employees and managers the power to accelerate and improve decision making, increase operational efficiency, pinpoint new revenue potentials, identify market trends, report genuine KPIs, and identify new business opportunities.

Typically used for more straightforward research and reporting, BI tools can combine a broad set of data analysis applications including ad hoc analysis and querying, enterprise reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), mobile BI, real-time BI, operational BI, cloud and SaaS BI, open-source BI, collaborative BI, and location intelligence.

They usually also include data visualization software, as well as tools for building BI dashboards and performance scorecards that display business metrics and KPIs to bring company data to life in easy-to-understand visuals.

Microsoft Power BI is a market intelligence tool hosted on Azure, which is part of the so-called self-service BI solutions, types of cross-platform tools with countless integrations that accelerate business decisions.

With the data explosion and the Big Data market trend, human processing power has become too slow to ensure competitive advantages – not to mention error-prone.

Self-service BI tools emerged to provide autonomy, allowing companies to find answers quickly without resorting to using more manpower, resources, or external sources, accelerating analysis and streamlining the decision-making process.

Power BI is compatible with more than 60 applications, including Google Analytics, MailChimp, Salesforce, Office Package (Excel lovers won’t be left behind), Git, Virtual Studio, and much more.

In addition to data integration, the Microsoft Power BI tool has arrived to help decision-makers overcome another challenge in relation to data: graphs and indicators that are intelligible to most company employees.

With integrated, interactive dashboards that ditch representing data with formulas or code, Microsoft Power BI has become an icon of data visibility, usability, and transparency, contributing to the consolidation of an analytical culture within teams and organizations.

Microsoft Power BI allows scaling business intelligence, empowering areas of Business Intelligence, and enabling easy integration of data from different sources into visual and organized dashboards.

Power BI is an interactive data visualization software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence.Microsoft Power Platform.

Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Data may be input by reading directly from a database, webpage, or structured files such as spreadsheets, CSV, XML, and JSON.

Power BI provides cloud-based BI (business intelligence) services, known as "Power BI Services", along with a desktop-based interface, called "Power BI Desktop". It offers data warehouse capabilities including data preparation, data discovery, and interactive dashboards.Azure cloud platform.

This application was originally conceived by Thierry D"Hers and Amir Netz of the SQL Server Reporting Services Team at Microsoft.Office 365.Microsoft Excel-based add-ins: Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View. With time, Microsoft also added many additional features like Question and Answers, enterprise-level data connectivity, and security options via Power BI Gateways.

On 14 April 2015, Microsoft announced that they had acquired the Canadian company Datazen, to "complement Power BI, our cloud-based business analytics service, rounding out our mobile capabilities for customers who need a mobile BI solution implemented on-premises and optimized for SQL Server."

In February 2019, Gartner.com, a software reviewing company, confirmed Microsoft as Leader in the "2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform" as a result of the capabilities of Power BI platform.

The SaaS-based (software as a service) online service. This was formerly known as Power BI for Office 365, now referred to as PowerBI.com, or simply Power BI.

Gateways are used to sync external data in and out of Power BI and are required for automated refreshes. In Enterprise mode, can also be used by Power Automate (previously called Flows) and PowerApps in Office 365.

Capacity-based offering that includes flexibility to publish reports broadly across an enterprise, without requiring recipients to be licensed individually per user. Greater scale and performance than shared capacity in the Power BI Service

A Power Query implementation in the cloud that can be used for data transformations to make a common Power BI Dataset that can be made available for several report developers through Microsoft"s Common Data Service. It can be used as an alternative to for example doing transformations in SSAS, and may ensure that several report developers use data that has been transformed in a similar way.

Caldwell, Nick (2016-03-31). "Embed the wow of Power BI in your applications with Microsoft Power BI Embedded!". Powerbi.microsoft.com. Microsoft. Retrieved 4 May 2016.link)

The Power BI Team, Microsoft (2015-07-10). "Announcing Power BI general availability coming July 24th". Microsoft Power BI Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 4 May 2016.link)

Gunnarsson, Ásgeir; Johnson, Michael (2020). Pro Microsoft Power BI Administration: Creating a Consistent, Compliant, and Secure Corporate Platform for Business Intelligence. Apress. ISBN 978-1484265666.

Microsoft Power BI is among the most popular business intelligence tools today. Businesses across the globe rely on it for advanced data visualization and analysis. Microsoft Power BI features enable superior decision making to prevent losses.

It integrates with Google Analytics, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics seamlessly. Power BI is changing the way businesses operate through intelligent data analysis. It is a suite with several services and applications that facilitates multi-source data analysis. Many companies consider Microsoft BI as the most reliable and powerful business intelligence tool.

The software has desktop, SaaS and mobile versions and runs across all devices. Take a look at some of the most important Microsoft Power BI features below.

Instant access to insights —Getting started with Power BI is quite easy and fast. A simple sign up is all you need to gain access to Microsoft Power BI features. It lets you instantly fetch data from sources like Salesforce, Dynamics and Google Analytics. Power BI training for new users is also quite accessible. Business owners find the application quite convenient. All your important business-critical data can be accessed instantly.

Convenient data integration —Users of Microsoft Power BI can effortlessly integrate their data into the software’s environment. Data can be fetched instantly from a wide variety of sources. This is one of the most important Microsoft Power BI features.

You can integrate data from Excel, cloud resources and on-premises databases instantly. You can also integrate Power BI reports in SharePoint Online pages with no code required. All the accumulated data is at your fingertips within the Power BI environment. Metrics are derived effortlessly regardless of the data source. Sharepoint consultant are recommending this features that help you make reports fit into your page

Access reports from anywhere —The Android and iOS mobile platform applications of Power BI lets users access reports from anywhere. Fetch your required dashboards and reports while on-the-go, no matter where you are. You do not need a desktop to gain full access to your business-critical data. The combination of different Microsoft Power BI featureson mobile helps you make important decisions at any time.

Easily access real-time information —The automatic data refresh feature of Microsoft Power BI makes it quite valuable for businesses. Dashboard reports get updated within the application in real-time. This helps you keep track of the details and take action if the need arises. The real-time data update is among the most vital Microsoft Power BI features. Real time data analysis can be a difference-maker factor for your business. The application also lets you customize real-time update alerts.

Data relationships or modeling —Power BI gives business owners the option of defining the relationship between data spread across multiple channels. The process is known as Data Modeling in the software. You can define relationships if two or more tables have a matching column. This is among the most convenient Microsoft Power BI features for business intelligence. It can help to create insightful visualizations, involving multiple data sources. Businesses can identify and define new metrics for calculation with this feature. Power BI consulting is available around the clock to help you get familiar with this feature.

Natural language questions— Users of Power BI can ask natural language questions from their application dashboard. This is one of the unique Microsoft Power BI featuresand saves a lot of time and effort. Asking a natural language question produces a visualization reply. Answers to your questions are offered simply through charts and graphs. Power BI is at the leading edge of business intelligence innovation.

Data Analysis Expression— Data Analysis Expression (DAX) is a Power BI feature that helps to obtain single or multiple values from a data set. This is achieved by performing multiple data calculations with existing data. Expressions and formulas aid in the calculation similar to that in MS Excel. The only difference is, users do not have to deal with numerical values and tables.

Content Packs —Power BI users can create convenient Content Packs for sharing data within their organizations. This consists of embedded queries, dashboard reports, datasets, Power BI objects and data models. Content Packs is one of the standout Microsoft Power BI features. One can instantly share Packs with individuals or groups of users. The data shared through this feature is kept secure in a centralized location.

Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics integration— This is one of the most impactful Microsoft Power BI featuresbeing utilized by numerous business owners today. Swift real-time data access is facilitated through Integration with Azure Stream Analytics and Azure Machine Learning. This integration facilitates predictive business intelligence, enabling more instantaneous decision-making.

These are some of the most crucial Microsoft Power BI features for businesses to utilize. The application greatly simplifies data visualization and business intelligence. It can enhance your workflow and produce better outcomes.

Business Intelligence (BI) is used to transform data into actionable insights that provide value to an organization and help achieve its business goals. Reports and dashboards are the go-to approaches for modern-day business intelligence tools.

At Appsilon, we are big advocates of R and R Shiny, but we also have significant experience with business intelligence tools. Besides, coding custom solutions from scratch (or coding in general) isn’t always the right solution, especially for simple tasks. The custom-built BI solutions have their place, but more on that towards the end of the article.Are you an Excel user who is curious about R Shiny? Read How to Switch from Excel to R Shiny: First Steps

All of the BI tools you’ll see in this article are top contenders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. Because of that, all of them are considered to be go-to solutions for enterprise businesses. Here’s a list of our top BI tools:

In addition to evaluating these tools, we’ll also answer the question of whether you should develop custom dashboards from scratch, and when would be an appropriate time for that.

PowerBI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn unrelated sources into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights – at least according toMicrosoft.

PowerBI is one of the most widely recognized BI tools due to its intuitive interface, various visualization options, and because it looks good by default. Even if something isn’t supported,PowerBI can easily connect to R and Python.

All of these options and plenty of other more technical details made PowerBI a tool of choice for giant corporations, such asWalmart,Apple, AndExxonMobil.

PowerBI is easy to get started with. You’ll only need a couple of crash courses to create impressive data visualizations. Don’t let this fool you though –PowerBI is tough to master, as this requires learning the whole suite of Microsoft tools.At the same time, that’s the biggest reason to use PowerBI – it includes full integration with the Microsoft ecosystem (authorization, Azure, Office 365, and so on). If you are a big fan of Microsoft’s UI, it’s safe to say you’ll find PowerBI somewhat familiar and comfortable.

As with Tableau, PowerBI isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. PowerBI is read-only, and you can’t access the source code. As a result, it is nearly impossible to maintain proper version control. This is a problem that PowerBI shares with Microsoft Excel.

Also, you can’t do too much about visuals within PowerBI. Don’t get us wrong, there is a lot you can tweak, but the amount of options doesn’t necessarily correlate with how charts end up looking. The UI can also feel overwhelming at first because there are too many icons and menus to look at, which takes focus away from the visualizations.

When it comes to pricing, things look better with PowerBI than with Tableau. PowerBI desktop isentirely free, provided you have a Windows machine. It is limited to approximately 2GB of data, but you can always upgrade to the Pro version if you need more. It will set you back $9.99 per month per user, so this shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.There are more advanced Premium versions of PowerBI which are used in enterprise situations, and those currently cost $4,995 per month per dedicated cloud compute and storage resource.

To conclude: PowerBI can be entirely free for individuals and small teams depending on the use case. The tool has its quirks, and it’s not as intuitive as Tableau, but it won’t cost you a small fortune to get