Texas, United States Dec 16, 2020 (Issuewire.com) - Data and analytics are the key drivers of an organization’s digitization and transformation efforts. Information has become a critical enterprise asset, and data analysis and business intelligence have become core competencies for companies of all sizes. The challenge for many businesses is the myriad of tools and platforms in the business intelligence category, making picking the right tool for your business a major challenge.
One non-negotiable is that unlike business intelligence software of old, you increasingly need to base business decisions on real-time data. A company’s ability to compete in the ‘new normal’ of an increasingly digital economy means you’ll need to make fast-paced, forward-looking decisions based on data coming from multiple sources. Data and analytics competencies are now incorporated into every workflow, therefore the methods of handling data has become extremely crucial for businesses.
Instead of struggling under traditional, analog business processes, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators can now be identified through data and performance against them directly helps maintain efficient business workflow at local, regional and global levels. Measuring performance has never been more critical, and another important parameter that determines the performance of a business is SWOT analysis. Business Intelligence tools and BI reporting tools can help in conducting this type of vital analysis.
A BI Software Tool integrates complex statistics and data into a compact report or chart that is easily decipherable by the business. But one of the by-products of the move to the cloud is that the number of key data channels within and outside of an organization has become potentially endless. Consolidating all of these data channels and getting a single, aggregated view is crucial for a business wanting to make key decisions in real time.
Such volumes of data are difficult to handle and therefore a scalable, secure business intelligence platform has become extremely important as a means of maintaining data and statistics in real-time. To successfully manage multiple data sources, modern Business Intelligence Software should include critical features such as online analytical processing, reporting and alerting, interactive and visual dashboards, and integration across the enterprise.
Online analytical processing (or OLAP) in BI tools helps in data processing and provides statistics to identify KPIs within an organization. It helps in gathering data in real-time which are categorized within set parameters as decided by the user. Parameters such as performance, time, and geography can be used to filter, segregate, and categorize data. These tools provide a precise querying system that contributes significantly to data integration and problem-solving. Alerts and reports should be able to be customized or created on an ad hoc basis as needed by business analysts and line-of-business users. Therefore, if your organization is looking for quick data aggregation and wants to make informed business decisions, BI tools are essential.
Business intelligence tools should be adaptable and interactive and make it easier to maintain an organization’s data. Free BI tools are often used for comparative analysis and to help businesses make decisions in real-time. The best tools are designed for data analysts - the main users of BI platforms. They connect databases, create datasets, write SQL queries, and build custom models and dashboards to help their businesses tell stories with data.
Here are 5 FREE Business Intelligence tools in the market that you should consider:
1. Bipp Analytics
bipp is a free business intelligence tool that helps organizations use their data to make better and faster decisions. Its enterprise-grade, in-database cloud BI platform was developed to save data and BI analysts’ time and develop insights faster. bipp leverages a free SQL Editor and is powered by the bippLang data modeling language, which supports collaboration, git-based version control, and re-usable data models.
Business users can use bipp to build and explore ad hoc reports on their own. They can slice and dice data and create visualizations, with updates reflected in real-time. Insights can then be easily shared across their organizations.
2. Sisense
Sisense is a BI comparison tool and is used to prepare, analyze and explore data from multiple sources. The reporting software can be used with special features to customize BI report content, control distribution lists of the report, apply filters to view only relevant information in certain groups and play with frequency and format.
3. Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics offers a range of business intelligence features such as a database network, data blending, multi-application connectivity, interactive dashboard, geo-visualization, forecasting and alerting, and mobile integration.
4. BIRT
BIRT is a simple but powerful open-source BI and reporting tool that is used to create data visualizations and reports that can be embedded into rich client and web applications, especially those based on Java and Java EE.
5. KNIME
KNIME is a free and open-source data analytics, reporting and integration platform. It integrates various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining concept.
A free Business Intelligence Software Tool or a business intelligence reporting software should turn data models into enterprise-wide single sources of truth. This means everyone in the organization should be able to base business decisions on the same data. The free BI tool should streamline data analysts’ queries, and improve collaboration between data analyst teams and across the business. And business users should be able to use the BI platform monitor and measure performance and make decisions in real time with dashboards that focus on organizational or team KPIs.
Selecting the right business intelligence platform is a key decision for organizations of all sizes. It is important to review the range of solutions on the market, and choose based on the key features that will save you and your teams’ time, and deliver the insights you need based on your company’s complex data sources and business priorities.
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