Best Business Analytics Software

Tableau is a data visualization and analytics solution that assists enterprises in making data-driven business decisions. It blends information from a wide range of sources to deliver actionable, real-time insights. It allows exploration of data via intuitive means such as drag-and-drop filtering and natural language queries, irrespective of skill levels. With ample customization and security options, it offers control over data visualization, enabling creation of dashboards and stories that effectively convey business narratives. It can be purchased as part of the Tableau Creator package, which includes the desktop version, Prep and a Creator license of the server or online version.

Board is a robust solution that offers analytical insights, business analytics and enterprise performance management all under the same hood. It helps key players of a company improve the effectiveness of their decision making. Its customizable and interactive dashboards give enterprises the ability to see a high-level overview of their business, as well as drill down into their KPIs to assess business performance goals. It serves mid- to large-sized companies across various industries, and its programming-free toolkit helps businesses analyze and plan with a tailored, efficient approach, irrespective of technical skill levels.

Splunk is an affordable analytics solution ideal for businesses of all sizes. It offers a number of common analytics features, including dashboards, plugins, automatic data enrichment, monitoring and alerts. It also provides unique features such as wide-sourcing of data, intel into different company functions and more. With cloud and on-premise deployment available, as well as a lightweight free version, it can serve a range of needs.

Microsoft Power BI is an analytics tool that assists in reporting, data mining and data visualization to provide business insights. Through Power BI's simple interface, businesses can connect to a variety of data sources and create their own dashboards and reports. Originally born from Excel as an add-on, Power BI has since grown to stand on its own. At a relatively low cost, Power BI fulfills the needs of organizations ranging from small business owners to enterprise operators. There are three versions: Desktop, which is available for free for individual use, an upgraded Pro plan offered on a monthly price-per-user SaaS subscription and a capacity-based Premium plan which provides enterprise-level insights with on-premise deployment and a dedicated cloud infrastructure.

Domo is a cloud-based business management suite that accelerates digital transformation for businesses of all sizes. It performs both micro and macro-level analysis to provide teams with in-depth insight into their business metrics as well as solve problems smarter and faster. It presents these analyses in interactive visualizations to make patterns obvious to users, facilitating the discovery of actionable insights. Through shared key performance indicators, users can overcome team silos and work together across departments.

Looker is a web-based analytics solution that offers businesses the ability to explore, discover, visualize and share data insights. Enterprises can view data sources and drill down into data to better understand their business and metrics. Using a simple proprietary modeling language, this system helps define data relationships while bypassing SQL. It facilitates data literacy and accessibility, irrespective of technical skill levels. It was acquired by Google on June 6, 2019, for $2.9 billion.

TIBCO Spotfire is a complete business intelligence and data discovery platform that can perform various functions, including in-depth analysis and robust visual reporting, all powered by artificial intelligence. It offers data streaming technology, which can support insights with AI, big data integration, integration with the Internet of things (IoT) and more.

IBM Cognos Analytics is a self-service, web-based analytics platform which empowers users of all skill levels to explore data through reporting, data analytics, KPI monitoring, events and metrics. Reports give users the ability to not just visualize their insights, but also share them with colleagues. It integrates with Watson Analytics, which leverages IBM’s artificial intelligence and natural language processing to make insights more accessible to non-technical users. It has various components which give additional functionality, flexibility and agility when processing large sets of data.

Sisense is an end-to-end data analytics platform that makes data discovery and analytics accessible to customers and employees alike via an embeddable, scalable architecture. With a back-end powered by in-chip technology, it allows analysts to blend large datasets from a variety of sources into a single cohesive database for the entire company. On the front-end, users of all technical skill levels can craft visualizations, reports and dashboards to explore and share insights that drive businesses forward. Its AI-driven, cloud-native analytics offering, Fusion, embeds into business workspaces and empowers teams to view key metrics and data insights where they work. Designed for companies of all sizes, it can be deployed on-premises, as a private cloud-hosted SaaS, as a fully managed SaaS or via a hybrid strategy. It is available via annual subscription pricing and offered in three packages: its main offering BI Analytics Teams, its embedded analytics component Product Teams and code-driven cloud analytics through Cloud Data Teams.

MicroStrategy is a data analytics platform that delivers actionable intelligence to organizations of all sizes. It allows users to customize data visualizations and build personalized real-time dashboards. It leverages data connectivity, machine learning and mobile access to offer users comprehensive control over their insights. Due to its ease of use and scalability, it stands out as a leader in the enterprise analytics field. Users can choose between cloud, on-premise or hybrid deployment according to their needs.

QlikView is a data discovery and customer insight platform from Qlik, a leader in the insight and intelligence space. However, it is not available for purchase any longer. Qlik Sense, Qlik’s next-generation offering, is available for new customers. It offers self-service data that can help drive decisions and generate significant ROI for technical skill level users. It’s built from the ground up to be affordable, scalable and adaptable. It can ingest data from diverse sources like big data streams, file-based data, and on-premise or cloud data. It is well-known for its data associations and relationship functionality, keeping data in context automatically. It delivers results quickly via its patented in-memory data processing module, processing data down to as little as 10% of its original size.

Pentaho Business Analytics helps users gain insights to drive decisions and manage their data. Notable features include data visualization, dashboards, data modeling, reporting, role-based security, mobile access and a host of analytics capabilities. It serves customers of any size in all industries and can be delivered in the cloud or as an embedded implementation. It’s built on open-source principles to leverage existing data against future data and has enough to offer users of any skill level.

BusinessObjects from SAP offers a variety of packages to fit businesses of all industries and sizes. It aims to reduce the cost of IT upkeep and increase responsiveness to business problems. It streamlines workloads and lets users share insights to make better business decisions.

Pyramid Analytics offers an enterprise-grade operating system that scales smoothly from single-user to organization-wide implementation. It’s OS agnostic and can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise. It promotes data literacy by allowing different levels of users to utilize different capabilities. It is designed to support an organization’s decision workflow end-to-end from self-service analytics to forecasting.

Oracle Analytics Cloud is an AI-powered solution that provides robust reporting and analytics features to businesses of all sizes. It offers a strong selection of reporting and analytics features from the convenience of the cloud. It prepares and analyzes data for trends, then turns that data into an intuitive visualization for users to explore and share. This helps users get a deeper understanding of a range of business questions as well as make accurate predictions and forecasts.

Logi Symphony (formerly Logi Analytics) provides businesses with interactive data analytics and visualizations, offering advanced reporting and visualization features in a minimal-code environment. It offers self-service data analysis and data discovery; then connects and blends operational intelligence to prepare it; and finally lets users turn it into dashboards, reports and other visualizations.

Datorama helps businesses handle their processing and analysis needs for data sets of any size and complexity. It is scalable and cloud-based for growth, access and convenience. Powered by Salesforce, it’s built to provide enterprise-grade intelligence and insights.

Zoho Analytics (formerly Zoho Reports) allows users to create visualizations and dashboards to present their data via a quick, easy, self-service model. It brings insight and analysis to an organization’s business data on-demand without needing IT assistance or data analysts through extensive automation efforts in several dimensions of the analytical process. Users can crunch huge datasets, clean and blend data, perform various analytical tasks and visualize the results in dynamic graphics to uncover insights. They can make data-informed business decisions in a stand-alone or embedded environment with support for mobile devices. It has flexible on-premise or cloud deployment models.

SAS Business Analytics is a full-featured solution from SAS. The product provides insights into business operations by integrating with big data, mobile devices, alternative data sources such as CRMs and more. The product provides a standard set of analytics tools, including dashboards, predictive analytics, real-time analytics and beyond. These tools enable businesses to take advantage of their own analytics and internal data.

Infor Birst is a cloud-based analytics software tool that aims to help users discover insights without the need for analyst input. It unifies IT-managed enterprise data with user-owned data, supporting the blending of both in a top-down and bottom-up manner. It uses consistent business metrics to structure raw data into organized sets and visualizations. It helps users identify patterns and better understand their organization’s KPIs. It offers a seamless, integrated UI that allows users to perform every step of the data analysis process in a single interface, enabling a smooth experience. It can be deployed either from the cloud or self-hosted on-premise. Users can purchase it in three available formats: per-user fee, by department or business unit or by end-customer in embedded scenarios.

Ibi by Information Builders offers cloud-based data and analytics platforms that empower users to turn their information into insights through robust visualization, reporting and data management. WebFOCUS is its primary offering. Flexible, configurable and scalable, it integrates data from many sources, simplifies data workflows and enables fast, easy organization and analysis of data. It allows users to make more confident data-driven decisions that drive business results.As of 2020, the vendor has announced that it will be acquired by TIBCO.

IBM Watson is an AI-augmented data science solution that enables employees to harness the power of proprietary data, unlock its potential and apply insights gained from it in new ways. It offers a wide variety of customizable modules for lifecycle management, data applications, APIs and industry-focused specializations.

Jaspersoft is a reporting and data analytics suite built around the JasperReports engine that helps businesses create seamlessly embeddable, pixel-perfect reports, dashboards and visualizations. It empowers businesses with the self-service capabilities to find answers to data questions through beautifully rendered visuals that are easy to understand and explain. Bridging the gap between insight and action, it promotes ownership of the decision-making process across organizations. It includes JasperReports Library, JasperReports Server and JasperReports Studio. The vendor also offers a cloud and microservice-embeddable reporting engine, JasperReports IO.

Einstein Analytics is a suite of analytics applications that use artificial intelligence to supply insights. With predictive, tailored analytics, it can build AI data visualizations and deliver recommendations to help companies accomplish their business goals. Developed by Salesforce, it integrates natively with their CRM to boost understanding of sales pipelines and customer satisfaction. It offers three editions: Predictions, Analytics Growth and Analytics Plus. Until 2017, it was known as Salesforce Analytics Cloud or Wave.

GoodData is a powerful, embeddable, customizable SaaS solution that combines, analyzes and visualizes the internal and external data of an organization to help businesses change the way they make decisions, with a focus on data-driven best practices. It lets users process data, analyze trends and create visualizations that present information in an easily-digestible format. Users can interpret these visualizations to draw insights and make intelligent business decisions.

Targit is built from the ground up for reporting and business metrics, getting actionable insight from trillions of rows of data in seconds. It surfaces complex events and provides key information to make business decisions. It merges internal and external data and presents it in customizable dashboards and storyboards. Businesses can figure out how to grow in target markets by accurately analyzing data. Deployment options vary from stand-alone to embedded, with web browser compatibility built-in.

Qlik Sense is a self-service data analytics software that enhances human intuition with the power of artificial intelligence to enable better data-driven business decisions. It allows organizations to explore their data and create intuitive and compelling visualizations from data insights with drag-and-drop simplicity. As the next-generation advancement of QlikView, released in 2014, it expands analytical possibilities to support the entire insights life cycle and helps businesses modernize their approach to intelligence. It has two editions: Business and Enterprise, offered on a per account annual subscription. Enterprises can choose between a hosted SaaS public cloud or multi-cloud, on-premise or private cloud deployment. Qlik Sense Business comes with a free 30-day trial. Its desktop version is available for free for personal use.

Tableau Online is a fully-hosted SaaS that enables users to perform self-service data analytics through the cloud from any device, anywhere at any time. It can create advanced visualizations that draw data from a variety of database sources and convert that data into understandable results. By creating and exploring interactive dashboards, users are easily able to discover insights and share them with others, empowering all members of an organization to make data-informed decisions. Each deployment requires at least one creator membership, which includes the desktop version, prep builder and a creator license for online. Users can acquire additional licenses for explorers and viewers, with a minimum of five explorers or 100 viewers. Subscriptions are priced per user per month and billed annually. Enterprise pricing with volume discounts where applicable is also available. The vendor also offers a data management add-on that enhances data preparation and governance.

Clear Analytics is a self-service data management platform that complements Excel to provide business intelligence and reporting to businesses. Storing all proprietary data on its server for security, it allows data to be shared with others independently from the spreadsheets where it resides. Pulling from data sources both in the cloud and on-premise, it wrangles vast amounts of data and provides data analysis, querying and visualization through Power BI. Though installable only on Windows, its query results can be published and shared online through Sharepoint, OneDrive and Power BI.In addition to a 30-day free trial version, the vendor offers a Team Edition for small teams and a Small Business plan at fixed monthly rates, and an Enterprise Edition, for which pricing is available on request.

Alteryx Designer is a solution that accelerates the process of data preparation, blending and analysis. It streamlines predictive, statistical and spatial analysis with the help of repeatable workflows, allowing creation and sharing of insights in hours instead of weeks. It has both a code-free and code-friendly interface, providing accessibility to self-service BI, irrespective of skill levels. It is available on its own or as part of a larger comprehensive suite of products that explore, consolidate and analyze data from end-to-end to help identify and solve business problems quickly.

Dundas BI is a browser-based analytics platform built to embed from the ground up. The vendor provides single and multi-tenant deployments with access to shared, reusable content. HTML5 enables customizable visualizations and user-friendly dashboards to build reports with interactivity options to drill down into data on demand. It allows secure write-backs to the database, capturing input through custom forms, stored procedures and REST APIs. It gives businesses complete control over the data stored on their IT infrastructure. The vendor offers a 25-day free trial.

ClearStory Data was acquired by Alteryx in 2019. Data access and analysis were once relegated to specialists, quants or statisticians. Today, competitiveness on the front lines of business is dictated by the speed of data access and the quality of informed decision-making. ClearStory Data’s end-to-end solution includes an integrated Spark-based data processing platform and an incredibly simple user application for business consumption of insights.

Cloudera is a multi-environment analytics platform powered by integrated open source technologies that help users glean actionable business insights from their data, wherever it lives. With an enterprise data cloud, it puts data management at analysts’ fingertips, with the scalability and elasticity to manage any workload. It offers users transparency into the whole data lifecycle and the flexibility of customization through its open architecture. It is available on an annual subscription basis with three offerings: CDP Data Center, Enterprise Data Hub and HDP Enterprise Plus. Each edition offers different components and pricing varies based on computing power, storage space and number of nodes. The company merged with Hortonworks in 2019 to provide a comprehensive, end-to-end hybrid and multi-cloud offering.

SAP Analytics Cloud is an augmented analytics solution that uses machine learning technology to generate data visualizations and simulate predictive scenarios. It provides every member of an organization with access to automatic, interactive insights via natural language processing. Powered by artificial intelligence, it helps businesses make decisions with confidence by exploring what-if possibilities based on historical data. There are multiple plans available with different functionality levels, so businesses can choose the subscription that provides the best fit for their needs.

ClicData is a cloud-based solution that collects data from multiple sources and delivers insights that are easy to use, embed and access on any device. It enables users to design and share dashboards. It has four different pricing plans with varying levels of functionality: Premium, Team, Enterprise and Dedicated. Users can purchase subscriptions at a yearly or monthly rate.

Solver BI360 is a corporate performance management suite that assists organizations in reporting, data warehousing, dashboarding and analysis, and budgeting and forecasting. Deployable either on-premise or in the cloud, it integrates with many data sources, including accounting, ERP and CRM. It pulls data from a multitude of data sources and enables report designing from within Excel itself, boosting productivity and accelerating decision-making processes. It caters to growth-focused organizations, from small businesses to large enterprises, and serves customers across the globe with its teams located in North America, Latin America, Africa, the Asia Pacific and Europe.