Top 21 Business Intelligence Software

A Buyer's Guide to Business Intelligence Solutions

BI & Analytics Buyer’s Guide
 
The acquisition of Business Intelligence (BI) software is a huge investment for any company or corporation. Ranging from around $100K up to more than $10M in software price alone, software that could analyze business big data to better understand the SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of an organization definitely requires an intelligent purchasing decision. This BI Buyer’s Guide from ITQlick.com will walk you through the different angles of BI and give you some insights on how to acquire and implement BI software into your organization efficiently and effectively.
 
Also known as the decision support technologies, BI is consisting of the tools, systems, and processes that helps a business on its decision-making process related to marketing, product development, customer management, supply chain management, and the overall business planning in general. Dashboards and reports that talks about the performance of your business in real-time are just some of the key features a future BI buyer like should carefully scrutinize in a Business Intelligencesolution.
 
Types
Data mining, text analytics, web analytics, real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and cloud data services are the technologies running behind BI. These technologies eliminate the hassles and dilemmas brought about by using legacy systems, manual spreadsheets, multiple accounts, and traditional periodic reporting. BI basically has five known categories that a buyer like should dig deeper into together with your management team. Let’s review them in brief.
 
Real-time
BI that is based on dashboards, with alert features, that can be modified by human users.
 
Tactical
Task-oriented BI ties the operational application with the system, also via the dashboard. It can be customized either as fully or semi-automated.
 
Investigative
Also launched from a dashboard, this BI has the flexibility to further drilldown or dig deeper into data to gather more specific information.
 
Traditional
Most companies are using the traditional enterprise-wide and departmental BI, also dashboard-based, but with features that are already lagging with technological innovations.
 
Third-party BI
Third party BI, like Google Analytics, is designed for a single purpose – measures website performance.
 
 
Features
BI software like of the Oracle’s Fusion Edition is not a one-size-fits all system. This edition is segmented into various analytics versions - CRM, ERP, Telecom, Financial Services, Insurance, Life Sciences, Consumer Goods, and Public Sector. The segmentation equates to specific BI solutions designed for specific application and as clearly enumerated, base on the industry that will utilize it.
 
Having highlighted this segmentation, almost all modern BI solutions have common features that characterized BI as a real intelligent application software. Let’s run over them one by one.
 
Executive dashboards
Real-time charts, pie graphs, meters, and time tables are what best describes a BI dashboard. Characterized by easily understood real-time data, a dashboard that can be personalized by business executives is one of the most important features to examine in any BI solution.
 
Location Intelligence
A geographical map showing the sales statistics per region is more than a Google Map with geotags. Data presented base on where they are as they happen is one of BI’s innovative features.
 
Analysis
It’s more than playing with the data. BI software enables business to formulate strategies base on the available data before a decision is made. The capability of BI to know in advance whether a business move will be feasible or not is a feature of precision and accuracy analysis.
 
Interactive reports
Three dimensional reports that can be scrolled down, maximized, and interact with is a powerful feature of most BI software. Reports that are converted to digestible knowledge support better decision-making process.
 
Metadata layer
Metadata layers are data in simplified business language form. Users of BI system can see and access data without the need for coding or programming. This BI feature is about the simplicity in understanding and interacting with business data.
 
Ranking reports
More than the Excel pivoting function is what a BI can do. Ranking reports feature allows you to customize reports that order specific categories of information.
 
Social Collaboration
Discussing the figures in a certain report in real-time is BI’s social collaboration feature. Equipped with collaboration and communication platforms, that’s business software most employees would want to love using.
 
Solutions per Business Size, per Vendor
Researching for the niche players, challengers and leaders in the BI market would be helpful in narrowing down your search for the right solution. An excellent source of information for the right software solution is ITQlick.com. With over 6700 listed business software on their website, you can definitely find what you’re looking for in BI software. They have their software experts to assess you business case and then recommend the right BI solution. Here’s an overview of what ITQlick.com has researched for you.
 
Among of the 2013 BI leaders are Tableau, Qlik, Microsoft, SAP, SAS, IBM, Tibco Software, and Oracle. Infor, Pyramid Analytics, Arcplan, Target, and Actuate belong to the niche players. Another good thing to explore in their website is the offered BI solutions by each player. Software directories, ebooks and buyer’s guide offered by ITQlick.com are excellent sources of information for the right vendor and BI solutions.
 
Pricing Considerations
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a BI solution is something that buyers like you should be very inclined with. The software, hardware, maintenance, services, enhancement, and support; all have their corresponding costs. Take closer look on these pricing considerations.
 
Hardware Cost = 33%-50% of the software cost
Hardware Maintenance Cost = 20% of hardware cost
Cost of Design and Implementation of Services:

• < $100,000 in software = 100% in services
• $100,000 to $500,000 in software = 300% in services
• $500,000 to $2 million in software = 200% in services

Cost of ongoing maintenance, enhancements, and support = 20% of the software cost
As an example, Oracle’s BI Application for Sales Analytics software license cost is $5,800. The software update license and support costs $1,276. It requires a minimum of 20 users of the application. You can use this example as a way to compute TCO.
 
Market Trends
As a future buyer, getting adept with the trends and projections in BI will play an important role in optimizing your investment. In 2013, the worldwide spending on business Intelligence and analytics enterprise software was reported to be $14.4 billion. According to a report, 25% of new BI and analytics platform deployments will be in the form of cloud-based subscription. The trend therefore is on the use of Cloud BI.
 
The projection of some experts is that the enterprise data is expected to grow by 650% in the next five years. This is a clear indication that the need for BI software will also increase globally.
 
Despite of the positive growth forecast, most BI vendors will face global issues concerning the big data hype and challenges in the BI implementation process. On the other hand, the governed data discovery and analysis, which calls for information democracy, will be the focus of most BI vendors in the coming years.
 
Business Intelligence remained to be a reliable business partner in the sense that it continuously helps businesses in their goals – growth and profitability. And by becoming a smart buyer, these business goals will be far from being unreachable.
 

ITQlick chart - 2021 best Business Intelligence Software

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