Predictive analytics and forecasting enable users to generate insights based on a product or service’s performance history. Make predictions: With access to so much data from the past and present, employees can make evidence-based decisions. They can generate reports on all electronics sales in 2020 or visualize patient records to identify the number of COVID-19 cases in 2022. Now, any employee without technical expertise, even interns, can access and analyze data necessary for their respective teams. Self-sufficiency: Data no longer just belongs to your company’s IT team. To make sense of it all, you’ll need business intelligence tools to pool the data together and deliver certain types of views (issues, trends, analytics) based on your queries or what you want to know. Companies collect data from numerous databases, portals, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and more. Benefits of BI toolsīI tools can help your business take smart, agile steps toward accomplishing bigger goals.Ĭentralized data: All of your data, in one place. As a result, employees can harness this information to make better decisions based on predictions, market trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The tools can perform functions such as data mining, data visualization, performance management, analytics, reporting, text mining, predictive analytics, and much more. BI tools find this information through queries, which can present the data in user-friendly formats such as reports, dashboards, charts, and graphs. Data sources might include documents, images, email, videos, journals, books, social media posts, files, and more.
What is a business intelligence (BI) tool?īusiness intelligence tools collect, process, and analyze large amounts of structured and unstructured data from both internal and external systems. Here’s a look at the benefits of BI tools and five of the most commonly used tools. These tools are used across all departments and industries, so consider exploring one to accelerate your career. Business intelligence involves the functions, strategies, and tools companies use to collect, process, and analyze data.īusiness intelligence tools can identify new opportunities for businesses to improve return on investment (ROI) and competitive advantage based on insights found.
Just like a handyman needs a toolbox equipped with hammers, nails, and screwdrivers, individuals pursuing careers in business intelligence (BI) must be familiar with certain software tools.