10 Best Business Intelligence Tools For Actionable Insights In 2024

NetSuite is a cloud BI ERP business software solution. The tool combines financial information, dashboards, reporting features, predictive analytics, and other features to provide a complete set of BI functions.

NetSuite allows users to automate project creation when specific services are sold and automatically track percent complete, time budget, and time spent on project tasks. Reports for utilization and backlog help analyze employee workloads and efficiency for business users.

NetSuite’s Project Management module seamlessly integrates with the NetSuite accounting system. In addition to project management and time and expense tracking, you can create and issue invoices, compare project performance to budgets and other metrics. NetSuite Project Management module manages revenue recognition, expenses, unbilled balances, and other project-related financials.

Other key capabilities include Multiple Project Types, Automate Job Creation, the Project Center, Timesheets, Mobile Time and Expense, Performance Measurement, and Project Tracking Reports.

Pricing for NetSuite is available upon request.

Zoho Analytics is a great business intelligence tool for small businesses, given their large feature set, simple interface, and affordable pricing for a small number of users.

This tool lets you pull data from a wide range of sources and build out intuitive and functional reports in order to analyze the visualized data. AI assistant “Zia” will answer questions typed into a query box using the data collected, combined with machine learning and natural language processing technologies.

Zoho Analytics takes the prize for my favorite in features and functionality. While most of the software reviewed here can sport a robust BI system, Zoho goes above and beyond with features like their AI assistant, their focus on ease of collaboration, tons of third party integration options, and Android and iOS mobile apps.

A few minor cons for Zoho include that the SQL tutorials could be built out a little bit better. Additionally, the reporting pivot view/summaries would benefit from having an “OR” or “CONTAINS” command in order to better pull out the data that you need.

They have integrations with Zoho Analytics, SAlesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Hubspot CRM, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Bing Ads, Zoho Surveys, Survey Monkey, Facebook, TWitter, YouTube,QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Zendesk, and more.

Zoho Analytics starts from $24/month for 2 users and has a free 15-day trial.

Supermetrics is a powerful data integration tool that simplifies the collection and analysis of marketing data, making it an essential resource for business intelligence (BI). By enabling users to aggregate data from over 150 different sources, including major platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads, Supermetrics ensures that businesses can compile comprehensive datasets for more informed decision-making.

One of the standout features of Supermetrics as a BI tool is its automation capabilities. Users can set up automated data transfers, which ensure that their reports are always populated with the latest data without manual intervention. This automation extends to the scheduling of regular data imports,

Supermetrics also offers robust data transformation options. Users can filter, combine, and modify data before it reaches its final destination, allowing for customized reports that meet specific business requirements. These transformation capabilities are critical for BI, as they enable businesses to tailor their data to uncover precise insights and trends. The tool’s compatibility with leading BI platforms such as Google Data Studio and Power BI further enhances its utility, allowing for sophisticated data visualization and analysis.

Additionally, Supermetrics supports a wide array of integrations with various marketing and sales platforms, like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Shopify, and Salesforce, ensuring that all relevant data can be consolidated into a single source of truth.

Tableau is a robust, scalable analytics platform with desktop, cloud or on-site options. It boats an interactive, visual analysis style and allows you to securely consume your data via browser, desktop, mobile, or embedded into any application. They offer over 900 learning resources, including over 100 training videos.

They excel in a specific area of the features and functions evaluations criteria section: flexibility. Tableau is easily scalable; offered by server, desktop and/or cloud; available on all device types, be it PC or smartphone; and they have free analytics resources for students, educators and smaller not-for-profits. Whatever your niche, you are sure to find something that fits.

Tableau can join with data collection systems like ServiceNow, Splunk, and Google Analytics. Other integrations, or “Technology Partners as they call them, include 0xdata, AIMMS, Aircloak, AllSight, Amazon Web Services, Astera, Axiomatics, Birst, Datawatch,

Element Analytics, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, Microsoft, and many, many more.

The pricing is a bit steep to begin with and costs go up at the end of the year long contract. Multi-year contracts are not available, so they got dinged in our value for cost section because of the high and shifting price schema, which can come across as predatory.

Tableau starts at $70/user/month and has a free 14-day trial.

Datapine is a great business intelligence software as it combines simple, intuitive usability with advanced analytics capabilities. The self-service BI solution empowers business users and data analysts alike to generate actionable business insights and make well-informed data-driven decisions.

Datapine is a comprehensive BI Suite, that offers all needed features within your analytics journey. First of all, you can connect literally any kind of data source (databases, flat files, CRM and ERP-systems, marketing, social media or helpdesk data, etc.) with a few clicks. Optionally, you can store connected data in their high-speed data warehouse to increase querying speed. The analyzer section in the screenshot above is the core part of the product, where data analysis and visualizations are done. Besides doing analysis and building charts by drag and drop, here you will find also advanced features like drill-downs, conditional formatting, trend identification, or predictions.

Additional strengths of datapine are their dynamic, interactive business dashboards. They offer a wealth of innovative dashboard features and have a large dashboard gallery, providing over 80 dashboard templates for different areas of applications (business functions, industries, platforms). Dashboards can be shared easily in multiple ways, including, among others, automatic email reports, sharing via URL, or advanced embedding options.

Datapine offers a 14-day free trial without any limitations with custom pricing starting at 250$ per account.

The Domo Business Cloud is a platform that lets you aggregate data from multiple sources and build custom workflow apps. Their features include dashboards and reporting, machine learning, predictive analytics, and external self-service reporting.

I like the focus that Domo places on your external relationships with vendors and other stakeholders. The name is Domo Everywhere, and it’s a feature that lets you build portals for your external partners. Therefore, they can analyze the data you decide to share with them on their own and draw their own insights.

Further, the data visualization boards are independent widgets that can be edited, filtered, and resized with a couple of clicks. Lastly, the platform allows you to set permissions on both internal and external users, regardless of the account (Domo or not Domo).

Domo integrates with external data sources through their 1000+ pre-built connectors, which include Shopify, Salesforce, Amazon S3, Adobe Analytics, Sharepoint, and Survey Monkey.

Domo has a free trial available, and prices can be quoted upon request.

Create easy-to-read reports and visual oriented interactive dashboards that display data-rich actionable insight for defining business metrics, locating value, and discovering interconnectivity between tables. Resources and features include custom applications, embedded visualizations, data science workflows, the ability to host on Public Clouds (like AWS and GCP), and more.

They offer a free interactive training course and many other tutorial-like resources, which is why I was able to score them so highly in the usability section of the evaluation criteria. Beneath the “Getting Started” tab, you’ll notice that they have plenty of self-help resources for viewing raw data, building tools, and developing models.

The downfall of this software is that writing the queries is not incredibly user friendly. On top of that, data analytics tasks take a significant amount of time to render and run queries. When it comes to big data, it may get sluggish.

They connect with databases from Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, as well as 50+ supported SQL dialects like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, MySQL, Oracle, Amazon Athena, Amazon Aurora, and more.

Looker starts at $3,000/month for 10 users ($50/additional user) and has a free demo.

A hybrid-cloud platform built to leverage all of your data together and make it available to you through interactive dashboards, self-service analytics, and/or white-labeled BI apps. They offer support, analytics, and reporting for business areas such as customer service measurables, digital marketing, finances, human resources, retail and eCommerce, IT analytics, and more.

As far as our usability and UI evaluation criteria expectations, I found that Sisense is easy to use, easy to instal and setup, and sports an intuitive interface and streamlined UX. The customer service team is responsive and adaptive so this would be a decent choice for companies with lower levels of technology experience who might need some extra assistance.

A few cons include that the marketing connector could be more robust. Also, some functions are so simplified that they get in the way, for example not having to write a query seems like a time saving mechanism until your needs don’t match their pre-existing data and you have to jump through hoops to find a creative solution to get what you need.

Use ODBC to connect directly to Sisense’s powerful back-end from any third party application you like, from Excel to popular data visualization and reporting tools. They also offer a marketplace for extensions and plug-ins that they or their partners provide for use. Some are available free and others are only available with a premium account.

Sisense offers custom pricing and has a free demo as well as a free trial.

Award-winning ease of use as well as advanced functionality means that Exago is great for both non-technical users and experts alike. You can determine what set of features each user has access to, offering solutions like a library of standard customizable reports, a drag-and-drop ExpressView designer, and a spreadsheet-organized Advanced Report builder. Build, format and export reports at any technical skill level.

Exago perfectly balances our evaluation criteria needs for value for cost and stand-out usability. It is relatively inexpensive, very flexible, easy to deploy, and intuitive to learn and use for the end user.

They integrate with your software in what they call “stealth mode”, offering an open API, fully configurable CSS, single sign-on authorization, and programmatic extension points.

While great for small or static teams, Exago’s software can't scale with you so it won’t do well for companies that expect to expand over time. Another con is that it is somewhat lacking features like a broader variety of data manipulation functions, multi selection in a parameter, and the ability to use mssql over mySQL.

Exago offers custom pricing and has a free 30-day trial.

Self-service reporting embedded right in your software with access to charts, graphs, and various visualizations, configurable dashboards, data preparation and reports, responsive design, integrated security measures, and admin UI that lets you manage data connectivity, user permissions, and multi-tenancy.

If our evaluation criteria for usability (help availability and training) is a core focus of yours, then Izenda will most likely impress you and your team. They offer plenty of online resources (white papers, case studies, videos, blogs) and their customer service team is responsive and helpful. Izenza is beneficial if you need a unique business intelligence solution driven by representatives who are willing to listen to your business’s needs.

A major con is that this BI solution runs a bit slowly compared to some others on the market. Also, the screen can get a little overcrowded with all of the functions and features available. Any advanced data analysis and reporting tasks will require a strong background in SQL.

Izenda integrates with any cloud, hybrid, or on-premise workflow solution. It supports the export of reports to PDF, XLS, Word, CSV, JSON and XML.

Izenda offers custom pricing and has a free demo and a free trial.