What is Business Intelligence software?

Business Intelligence Software helps you to create, distribute and use reports, analysis and dashboards very easily and in a cost effective manner. One of the main objectives is to increase the performance of your business. BI software ships usually with one or more of the following features.

Reporting connect to one or multiple databases in a single report loading millions of data records for aggregation and analysis design a pixel perfect report including a variety of formatting options conditional formatting display plain tables or pivot tables creating sections guided by a dimension creating simple and complex filters presenting data in many type of graphs automatic summarization of figures: average, count, sum and so forth.

Analysis clicking on data items to drill-down into the details one click graphs switching easily a dimensions by slicing and dicing nesting dimensions filtering conditional formatting automatic summarization of figures

Dashboarding display measures visualized as meters letting you to create a dashboard with one or more meters defining norms and targets on measures alerts and notifications when target values are reached drilling into more details

Performance management define a framework of key performance indicators setting the most likely impact of one indicator on another defining norms, targets and objectives support for the Balanced Scorecard methodology support for strategy maps support for planning & consolidation adjusting norms and targets visualization of the performance indicators in dashboards and reports

Social collaboration creating notes regarding a specific indicator or graph distribute the notes to your collegues real-time shared analysis letting your collegues see what you see instant messaging (IM) lets you chat about the figures

Most Business Intelligence software do have features for basic reporting and analysis. But we know from our research that not all solutions provide features for performance management and social collaboration. We know also that business intelligence software differ substantially in terms of functionality, connectivity, security, platform support, usability and price. We compared and evaluated all the BI software available in the market on 103 selection criteria. Order now the BI Software survey.

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