Gaining success in your business or growing your business does not completely rely on the quality of the products you sell or the number quality employee you have. Instead, it depends on how wisely your firm is able to utilise the business intelligence tools as the corporate sector is moving towards it with the advancement in the rapidly developing data science and big data. Your organisation can use these tools to examine the data, evaluate them, and provide you with useful and necessary data for further use. This information is growing into a vital data for the businesses to design their marketing strategies and future development. That’s the only reason why your firm should start using Open Source Business Intelligence software to not only grow your business but also enhance productivity.
Table of Contents
What is business intelligence?
Business intelligence is nothing but a technical term that supervises data, analytics and computing within business operations. It is a set of architectures, processes, and technologies that transform unprocessed data into a meaningful report that urges profitable business operations. In addition to that, it is a chamber of software and services to convert information into insightful intelligence and knowledge. Some examples of business intelligence and analytics are reporting, data mining, data visualization, benchmarking, data representation, and more.
Importance of business intelligence
Employing business intelligence in your business will help you in making better decisions that would enhance the success rate of your organization. It can do so by providing you with the present and earlier data within its business context. Moreover, it presents you with the benchmarks that aid you in running your firm efficiently. With the help of business intelligence, you can improve almost every aspect of any business. Here are some of the highlighted importance of business intelligence:
- Recognize ways to boost profit
- Analyze data with opposing businesses
- Investigate customer relationship
- Record company performance
- Foretell the success of innovative ventures
- Optimize business operations
- Recognize any business problems
- Classify market trends
Advantages of business intelligence
1. It helps you to increase the overall productivity of your firm by creating reports with a single click instead of spending hours on analyzing and reporting. Moreover, it allows the manager to assign work to the employee, and that will make them more productive.
2. It aids you in fixing the accountability by appointing accountability in your firm that will help your business to perform against your goals.
3. It will enhance visibility, which will assist you in spotting the areas that demand more attention.
4. It removes the complexity linked with business processes and streamlines analytics by providing computer modelling, predictive analysis, and benchmarking.
5. With the help of a BI dashboard and scoreboard, it gives an overall view of your organization.
Disadvantages of business intelligence
1. It can be a bit costlier if you are running a small-sized or medium-sized business.
2. The implementation of Bi can be complex.
3. The implementation takes a lot of time and is a time-consuming process.
Free and Open Source Business Software
Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI) software aids in wrench out appropriate data to present available reports to the business owners. OSBI software programs come equipped with conventional administration and logical tools that assist you in receiving a well-presented report for your project or the firm. In addition to that, one thing that makes OSBI software programs impressive is that they are available for free. However, you can not get access to all the tools for few, and some tools demand you to pay service charges. By paying that amount, you can get access to a load of tools that can help you with streamlining the business and enhance the productivity of your organization.
Here are some of the best free and open source Business Intelligence tools:
|
Software |
Database |
Project management |
Interactive dashboard |
|
BIRT |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
KNIME |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Jaspersoft |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Knowage |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Zoho Analytics |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Report Server |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Microsoft Power BI |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Seal Report |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Pentaho Community Edition |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
SpagoBI |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
1. BIRT
It is a simplistic yet robust and free business intelligence tools that perform seamlessly to offer less complex data groups by turning them into a more visible data and creating reports that can be modified by the user. BIRT comes with a vast database to assist and process complicated data clusters. Moreover, it is excellent at forming reports, managing projects, and planning questions associated with your projects and their results as well. One of the most powerful features of this software is project management and organization. BIRT is the most suitable software for you if gaining less complex data and building quick reports is remarkably essential for your business. Also, you can achieve this in very less amount of time, which would permit you to use your time in other work to increase productivity. This software also allows you to modify the code for more uncomplicated data processing.
2. KNIME
This is a very uncomplicated and helpful data analysis tools that assist your firm in examining and preparing data clusters without consuming more time to make your businesses operate more effectively. KNIME operates seamlessly, thanks to its comprehensive data network and capability to prepare and sort data within few seconds that allows you to use the time in allowing employees to work on different tasks. Also, it can generate optical workflows and statistics with the aid of its data processing model and innovative dashboards. It allows you to create machine learning models, which is an exceptional add-on to have. Additionally, KNIME is powerful enough to satisfy all your needs to enhance the productivity and efficiency of your firm.
3. Jaspersoft
Jaspersoft is a robust and effective business intelligence software tools that comes equipped with a ton of features. The separation of data clusters and the multi-platform alliance is a prominent feature to have in a business intelligence software. It offers mobile integration that allows users to observe and control their business on the go. It flaunts an interactive dashboard and UI that helps to analyze and process data. You can also opt for a 30 days free trial. It also aids in categorizing data clusters into info-graphics and charts to make it easy for almost every kind of user to understand the data. In addition to that, it comes with Big Data connectivity and this features is very rare to find when you are looking for business intelligence software tools.
4. Knowage
Knowage is one of the popular modern data visualization tools that offers class-leading performance and innovative features. It comes with interactive and easy to understand dashboards that make the functioning uncomplicated and effortless. It gets a vast database network that allows the analysis and processing of data via enormous data clusters. With the help of this software, you can turn complex data into simple one within a few seconds. Another attractive feature is the Ad-hoc; it is a reporting tool and is pretty useful for communication inside the organization. It also flaunts other modern features such as Data Mining and Location Intelligence that makes it an exceptional software tool. With the help of this software, you can automate your workspace to enhance the productivity and success rate of your firm.
5. Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is one of the most popular and free bi tools (up to 15 days) that you can discover on the internet. It comes with a variety of features and functions that can assist you in examining and processing a large amount of data in a single click. Moreover, it has a vast database that can recognize different sorts of information and numbers at once. You get an interactive dashboard, which is compact and informative at the same time. This dashboard manages the complex data in a simplistic and clear manner so that even common people can understand it without any issue. This software can be blended with multiple platforms and purposes that would help you to use it in a convenient way. Also, if you want to use it, then you might get excited after knowing, it is mobile friendly. With a comprehensive forecasting and auspicious model available, you can prepare for the future business as well.
Open Source Business Intelligence tools is one of the essential tools for BI executives and data scientists. It comes with a plethora of features such as data mining, data management, project management and more. You can find lots of such software in the market, but you can take the reference from the software as mentioned above to get the best results.
