Business intelligence and analytics tools can help companies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and position themselves as leaders in the new year
COVID-19 has had an impact on customers, the workforce, operations, finances, and technology. Today and into the foreseeable future, companies will need to outmaneuver uncertainty by changing their course as circumstances change—sometimes multiple times.
“This requires them to reassess assumptions, re-evaluate scenarios, and strengthen their ability to sense and respond,” according to Accenture.
Although many of these challenges were already impacting companies before the pandemic, today, these challenges have a more profound impact. This forces more companies to adopt business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) tools to secure their survival — and potentially a lead in the marketplace. McKinsey lists one of the keys to success as analytics being in alignment with business priorities.
These business intelligence and analytics tools can help companies to better position themselves as a leader in 2021.
Image: Sisense
Sisense simplifies complex data and analysis to deliver insights to everyone across an entire organization and empowers developers to build machine language enhanced analytics into products. It’s an end-to-end BI platform that gives data engineers, developers, and analysts the power to build analytic apps to deliver highly interactive user experiences. Data within any department can be connected and analyzed which removes information technology (IT) Bottlenecks.
Key features:
- Live data models powering Sisense dashboards to run queries in real-time from cloud data warehouses
- Native connector for Azure Synapse
- Embedded analytics for product developers
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities
- Embedded natural language querying (NLQ)—enhanced for self-service analytics
- Dashboards, chatbots, and voice interfaces for line-of-business (self-service BI)
Pricing: Sisense pricing is based on an annual model. Get a price quote online.
Image: SAP
SAP BusinessObjects is part of a business intelligence suite that helps organizations make more informed decisions by accessing real-time information within one scalable platform. SAP has released its BusinessObjects BI 4.3 with a Fiorified business intelligence launch pad, BI workspace, content linking, report scheduling to Multiple Destinations, information design tool enhancements, and more.
Key features:
- Reporting and analysis with ad-hoc reporting
- Data visualization and analytics applications with cross-enterprise sharing
- Office integration with embedded analytics in Microsoft PowerPoint
- Product road maps
- Credential mapping
- 64-bit Crystal reports
Pricing: SAP offers a “Try and Buy” option, or companies can request a quote.
Image: Oracle
Oracle Business Intelligence 12c helps customers unearth new insights and informed decisions much faster. It offers agile visual analytics and self-service discovery, all within a single enterprise analytics platform. Business intelligence that provides analytics to cross-functional teams from human resources, sales, and marketing, to finance and supply chain. In addition to this comprehensive platform, Oracle has rolled out numerous updates in 12c, including the following.
New features:
- Oracle applications data visualization
- Narration and storytelling
- Intelligence answers that can be saved, shared, or embedded
- Real-time decision server that delivers real-time decisions or recommendations
- Scorecard and strategy management
- Dashboards with live reports, charts, and tables
Pricing: Contact Oracle for pricing.
Image: MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy Offers companies business intelligence everywhere through its open enterprise platform. Companies can rapidly implement consumer-grade BI experiences based on role. The platform is also accessible on any device and provides split-second response time on an enterprise scale. In 2020, MicroStrategy launched many new or enhanced features, including the following.
Key features:
- Intelligence Server for improved, more secure intelligence
- Embedding software development kit (SDK) for custom error handling
- Mobile SDK and library for iOS
- HyperIntelligence for the web and mobile
- Workstation, desktop, and web access
Pricing: Contact MicroStrategy for pricing.
