The consumer-driven society is all about data now. Every day, tons and tons of data is generated across the globe. In some way, the data can help companies improve their products and services. But how do you think all this data is analyzed?
All thanks to business intelligence, which converts it into consumable insights to help companies make better decisions efficiently.
Even though many BI platforms operate for a price, some of the best free business intelligence platforms can add value to your product and services.
Here are some of them you should know about.
Best Free Business Intelligence Platforms
Business intelligence platforms are helpful for companies and organizations to stay competitive and maximize revenue streams.
All small, medium, and large companies use BI platforms to track, analyze, and visualize business data.
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Let’s look at the top BI platforms in 2022.
1. Tableau
Offer: Free
Tableau is a free business intelligence platform that helps create appealing visual data representations for free. It has an excellent online gallery with ready-to-use public dashboards that data analysts and BI enthusiasts can easily share.
The platform also offers a paid version for advanced requirements such as data storage and security. It also has a non-profit tool and versions for academic settings.
2. Zoho Analytics
Offer: Free/Paid
Zoho Analytics is another free business intelligence platform that aids users in analyzing any data through dashboards and reports.
This BI and data analytics platform’s basic features are used by thousands of companies across the globe for data reporting needs. Zoho allows you to sign up for free without entering your credit card number.
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3. Power BI
Offer: Free basic desktop edition
Microsoft Power BI is one of the most popular BI platforms for pulling data from virtual sources. With its wide range of connectors, it is similar to Excel and is supported on Android, iOS, and Windows.
Another feature of the platform is that it is easily embeddable within business applications and helps in data integration, analytics, and reporting.
4. QlikView
Offer: Free up to 5 users
QlikView enables users to create step-ahead data visualization applications for analytics. It helps developers and business analysts develop data models and dashboards that business stakeholders can easily consume.
QlikView is one of the startups and students’ most used free business intelligence platforms. It is easily deployable and embeddable to access analytics in applications, portals, and websites.
5. Microstrategy
Offer: Free/Paid
MicroStrategy Desktop enables users with diverse needs to perform self-service data analysis and access insights with one click. It is a BI platform that provides data discovery, visualization, and access to built-in tools and templates for effective data management and yielding insights.
6. Metabase
Offer: Free/Paid
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence platform that allows users to ask questions about the data collected and displayed in a consumable format.
You can also easily share questions and dashboards with other team members for better decision-making. The platform also provides an SQL interface for developers with more advanced needs.
7. WebDataRocks
Offer: Free/Paid
WebDataRocks is a free reporting tool for data analytics and visualization that works on any device and can be easily embedded into a web page.
The platform’s key features include filtering, grouping, sorting, and number formatting. Users can conveniently print or export a web report into PDF or Excel.
8. BIRT
Offer: Free/Paid
BIRT is one of the best open-source, free intelligence platforms for small businesses looking to scale up. The platform aims to create reports that you can easily embed anywhere.
It is one of the top projects within the Eclipse Foundation and has a large, active, and growing developer community, with experts from IBM and Cisco.
9. Helical Insight
Offer: Free/Paid
Helical Insight is a developer-friendly, open-source, free BI platform built on Java. It allows you to develop data analysis on top of your data and embed it as a hassle-free built-in plugin.
It also has a paid version with great features, providing an API-driven business intelligence framework.
10. BOARD
Offer: Free/Paid
BOARD is designed to help customers create their BI and CPM applications without needing expensive and time-consuming programming.
The drag-and-drop function makes segmenting data easy in real time, ranging from simple reports to complex performance management applications.
Advantages of using Business Intelligence Platforms
Business intelligence is more than just a platform or software. It is a holistic initiative to use data in everyday operations. Here are its most prominent benefits:
- Faster analysis with intuitive dashboards
- BI increases the efficiency of the organization
- Drives data-driven business decisions
- Improves the overall customer experience
- Increases the competitiveness
- Increases revenue
- It helps identify market trends
- Fast and accurate reporting
Conclusion
Free business intelligence platforms are always the first go-to places for most intended users or startups trying to scale up their businesses.
Even though these have limited access and functionalities compared to the paid ones, they help to get the hang of the platform before shifting to the paid version.
