The adoption of Business Intelligence (BI) has advanced significantly during the last five years. Gartner noted in 2017 that broad BI was still "elusive," with just 30 percent of businesses adopting BI tools in any significant capacity.
Fast forward to 2020, and 54 percent of enterprises report that cloud BI is either critical or very important to their ongoing and future initiatives - according to Dresner Advisory Services.
Such figures underline the growing role of BI tools within modern enterprises. Yet, many BI vendors are out there, aiming to seize a stranglehold on the market.
After distilling these and navigating many analyst reports, here are CX Today's top eight recommendations for 2022.
1. Microsoft
Microsoft makes its way into most business intelligence rankings due to its Power BI offering. Power BI is a suite of software services, applications, and connections that transform disparate data sources into cohesive, visually engaging, and interactive insights.
Data could include a collection of Excel spreadsheets or on-premise data warehouses. Whatever the case, Power BI enables users to link such data sources, view and uncover what is significant, and share this information across the enterprise.
The company also benefits from a significant market reach and strong alignment with other Microsoft tools like Office 365, Teams, and Azure Synapse.
Its extensive offering also consists of visual data exploration, interactive dashboards, and augmented analytics.
The pricing and effectiveness of the Microsoft solution offer further distinguishing factors.
Microsoft Power BI Pro is available for $9.99/month per user, with a 1GB cap on model size. Power BI Premium is available at $20/month per user.
2. Salesforce (Tableau)
After purchasing Tableau in 2019, Salesforce solidified its leadership position in the market for business intelligence tools. The purchase allows Salesforce to establish an ecosystem combining the advantages of MuleSoft, Tableau, and Tableau CRM (formerly renamed Salesforce CRM Analytics) into a unified BI solution.
Salesforce also offers superior analytics efficiency and usability, enabling customers to find insights and communicate them more effectively.
The vendor prices Tableau Creator at $70 per user per month.
3. Qlik
Qlik provides a business intelligence platform with low barriers to entry.
Pairing up its Qlik Replicate BI solution with Qlik Sense, a data integration software, enables businesses to draw more value from enterprise analytics.
Qlik had a great year in 2021, acquiring NodeGraph and Big Squid to add machine learning and metadata systems management to Qlik Sense.
These additions add to its other notable strengths, which include its deployment flexibility, consumer interaction, and data literacy initiatives.
Qlik Sense Business starts at $30 per month for each user.
4. Looker
Looker is a platform for big data analytics that facilitates the exploration, analysis, and sharing of real-time business statistics.
Acquired by Google in 2019, Looker pairs well with its Data Studio and Web Analytics to extract more data and enhance the value of BI.
By incorporating Looker into its Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environment, Google enables the combination of its powers with other cloud-based services.
In addition to application development resources, its in-database architecture and governance are also significant assets.
