March 17th, 2021 | Updated on June 28th, 2022
Self-service BI tools are confusing as still, not many companies are aware of its working. In simple words, if we explain, then self-service tasks are those that a company finishes on its own and does not assign to its IT team.
Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI) has many other aspects associated with it. However, its meaning depends mostly on the specific task that the business wishes to accomplish.
For example, casual BI users can use self-service BI tools to manage the data at hand. On the other hand Business, analysts would want to combine the local data from various sources and build or enhance the existing reports.
The self-service BI tools in the market can handle all this and are widely trusted by most businesses.
To solve your problem, we created a concise list of the best Self Service BI tools for use. We have scrutinized each of these tools on a variety of aspects.
Along with we have mentioned some of their pros and cons to understand which tool works the best in what circumstances.
With such detailed information at your disposal, you can accurately decide which BI tool to select from amongst the vast choice available.
1. Tableau
Tableau is an integrated business intelligence (BI) and analytics solution that helps to analyze key business data and generate meaningful insights.
The solution helps businesses to collect data from multiple source points such as SQL databases, spreadsheets, cloud apps like Google Analytics and Salesforce to create a collective dataset.
Tableau’s live visual analytics and interactive dashboard allow slicing & dicing datasets for generating relevant insights and exploring new opportunities.
Review: PCMag
Tableau Desktop was one of the early players in the self-service business intelligence (BI) space. It’s this maturity that makes it one of our three Editors’ Choice winners for the category.
New competitors, along with the rise of Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT), have put the pressure on Tableau to constantly improve over the years.
2. Intellicus
Intellicus is a Business Intelligence and Analytics platform. It offers an end-to-end BI solution, covering the complete spectrum of business intelligence – from Data Extraction and Data Processing to Delivery of Insights.
Key features include built-in data science and machine learning, high speed OLAP, real-time analytics, responsive dashboards, self-serve ad hoc reports, print-ready standard reports, report scheduling & delivery, ETL, and mobile BI.
Review: Capterra
Intellicus has proven to be a worthy partner over the year, reasonable team, problem-solvers, and dedicated to filling the gap between dynamic analytics and traditional reporting.
I hope to see them continue to engage with customers and invest in the platform: customization, designers, performance, administration and user experience.
3. Reveal
Reveal, formerly ReportPlus, is a self-service business intelligence and analytics solution designed for midsize and large enterprises.
It allows anyone to analyze sorted and unsorted databases, set and view performance metrics, explore trends, and share rich data visualizations and dashboards. It is available in both on-premise and cloud-based deployment models and also offers native apps for iOS, Windows and Android devices.
Reveal allows users to connect to various databases, including online sources like cloud storage drives, social media platforms, SaaS applications as well as offline sources like Excel, SQL database and more.
Review: Capterra
The software was easy to use, i was able to settle in pretty quickly. Also the open structure offered quick alternative solutions in urgent situations.
Knowing other eDiscovery systems and then being able to use such a fast system with low and virtual hardware was more than awesome.
4. germain APM Software
germain APM is a user experience (UX) analytics platform designed to assist IT developers with proactive detection and resolution to improve user interface technology or design.
Key features include user research, animation, screen activity recording, heatmaps, resource management, performance control and full transaction diagnostics.
Review: Capterra
There just isn’t enough time or space to include all the amazing capabilities of this company’s technology. I am convinced that this software is essential to any thriving business today.
5. Cluvio
Cluvio is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics solution that enables businesses to analyze data through a dashboard. The solution helps in running queries, filtering results, and displaying data via graphs and charts.
Cluvio offers integration with databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, MariaDB, Microsoft SQLServer, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Aura, and Exasol.
Review: Softwareadvice
Cluvio has become a critical piece of our operations. We rely on numerous scheduled reports and SQL alerts to let us know when a potential problem has surfaced as well as to provide daily reporting. The Dashboards are used by nearly everyone in the company as a way to easily check on product performance and client success.
6.Periscope
Periscope Data is Business Intelligence software that allows users to keep data in one interactive dashboard.
Functionalities include dashboards and scorecards, data warehousing, data mining and predictive analytics, ETL, OLAP, a query and report writer, and performance management. The software offers integrated charting that will create visuals for the data stored in the dashboard.
Review: Trustradius
Periscope Data is really well suited for organizations that work with a lot of data and need ways to share data internally or externally with clients.
All of the features of the software can fully be taken advantage of if you have staff that is well versed in data analytics, data management, and programming.
7. BOARD
Created to combine business intelligence, corporate performance management, and business analytics, BOARD is a full-featured business intelligence system that serves midsize and enterprise-level companies in a variety of different industry segments.
Within the reporting functionality, BOARD allows users to pull from almost any data source, as well as generate full self-service reporting.
Review: G2
Board is a completely unique platform that allows its users to: plan, forecast and perform advanced analysis in the most efficient way available, personally I consider that all the functionality provided by Board is completely unified and shares the same metrics, data and vision of customers, products or services and marketing.
8. Cumul.io
Cumul.io is a dashboard creation tool that helps businesses design personalized dashboards with custom logos, colours and login screen to establish brand identity with clients, visualize data and generate reports.
The platform enables organizations to drag-and-drop various spreadsheets formats including excel, GeoJSON, TSV, CSV, TopoJSON, and more.
Review: G2
Cumul makes it easy to create and manage dashboards. But the real value they create is when you start embedding cumul in your own software. Imagine cumul as the google tag manager of charts, business data and insights.
9. ActivTrak
ActivTrak is a cloud-based employee monitoring platform that helps small to large businesses monitor employees’ online activities to ensure productivity and compliance within the organization.
With ActivTrak, employers and managers have the insight they need to know to improve employee performance as well as keep track of sensitive internal information and improve operational efficiency
Review: Capterra
It’s very easy to start using software 5 minutes after installation. Reports and analysis potential are huge and alarming options above my expectations.
We got the information about employees productivity that helped us optimize work for everyone to feel and work better.
10. Domo
Domo is the Business Cloud, empowering organizations of all sizes with BI leverage at cloud scale in record time.
With Domo, BI-critical processes that took weeks, months or more can now be done on the fly, in minutes or seconds, at unbelievable scale, helping teams and organizations go fast, go big and go bold.
Review: Softwareadvice
We were originally looking for dashboard software. Something like Geckoboard, but we wanted something more advanced. We were using multiple tools, and wanted to collect data from them.
We then found Domo. Within days we had integrated our CRM database, Website Analytics, Invoicing database, and Order Processing database.
11. Email Meter
Email Meter is a cloud-based solution that assists businesses of all sizes with email analytics. It is primarily designed to measure email productivity across individual accounts and teams.
The tool provides users with centralized email statistics which includes a number of emails sent and average response rates across teams.
With the domain email monitoring feature, users can track employee emails through the header and metadata analysis. Email Meter’s advanced analytics feature measures the company’s email workload and identifies the email sources as external or internal.
Review: G2
The analysis is well structured in terms of time, which allows better results in the mail behavior report. We can identify the communication faults that may be existing in that exchange given in the chat that we can visualize with Gmail meter.
12. Answerdock
Answerdock is a cloud-based business intelligence solution for organizations of all sizes across industries such as retail, healthcare, finance, communication and media.
Key features include scheduled data loads, search-based analytics, user management, data mining and automatic chart selection.
The time series analysis tool allows users to plot metrics over time on a monthly or yearly basis. Data filters can be used to view data from specific timeframes or geographies.
Review: Capterra
We just like the ease of use and the speed we are using it to track our revenue , clicks , search performance , we have connected to at least 15 datasets, and are able to search through them quickly and intuitively.
We also have setup the typical dashboards just like on other software and have then scheduled on monthly and weekly basis, but the main thing we like is the search- like interface .
13. Sisense
Sisense is an agile business intelligence (BI) solution that provides advanced tools to manage and support business data with analytics, visuals and reporting.
The solution allows businesses to analyze big and disparate datasets and generate relevant business trends for them.
Sisense allows businesses to combine data from many disparate sources and club them into a single database. Once done, the solution itself rearranges data into a predefined standard format.
Review: Trustradius
Sisense is our system of record for integrating a number of different data feeds (Google Analytics, SalesForce, Call Tracking, Internal Systems).
It is used across all of our sales and marketing organization and is used in a variety of ways by different teams. The portability, ability to build data cubes in the tool.
14. Dundas BI Software
Dundas BI, from Dundas Data Visualization, is a browser-based business intelligence and data visualization platformthat includes integrated dashboards, reporting tools, and data analytics.
It provides end users the ability to create interactive, customizable dashboards, build their own reports, run ad-hoc queries and analyze and drill-down into their data and performance metrics.
Review: Capterra
We needed a self-service BI solution that would cover manufacturing operations dashboards and use cases.
We wanted a tool that would allow for the distribution of centralized common dashboards but also allow for self-service customization.
It needed to connect to multiple disparate data sources, and provide native ETL. It also needed to allow for real-time refresh capability.
15. Sigma
Sigma is the business intelligence and analytics solution that allows everyone in your organization, not just analysts, to ask questions and find answers using data.
Instant, guided access to the cloud data warehouse enables teams to quickly conduct ad-hoc exploration without extracting data or updating models.
A familiar spreadsheet interface and formulas empower business experts to independently uncover insights and make data-driven decisions with no code required, freeing data teams to focus on more strategic and impactful work.
Review: Softwareadvice
You can easily add data sources, and then create datasets with the columns you need – It also lets you format the columns and process the data by using formulas, very similar to what you would do in a spreadsheet, but more streamlined – You can easily join different datasets and filter data.