Business Intelligence tools and its Categories

 Which Business Intelligence tool I should study? 

This is my client's requirement which tools are most suitable for this requirement?

    These are the primary questions that every Business Intelligence developer face during the requirement understanding and planning phase. To take a precise decision in choosing the tool is very crucial. Because a lot of company cost is involved based on this decision. 

    To make the right choice awareness about all available tools and their features is important. From all the available Business Intelligence tools I classify them into three broad categories based on their features. Those three categories are as follows:

1. ETL (Extract Transform Load)
2. Analytics 
3. Reporting.

1. ETL (Extract Transform Load):

    ETL tools will help you do the initial processing of your data. Like cleaning, removing redundant data, applying normalization forms if required, Transforming your data and making it ready for analysis or reporting. Once the extracting from source and transforming is done we load it in a Data warehouse. or we even prefer the term staging database. Business Intelligence ETL tools smooth this process for us. There are many tools in the market but the following are some Business Intelligence ETL tools that are widely used for reference:

• Microsoft SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services)
• Pentaho
• Talend

2. Analytics:

    This set of tools are optional. We have two options either directly connect to BI reporting tools or connect to Analytics tools after ETL processing. Analytics tools will help you dig deeper into your data for more fruitful insights which are invisible to human eyes. We can create multidimensional or tabular cubes, do predictive analytics, machine learning algorithms implementation with the help of these tools. There are many tools in the market but the following are some Business Intelligence Analytics tools that are widely used for reference: 

• Microsoft SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services)

3. Reporting:

    Presentation is a very important aspect of any project. Now is the time to present all the work that we have done with the data. Different Business Intelligence reporting tools will help to put your data into different charts and figures which will make it more interactive and even simpler to understand. This will contribute to making better business-level decisions. There are many tools in the market but the following are some Business Intelligence Reporting tools that are widely used for reference:

• Microsoft Power BI
• Tableau
• Qlikview
• Qliksense 
• Looker
• Microsoft SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Service)

Conclusion: 

    As per the project requirement given by your client or stakeholder, you can identify from the above description what all categories of Business Intelligence tools you need to consider and from those categories which tools you need to analyse and choose for your project.

I believe this blog will be helpful for you and more details about respective Business Intelligence tools and features stay tuned, I will post them in my upcoming blogs. Feedback is always welcome and does let me know for any queries in comments and do like and follow my blog for more informative blogs.