We Reviewed the Best Analytics and Reporting Tools For Critical Business Insights

Better Decision-Making

A bit broad? Maybe… but this is, without a doubt, the biggest benefit of analytics and reporting tools.

Analytics tools let you mine your data for good ideas (or the evidence to back them up). When you combine this with reporting features, you have a way to communicate these ideas with others, get buy-in, and fast-track organizational changes that lead to all kinds of knock-on benefits, like:

• Increased revenue

• More efficient operations

• Improved customer satisfaction

When you implement this data-driven approach to decision-making at scale, the results can be truly transformational.

Enhanced Forecasting and Predictive Analytics

The ability to “see the future” is closely related to decision-making, but it’s a benefit worth discussing on its own. Planning — especially for enterprises — can be a rigid, time-consuming process that results in roadmaps that are difficult to adjust on the fly.

Analytics and reporting tools with predictive features allow businesses to anticipate potential challenges and opportunities so that they can plan more effectively. The result is a more proactive approach to decision-making and increased revenue as a result of being able to capitalize on emerging trends.

Increased Operational Efficiency

Last but not least, analytics and reporting tools help you boost organizational efficiency on two fronts.

For starters, these tools make the process of analyzing and actioning data simpler. Teams save time with features like natural language querying and templates, and this time can be reinvested into core work tasks.

As an example, Ando saves 75 staff hours per month thanks to Qlik’s automated features.

Additionally, these tools can help you spot high-level inefficiencies that are eating into your productivity and profitability. This can manifest in all kinds of beneficial ways — from increased sales per employee to increased revenue.

Quick Data Processing

Choose analytics tools that can handle data streams quickly from multiple sources. Look for edge computing to process and analyze data as it’s created. Make sure the software can scale to handle more data without slowing down.

Customizable & Dynamic Dashboards

A mainstay of top analytics tools, drag-and-drop interfaces are critical to creating bespoke visualizations without coding. These citizen development tools reduce your dependence on IT team members, speeding up report generation and decision-making.

Another key functionality to consider is role-based dashboard customization, which caters to different stakeholder needs. For example, a sales manager may need to see how well all his team members are performing, while a mid-level sales agent only needs their performance insights.

Though easy to overlook, responsive design is also worth prioritizing as it aids seamless viewing across desktop and mobile devices.

Collaboration & Sharing Features

Collaboration and sharing are essential features of reporting tools as they enable stakeholders to contribute to reports, drop comments, and make collaborative decisions.

These features range from version control and change tracking to secure, role-based sharing options, granular access controls, and integrations with common communication platforms

Qlik Sense^® is a data analytics and business intelligence (BI) platform designed to help organizations integrate, visualize, and dissect data from all their data sources.

Businesses and enterprises (like yours) use Qlik to understand trends and make informed decisions using:

• Traditional and natural language querying

• Dashboards and reports

• Mobile, offline, and continuous analytics

• Data and app embedding

Qlik Sense^® represents the analytics branch of the Qlik data platform. It integrates seamlessly with our other products for data integration and AI/ML data management and analysis, giving you a flexible, expandable, and scalable solution for all your data analytics needs.

Key Features

• Augmented Analytics: Use Qlik's augmented analytics tool to turn data into actionable insights effortlessly. Write queries in natural language for accessible, conversational insights and give every stakeholder the power to make informed decisions quickly.

• Embedded Analytics: Seamlessly connect analytics with your everyday business apps with Qlik's embedded analytics tool. Gain insights and make faster and more effective decisions within the context of platforms you already use. We support no-code and code embedding, so you can conveniently integrate multiple data sources for easy access.

• Visualizations & Dashboards: Design reports and data representations tailored to your business needs. Display live data that stakeholders can filter for relevant insights based on their roles.

• Reporting: Automate report generation and schedule their delivery to all concerned individuals and teams. Create, export, and share reports in different formats like PDFs, PowerPoint slides, and Excel spreadsheets.

• AutoML: Automatically build prediction models via machine learning tools, without needing a data scientist or specialist. Leverage predictive analytics for activities like sales forecasting, churn analysis, and more.

• Advanced Alerting: Go beyond simple chart monitoring with Qlik’s alerting capabilities. Identify significant trends, anomalies, or changes proactively and receive context-rich notifications that keep your team ahead of potential issues or opportunities.

Pricing

Qlik Sense^® has four plans:

Not sure which plan fits your needs? Our sales team can help. Schedule a demo or start with a free trial to explore Qlik Sense® firsthand.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Has an extensive knowledge base for users

• Responsive support team, ever ready to address customer issues

• In-product support the lets users to ask questions directly within the platform

• Its scalability makes it ideal for both medium and large enterprises

• Supports over ten languages, including English, Japanese, Dutch, and Polish

• No hard-to-calculate per-user pricing model

Power BI is a tool that integrates seamlessly with data from various sources. It offers basic no-code capabilities for non-technical users while providing support for two coding languages to address more complex tasks.

Power BI’s seamless integration with Excel, Fabric, and SharePoint gives it a unique edge for businesses already using the Microsoft Azure ecosystem. This tight integration supports smooth workflows and easy data sharing across platforms — especially if you’re already familiar with Microsoft products.

Qlik also integrates with Power BI, as well as the broader Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure, Fabric, and OneLake to support seamless data sharing and enhanced workflows across multiple platforms.

Key Features

• AI-Powered Insights: Convert data into visuals with advanced analytics, including features like anomaly detection and sentiment analysis. Simplify data analysis by letting non-technical users explore trends and insights.

• Data Unification: Consolidate data from multiple sources into a single platform. Power BI’s connectors enable seamless integration of cloud, on-premise, and third-party systems.

• Natural Language Query: Use Power BI’s Q&A feature to query your data using natural language, making data accessible for all team members without requiring technical expertise.

• Advanced Integrations: Leverage Power BI’s integration with Microsoft tools like Excel, Fabric, and SharePoint to streamline workflows and enhance collaboration across teams.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Seamless Microsoft 365 integrations, especially valuable for everyday Microsoft users

• Streamlines data cleaning and automation

• Easy deployment in organizations already using the Microsoft Azure infrastructure

Cons

• Performance issues and long loading times when handling large datasets

• Steep learning curve for average office workers

Tableau (owned by Salesforce) is a leading analytics platform that lets you turn tons of raw data into interactive dashboards and reports.

With little to no programming skills, Tableau enables you to integrate data sources, centralize data, and generate multiple visualization formats like graphs, charts, tables, and maps. It excels at visual storytelling and lets users create dashboards that provide insight and guide decision-making through intuitive data flows.

Like Microsoft BI, you can integrate Tableau with Qlik using REST and Metadata APIs. Additionally, Tableau provides multiple tools to integrate data from various data sources, enabling centralized analysis and reporting.

Key Features

• Intuitive Visual Exploration: Use drag-and-drop functionality to simplify data exploration, create custom visualizations, and uncover insights quickly without writing code.

• High-Quality Visualizations: Allows users to create visually stunning and interactive graphics, making complex data easy to interpret and share.

• Customizable Dashboards: Design dashboards tailored to specific needs with a wide variety of visualization options.

• Tableau Public: Share your data visualizations publicly with Tableau Public. Publish dashboards online for free, allowing access to anyone for collaboration or transparency.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• User-friendly interface for generating multi-format reports

• Flexible enough to match user levels, from beginners creating simple visualizations to pros running advanced SQL queries from data sources

Cons

• Cumbersome workflows with multiple tools for data preparation

• Limited data security options

Looker is a modern BI platform designed to deliver real-time insights that empower you to make data-driven decisions.

Its cloud-native architecture makes it perfect for businesses handling large datasets — no additional infrastructure or hardware.

Plus, Looker’s centralized governance of business definitions ensures consistent data interpretations across the organization. However, it is best suited for teams with technical expertise due to its complexity and limited support for integrating multiple data sources.

Key Features

• Live Data Analysis: Connect directly to your database to access up-to-date insights and make timely decisions without waiting for scheduled reports.

• LookML: Use Looker’s modeling layer to define and centralize business logic to ensure consistent data governance and streamlined reporting.

• Seamless Integration: Benefit from deep integration with databases that let IT teams manage data efficiently and maintain accuracy across the organization.

• Looker Blocks: Use pre-built pieces of analytics code (Looker Blocks) to accelerate common business analyses, like customer churn or revenue tracking.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Live data connections for up-to-date insights

• Highly scalable for growing businesses with expanding data needs

• Seamless integration with cloud data warehouses like Google BigQuery, Redshift, and Snowflake

Cons

• Less flexible authoring capabilities can make it challenging to adapt dashboards and reports

Sisense is a robust data analytics tool designed to simplify complex data analysis by pulling information from multiple sources. That platform makes it simple to unify all your valuable organizational data into one place — whether you're working with cloud-based systems, on-premise databases, or third-party apps.

Plus, its customizable dashboards and interactive reports let you visualize and explore the data in ways that are meaningful to your business.

Key Features

• Elastic Data Architecture: Analyze large amounts of data efficiently across multiple sources, combining cloud, on-premise, and third-party data for unified insights.

• AI-Driven Analytics: Automate trend detection and anomaly identification with Sisense’s AI-powered analytics, helping you spot key insights early.

• White-Labeling: Embed Sisense’s analytics directly into your own applications or customer-facing platforms, offering a seamless, branded experience for clients.

• In-Chip Technology: Leverage Sisense’s “in-chip” technology to accelerate data processing by using the CPU’s resources, reducing hardware demands and speeding up query performance.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Integrates data seamlessly from multiple sources

• Can be embedded into external apps and websites

• Highly customizable through its developer toolkit

Cons

• Advanced customization options may require technical expertise for full implementation

The best analytics and reporting tool or software combo depends on your unique business needs.

However, Qlik stands out for its advanced features, straightforward pricing, and integrations with many other business intelligence apps. Our tool lets you and your team members discover actionable insights and make more informed decisions without breaking the bank or hopping between siloed systems.

Get started with Qlik today.