Software7.02.2023

Top business intelligence software for South African companies

South African companies working with lots of data can equip themselves with business intelligence (BI) software to ensure they run as streamlined and cost-effectively as possible.

Computer hardware, software, and services company IBM explains that BI software ingests business data and presents it in a user-friendly way.

BI can extrapolate useful information from data sets and display it in reports, charts, graphs, or dashboards.

BI software also allows businesses to input and access various types of data from their operations.

These can include past and present data, in-house and third-party data, and semi-structured and unstructured data from other sources, even social media.

The data can then be analysed to provide insights into business performance.

“Business intelligence gives organisations the ability to ask questions in plain language and get answers they can understand,” IBM said.

“Instead of using best guesses, they can base decisions on what their business data is telling them — whether it relates to production, supply chain, customers or market trends.”

Below are four major BI software providers that South African companies can use to get the most out of their data.


Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft’s Power BI was first launched in 2011 under the name Project Crescent.

In 2013, it was rebranded to Power BI for the Office 365 productivity suite, before being released as a standalone product to the general public in 2015.

The application provides interactive data visualisation capabilities powered by the cloud.

It consists of several services, apps, and connectors that collaborate to convert data from different sources into coherent and immersive insights.

Data can be fed to Power BI from databases, webpages, or various spreadsheet file types.

The free version of Power Bi can only be used in Microsoft Teams and offers limited functionality.

The professional tier costs a monthly $9.99 (R176, excl. VAT) per user and provides the full suite of features, including intelligent and augmented analytics.


Qlik Sense

Business analytics firm Qlik was founded in 1993, with its first product — QuikView — launching in 1994.

It allowed users to perform in-depth data analysis across multiple systems. The product was rebranded to QlikView and is currently the company’s on-premise option.

Whereas QlikView analyses static data, the company’s Qlik Sense cloud-based software enables concatenating different data sources.

QLik Sense comes with the following features:

  • Easily associate multiple data sources
  • Drag-and-drop data to create fully-interactive analytics apps
  • Get automatic AI-generated insight suggestions
  • Share and co-author with groups or teams in a governable environment
  • Schedule automated data refreshes

QLik Sense Business is priced at $30 (R529) per user per month, while pricing for Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service), which provides more advanced features, is only available upon request.


Salesforce Tableau

Sales, marketing, customer service, and analytics specialist Salesforce acquired Tableau in 2019.

Founded in 2003, the analytics platform uses cloud databases, relational databases, online analytical processing cubes, and spreadsheets to generate graph-based visualisations.

One of its most-punted features is the ability to drag and drop data fields into worksheets and mapping functionality that can plot latitude and longitude coordinates.

Tableau uses Salesforce’s Einstein Discovery machine learning system for forecasting and making recommendations within its workflows.

The company’s high-profile customers include Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, Pfizer, and Verizon.

Tableau comes in three packages — Creator for analysts, Explorer for business users, and Viewer for executives — respectively priced at $70 (R1,234), $42 (R741), and $15 (R265) per user per month.


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