The 11 Best Business Analytics Tools to Use in 2024

Does your company make use of data? 97% of $50MM companies invest in business analytics, so you should, too! You don’t have to invest gigantic amounts of money; start by using business analytics tools. They will drive your decision-making process. It will help you to succeed in any industry! Not sure what tool to choose? I will present you with the best of business analytics tools. Stay with me!

Business analytics tools are software that collects quantitative and qualitative data and transforms it into actionable insights. They include a wide range of software. However, they all support decision-making processes, increase operational efficiency, improve customer insights, and drive business growth.

As told by Andy Dunn – an American entrepreneur and co-founder of Bonobos Inc.:

“Passion provides purpose, but data drives decisions.”

Andy Dunn

Passion acts as the spark that ignites your vision. But will your business succeed if you only rely on passion?

No!

You need to make the right decisions… and the right decisions are those based on data.

Business analytics tools will help you do that. Thanks to them, you’ll:

• Identify weaknesses of your business
• Solve urgent problems
• Gain a real-time view of your organization
• Predict future performance

Let’s explore the best tools!

Top Business Analytics Tools:

1. Brand24 – the best for brand monitoring
2. Qlik Sense – the best for machine learning
3. Google Analytics –  the best for web and app analytics
4. Microsoft Power BI – the best for business intelligence
5. Tableau – the best for data visualizations
6. Looker Studio – the best for micro companies and startups
7. Zoho Analytics – the best for robust insights
8. Sisense – the best for fast data transformation
9. Domo – the best for mobile access to data and insights
10. SAP Analytics Cloud – the best for financial planning & budgeting
11. Microsoft Excel – the best if you need the most basic solution

01 Brand24

Free 14-day trial.

Brand24 is a powerful business analytics software that monitors your brand online.

What exactly is Brand24 for?

Brand24 is designed for tracking mentions of your brand and different other keywords in real-time across:

• Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), LinkedIn
• Blogs
• Forums and review sites
• News and other sites
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• And many other sources!

The tool provides not only the number and reach of mentions but also quickly explains unusual spikes in these numbers.

Did you notice a spike in the reach of Nivea?

The reach is almost 22 MILLION!

The Anomaly Detector says this is due to skincare routine inclusion and sunscreen promotion on TikTok:

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes anymore and search the Internet to find the cause!

Another feature is sentiment analysis. It shows whether someone has expressed positive, negative, or neutral about your business.

As you can see above, Nivea generates more positive mentions than negative ones.

Moreover, Brand24 can accurately detect emotions such as admiration, anger, disgust, fear, joy, neutrality, and sadness, and tell which data source brings what kind of emotions.

You can analyze your competitors and compare your company to them in Brand24.

Let’s stick to Nivea and compare it with Dove:

It turns out that Dove is a more popular brand online – it has more mentions and generates higher reach.

Brand24 turns data into AI-powered key insights.

Metrics Analysis provides a neat summary of your project. Take a look at the summary of Nivea:

Thanks to this feature, you don’t have to go through all the dashboards to find what you want. All data is in one place with ready-to-use insights.

For example, you get information that more than half of  Nivea’s reach is generated on TikTok, and also this source is the most reach-efficient:

Key features:

• Advanced analytics
• AI-powered features: Sentiment Analysis, Emotion Analysis, Topic Analysis, AI Insights, Metrics Analysis, Intents Analysis, Anomaly Detector, AI Brand Assitant
• Deliver customizable reports
• Integrates multiple data sources
• Real-time alerts
• Interactive dashboards

02 Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is one of the best data discovery and analytics platforms. It offers advanced predictive analytics in real-time.

It uses machine learning (ML) to help you understand and use data effectively. Thanks to ML and AI, Qlik Sense provides excellent opportunities for any user regardless of skill level – it creates and prepares data, provides predictive analytics, and automatically generates insights.

In Qlik Sense, you can connect and combine data from hundreds of sources, including Dropbox, Azure, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Excel.

Regardless of your data size, Qlik Sense is easy and fast to use.

What could be the biggest downside of this tool? Experts are needed to implement it.

Key features:

• Active data analysis
• Data preparation
• Data integration from different sources
• Interactive dashboards
• Automated AI-generated insights
• Easy collaboration

03 Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool you are familiar with (I’m sure), and of course, it is classified as business analytics software.

It gathers and analyzes data about user behavior on your website or app. This free tool lets you see where visitors come from, from what device, and how long they stay with you.

Google Analytics reports in real time and provides drag-and-drop, easy-to-read charts.

Although this tool is great, you may need more than just your website data analysis.

Key features:

• Predictive capabilities
• Actionable insights
• Real-time reports
• Seamless integration with other Google solutions

04 Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is one of the best-known business analytics tools, if not the most famous. As the name itself says, it is a Microsoft product.

What can you do with Microsoft Power BI?

You can quickly combine data from different sources, create visualizations, and, as a result, get interactive insights. Thanks to Microsoft Power BI, you will understand the data easily!

I recommend this tool to large companies that manage massive data volumes and those associated with the Microsoft ecosystem.

Key features:

• AI features like image recognition and text analysis
• Quick, meaningful insights
• Seamless integration with other Microsoft products
• Mobile app available

05 Tableau

Tableau is a business intelligence platform that transforms raw data into powerful visualizations.

This tool can be integrated with platforms such as Google Analytics or Salesforce. Joining multiple data sources is very easy!

Statistical analysis in this tool allows for in-depth analysis and the prediction of patterns based on current and historical data.

Unfortunately, the enterprise version of this tool turns out to be more expensive than its alternatives. But no worries, you can try Tableau for free!

Key features:

• Limitless data exploration
• High-quality data visualizations
• Connection to multiple sources
• Interactive and intuitive interface
• Easy dashboard sharing

06 Looker Studio

Looker Studio is another tool that supports making data-driven decisions. Until 2022, it was called Google Data Studio.

It combines data from various services such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube, Google Search Console or Firebase.

Thanks to it, you can easily track the results of your marketing and sales campaigns and monitor customer behavior on a website or app.

Looker Studio is totally free. It offers many advanced features to process complex data; it does not stand out from other business analytics tools.

Free is a reasonable price!

Because of this, it’s great for micro-businesses, startups, and all other companies with limited budgets.

Key features:

• Configurable data visualization
• Easily report on data from a wide variety of sources
• Collaboration possibilites
• Built-in sample reports

07 Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence platform designed for robust insights. It is available in both online and on-premise versions.

In Zoho Analytics, you can merge data from different sources and departments of your company.

The tool is easy to use, so you can effortlessly create cross-functional reports and dashboards.

Zoho also provides in-depth CRM (Customer Relationship Management) analytics in a separate tool called Zoho CRM. With Zoho CRM’s insights, you can dramatically increase customer satisfaction.

However, it is worth mentioning that Zoho Analytics is a more powerful tool than Zoho CRM, tailored for sales and marketing professionals. It offers more comprehensive analytics and a wide range of data visualizations.

Key features:

• Unified business analytics
• Analyze data from different sources
• Wide range of APIs
• Drag-and-drop interface
• Mobile app available

08 Sisense

Sisense is considered to be the leading cloud analytics platform. Its many advanced features transform raw data into key insights.

Sisense’s predictive analytics capabilities predict patterns based on provided data.

Professionals (data analysts and data scientists) consider Sisense a high-speed business analytics tool.

It’s a solution for companies of any size, from startups to large enterprises. Although Sisense does not list pricing on its website, you need to contact Sisence to get it.

Key features:

• AI-powered big data analytics
• Fast data transformation
• Data visualization
• Seamless integration
• Self-service reporting

09 Domo

Domo is a comprehensive cloud-based business analytics platform. It allows users to leverage data and metrics to make informed decisions.

This business analytics tool is a good fit for most analytics use cases, such as solid visualizations, marketing and sales analytics, and financial analytics.

It also provides direct access to business data via any device and without relying on the IT department. Domo offers an exceptional mobile app experience; you are connected to your data anytime and anywhere.

Domo launches new features quite often. You may have a hard time keeping up with it.

Key features:

• Advanced analytics like predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI-powered insights
• Drag-and-drop interface
• Wide range of connectors and integrations
• Real-time collaboration
• Perfect mobile app

10 SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud is another cloud-based business analytics solution. It is the most advanced tool mentioned in this article.

It uses machine learning algorithms to uncover hidden patterns and forecast future outcomes. This enables it to predict market changes and effectively minimize risks.

Furthermore, this tool offers integrated planning and budgeting features. It streamlines financial planning processes and improves decision-making accuracy, which is useful in big enterprises.

As it is a very advanced tool, the implementation is complex. If you decide to use SAP Analytics Cloud, expertise may be required.

Key features:

• Ad-hoc analyses and planning
• Connection to various on-premise and cloud data sources
• High-quality data visualization

11 Microsoft Excel

You may wonder what Excel is doing here…

Yes, Microsoft Excel is one of the business analytics tools. Compared to the other analytics tools presented, it’s elementary but enough for some people.

As you may know, Excel is not automated and does not provide advanced analytics features.

You can use it to organize data and create visualizations in various forms, such as scatter and radar charts.

What’s more, most people already know Excel. I guess you are in this group of people. So you don’t have to invest your time to learn new software.

Key features:

• Good data organization
• Mathematical, statistical, financial, and logical operations
• PivotTable
• What-if analysis
• Easy sorting and filtering

What are the most important features of a great business analytics tool?

The most important features of the best business analytics tool are:

• Seamless data integration: Any reliable tool should be able to integrate data from different sources. Comprehensive data integration ensures a holistic view of your business. Always check that the tools integrate with the sources you need.
• AI-powered capabilities: Advanced business analytics tools leverage AI for pattern recognition, trend analysis, anomaly detection, and predictive modeling. If the tool is not AI-powered, it’s not worth trying!
• Real-time analysis: The best tool must analyze data in real-time. Any delay in the analysis is not acceptable.
• Data visualization: A wide range of data visualizations helps to understand data. Good visualization is the key to effective insights.
• Customizable reports: The tool should generate reports you can easily customize for your needs. For example, when presenting a report to your boss, you won’t have to search for the information you need in a maze of unnecessary information. You’ll show him a report with what interests him.
• Interactive dashboards: Interactive dashboards are a must. They make data reading easy, and you can customize the view for your needs, for example, by selecting the metrics you want or applying filters.

Conclusion

A company without data is like a car without fuel – it stands still.

That’s why collecting and analyzing data is crucial! You can make decisions that drive your business.

Which business analytics software should you choose? It depends on your business goals and specific needs.

Final thoughts:

• To make decisions without a doubt, you need business analytics tools.
• Whether monitoring your brand online, analyzing your website, or integrating data from different sources, there’s a business analytics tool for every purpose and company size.
• Before buying a tool, it is worth starting a free trial to be fully convinced.

Start using business analytics tools now! Try Brand24 for free!