10 reporting tools to help make better business decisions
Every business needs accurate and up-to-date information to make sound decisions. In today’s ever-changing business landscape, the ability to make informed decisions quickly can be the difference between success and failure.
Welcome to the world of reporting tools. These marketing, business intelligence, IT, financial, enterprise, and other analytics tools draw data from multiple sources into one platform. Reporting tools allow businesses to collect and analyze their most important data to make better decisions.
There are many different types of reporting tools on the market, but not all are created equal. When choosing a reporting tool for your business, there are certain reporting capabilities and features you should look for to ensure that it meets your needs.
In this article, we will walk you through the top reporting tools available and the most important reporting features that any reporting tool should have. But first, we will look at what BI reporting tools are and why they are so important.
What are reporting tools?
A reporting tool is a software application that helps businesses collect, analyze, and visualize data so they can make more informed decisions. Reporting tools turn your business data into insights that you can use to identify patterns and make better decisions that optimize business performance.
With the latest in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies included in some platforms, these tools can also help you with business forecasting or predicting future trends.
With the high number of reporting tools available in the market, it’s challenging to know which is the best match for your business. This is why we’ve included our top 10 reporting tools for you to consider.
- Domo
Domo’s all-in-one tool offers a full range of analytics and reporting capabilities and features. This self-service data analytics and business intelligence platform can handle big data sets, connecting and centralizing all your key internal and external business data for a holistic view of your business.
With features like intuitive design, interactive data visualizations, and AI all users can draw insights no matter their tech skills. The fully automated reporting tool pulls and updates information for you, so you’re basing all decisions on real-time data.
- Zoho Analytics
This self-service analytics and reporting tool transforms your raw data into dashboards featuring pivot tables, widgets, charts, and other visualizations. You can easily generate customized reports to share with clients or collaborate with team members using Zoho’s tool. It features AI capabilities for forecasting and smart alerts to inform you when critical data changes.
- Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI is a data visualization tool that helps your business generate new insights. Users can access data and share reports through the web, email, or mobile devices. This scalable platform can handle a large capacity of data and can adapt to your business’ growth.
- Hubspot
This marketing-based analytics tool offers built-in reports and dashboards so you can more easily evaluate your performance and share your data. This reporting tool is a great choice for businesses that want to improve aspects of their marketing, including content marketing, lead generation, email marketing, marketing automation, and other marketing analytics. However, this isn’t your best choice if you want to analyze more than just your marketing data.
- Tableau
Tableau is a visual analytics platform that focuses on collecting business intelligence and analytics data and transforming it into visualizations to use in worksheets or dashboards. With an intuitive interface and low-code software, users don’t need programming experience to use or benefit from this reporting tool.
- Whatagraph
If you need to monitor social media and other marketing analytics, consider Whatagraph. This reporting tool connects multiple marketing channels (including social media, ecommerce, and email automation) and offers dozens of templates to help you generate reports quickly. You can also use their report scheduling feature to automatically generate reports for your clients.
- ProWorkflow
ProWorkflow is a project management software with data reporting capabilities. Easily track your top productivity and project management key performance indicators (KPIs) for better collaboration, team communication, and greater efficiency. With this reporting tool, you can focus less on managing your team or data and more on delivering great work.
- Thoughtspot
This AI-powered analytics tool connects with your cloud-based databases and offers real-time business analytics reports. Build your own interactive visualizations through Liveboards, or use the AI query function to search and explore your data with ease. If your business has a lot of on-premise data, there may be better tools for you.
- Datapine
Datapine offers advanced analytics tools that are easily accessible to non-technical users. You can integrate various data sources like databases, flat files, ERP and CRM systems, marketing platforms, and more with just a few clicks. They offer customizable drag-and-drop dashboards to track your KPIs using dynamic visualizations, filters, and predictive analytics.
- Integrate.io
This cloud-based data integration tool features a seamless ETL (extract, transform, load) platform for a hands-off approach to data collection and analysis. Its no-code and low-code options, along with its easy-to-use graphic interface, make this a tool your entire team can use to improve decision-making.
Features to look for in a reporting tool
There are many different types of reporting tools on the market, but not all of them offer the same features and functionality. When choosing a reporting tool, it’s important to consider which features are most important to your business. To help you make the best decision for your business, we have compiled a list of essential features that any BI reporting tool should have.
- The ability to connect to diverse data sources
One of the most critical features of a reporting tool is the ability to connect to data sources. In order to make informed decisions, businesses need to be able to access all the relevant data regardless of where it resides.
A good reporting tool should offer the ability to connect to a variety of data sources, both internal and external. This includes databases, spreadsheets, text files, cloud-based applications, social media platforms, and more.
If your reporting tool doesn’t offer this feature, you’ll likely end up with incomplete data sets that can lead to inaccurate insights and poor decision-making. This can lead to costly mistakes that could have been avoided if you had access to all the relevant data.
- The ability to handle large data sets
Another important feature of a reporting tool is the ability to handle large data sets. As businesses grow, so does the amount of data they generate, as well as the amount of data they need to collect and analyze.
A good reporting tool should be able to handle large data sets without slowing down or crashing. This is especially important if you need to generate reports on a regular basis.
If your reporting tool can’t handle large data sets, you’ll likely run into problems down the road as your business grows and the amount of data you need to collect and analyze increases.
- Flexible reporting options
Another key feature of a reporting tool is flexible reporting options. Businesses need to be able to generate reports in a variety of formats so they can address business questions of all types.
A good reporting tool should offer a variety of report types, such as pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, and heat maps. It should also allow you to customize reports so they can be tailored to your specific needs. Having the ability to add summary numbers to charts is also a nice feature that can quickly convey an important piece of information.
- The ability to schedule reports
A reporting tool should offer the ability to schedule reports. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to generate reports on a regular basis, such as weekly or monthly.
Scheduling reports ensures that you always have the most up-to-date data and eliminates the need to manually generate reports each time you need one. It also frees up employees to spend time on other essential tasks.
- The ability to share reports
Another important feature of a reporting tool is the ability to share reports. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to collaborate with others in order to make decisions.
A good reporting tool should offer multiple sharing options, such as email, PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint.
An even better reporting tool offers the ability to share reports with other users within your organization through the reporting platform itself. It’s important to look for a reporting tool that lets administrators set permissions based on users’ roles to restrict the content they can see.
- The ability to export data
Another key feature of a reporting tool is the ability to export data. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to share data with others or use it in other applications for further analysis.
A good reporting tool should offer multiple export options, such as CSV, XML, and JSON. It should also allow you to export data in a variety of formats, such as Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint.
Some reporting tools offer the ability to embed visualizations within other applications and environments, ensuring that they remain dynamic and users have access to real-time updates in the data.
- The ability to create custom reports
A good reporting tool should offer the ability to create custom reports. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to generate reports that are not available out-of-the-box.
Creating custom reports allows you to tailor reports to your specific needs, so you can get the information you need to make better decisions.
A perfect way to envision this would be if you run a website and want to see not just how many people visit your site but also where they come from, what pages they view, how long they stay on each page, and what actions they take.
- The ability to create dashboards
The bread and butter of modern reporting tools is the ability to create dashboards. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to quickly and easily see key data points at a glance.
A dashboard is a visual representation of your data that allows you to see how your business is performing. A good dashboard should be highly customizable so you can tailor it to your specific needs.
- The ability to interact with visualizations
In addition to visualizing data, a good reporting tool should allow you to interact with it. This is a critical feature for businesses that need to drill down into their data to get the information they need.
Interactive features, such as filters and drill-downs, allow you to quickly and easily see the specific data you’re interested in. For example, let’s say you want to see how your website’s traffic has been over the past month in terms of unique visitors.
- The ability to centrally store data
A reporting tool’s primary job is to visualize data effectively, but a bonus feature that full-stack reporting tools have is the ability to bring in data from a variety of sources and then store it in a data warehouse.
This eliminates the need to keep track of your data in another system that you’d have to access every time you needed to build a report. Storing your data in the same system where you build visualizations streamlines the reporting process.
The bottom line
Reporting tools are essential for businesses that need to collect and analyze data. These top tools and the 10 features above are some of the most important ones that should be considered when you’re looking for a reporting tool.
The market has plenty of options for you to choose from, so make sure you pick a tool that has all the features you need. When you can unlock the power of your data, you’ll be able to make better decisions and take your business to the next level.