BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS

Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to retrieve, analyze and
report data for business intelligence. The tools generally read data that have been previously
stored, often, though not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart. Business intelligence
tools are a type of software that is designed to retrieve, analyze and report data. This broad
definition includes everything from spreadsheets, visual analytics, and querying software to
data mining, warehousing, and decision engineering. By using these tools along with company
data you will able to combine, analyse, report and visualise all that data in a blink of an eye. It
helps organisations to better understand how things are going and eventually where things go
wrong. They give employees and managers the possibility to improve business processes on a
daily basis by using correct information and relevant insights.

Architecture

What are the biggest benefits of these tools?

Improve the overall performance of your organisation, departments and teams.
Make fact-based decisions without neglecting the intuition of experienced employees.
Enhance the business processes in the organisation using the right visualisations.
Easy monitoring and reporting of your genuine KPIs using role-based dashboards.
The list of Business Intelligence tools
The list of BI tools below is in random order. For a 100% vendor independent ranking on 169
key selection criteria you might be interested in our BI Tools Survey.
SAP BusinessObjects QlikView
IBM Cognos Series 10 SAP NetWeaver BI
JasperSoft SAS Enterprise BI Server
Microsoft BI tools Style Intelligence
MicroStrategy Tableau Software
Oracle Enterprise BI Server (OBIEE) WebFOCUS
Oracle Hyperion System BizzScore
Pentaho BI Board Management IntelligenceToolkit
Yellowfin BI

Pentaho BI Suite:

is one of the worlds most popular open source BI suite which has won many awards. Key
capabilities: Reporting, analysis, dashboards, data integration, data mining Runs on: Java
runtime version 1.5 or higher and tested on Sun Hotspot Client VM

JasperSoft BI Suite:

is an easy to deploy and cost-effective enterprise strength BI suite which specializes in

reporting tools suitable for organization departments, SMBs and ISVs. Key capabilities:
Reporting, dashboards, analysis, data integration Runs on: 100% pure Java. JDK 1.5 and above.
Supports any RDBMS with JDBC 2.0 driver.

OpenI:

is an open source BI application for on demand web-based SAAS deployment. Its web-based
application allows you to connect to OLAP data sources, relational databases, data mining
models for the purpose of publishing web-based reports. Key capabilities: Reporting, analysis,
dashboards Runs on: J2EE web application environment with connectors to OLAP servers,
RDBMS servers and Data Mining servers

SpagoBI:

is a unified BI solution built on top of a free and open source platform specifically for
enterprises. Key capabilities: Reporting, multidimensional analysis, dashboards, KPI models,
data mining Runs on: Java based web application, supported on Tomcat, JBoss and
WebSphere. Also runs on portal applications such as eXo WebOS and Liferay.
Eclipse BIRT:

is an open source Eclipse-based reporting system that integrates with your Java/J2EE
application to produce compelling reports. Also well-known as a reporting plug-in for Java and
J2EE. Key capabilities: Reporting features such as data access, report layout and scripting Runs
on: Eclipse platform, GEF, EMF, DTP and WTP packages

Big Date:
Big data generally refers to mining and analyzing large sets of unstructured information
obtained from the social Web, sensors and other sources, versus traditional BI, which runs
reports and analyses off structured data stores.Big data is useful for retailers because it can help
them automate and optimise inventory levels.
Since the start of the computer age, manufacturers have used data to help drive production
quality and efficiency. Big data allows designers and manufacturers to share data quickly and
cheaply and create simulations that test designs. The aerospace and car industries use big data
for this purpose. Big data can help improve business management for it can help maximise
cash flows.

Making big data available across an entire business has considerable benefits. It can encourage
underperforming divisions, for example, to improve without management intervening. A
common application is to rank sales targets by division or even individuals. Demand is growing
for software that can deliver this variety of statistics and performance indicators. Big data can
help the public sector too, from the military to the healthcare system.

For tax departments, however, more data is not always better. In reality, most tax departments
need only a small portion of whats available in the massive sea of corporate Big Data. Too
much data can be crippling and impossible to analyze. In the world of taxeswhether dealing
with income, sales, property, or international taxesfinding the right data is critical to
compliance and avoiding unnecessary tax penalties and costly audits. Its all about quality
the data must be both accurate and complete.

Since the various types of tax compliance (e.g., sales, international, property, or income) are
different enough to warrant specialized solutions, for simplicity, we will use indirect tax
compliance as an example. Indirect tax compliance is a cumbersome process with many
correlating steps within the automation process. Fail at any of those steps, and the results could
be disastrousand result in audits and penalties. Indirect tax compliance is where the adage
garbage in, garbage out applies more than ever. As a result, companies need to look at the
automation process from a holistic standpoint or risk a breakdown of the overall indirect tax
compliance process.
 The first step in the process is to make sure your company has the most up-to-date tax
research, which includes rates, rules, logic and product taxability information

Once accurate tax research is in place, the next step is to select a robust tax determination
engine, which provides tax jurisdiction, taxability, tax rate tables and tax calculation logic,
along with full transaction reporting. With thousands of taxing jurisdictions, all with
continually changing tax rates, having a robust tax calculation and determination engine
ensures that the correct tax rates are charged from the get-go.

Since most companies dont have just one system, indirect tax integrations are critical to
providing a complete view of various transactions from ERP systems, as well as e-commerce,
legacy financial systems. Bringing tax automation to as many finance systems as possible
extends the benefit that can be brought about by automation.

The final step is compliance, which provides return preparation, electronic filing (where
supported) and audit reporting. If necessary, the ability to import transaction data from multiple
financial systems into the compliance solution is critical. Again, without the complete and
accurate view of data, creating accurate returns and audits reports is a moot point.

The operational resources required to achieve tax compliance (in particular within indirect tax)
can be overwhelming. Not only are companies required to navigate a dynamic indirect tax
landscape, but a renewed emphasis on indirect tax has resulted in a flurry of new tax laws,
making an already complex process even more cumbersome.

It is imperative that tax departments select automation technology aimed at consolidating

transactional data stored in multiple systems and melding that data with the thousands of tax
law changes typical in a given year. The result is the transformation of Big Data into actionable,
accurate data and the end of siloed, error-prone tax calculations that put companies at risk.

It enables government departments to analyse large amount oa data across populations and to
provide better governance and service.Big data can help them to provide transparency,enhance
decision making,public administration.

Business Intelligence tools in Government sector

Government agencies can now use business intelligence software for secure information access
to applications including financial performance management, revenue and expenditure
tracking, and performance reporting. Government agencies are pushing for BI discovery and
reporting, analytics and segment-specific applications that provide actionable results so they
can also focus on improvement. With taxpayers demanding accountability in spending, BI
efforts focus on tracking expenditures and bottom-line figures, optimizing procurement
processes, workforce placement, revenue collection efforts and uncovering bloat. One area
thats benefiting from actionable analytics is fraud detection in government programs,
including Social Security, Medicare and public assistance.

Why Government Agencies require Business Intelligence?

To measure, manage and report on performance

Policy formulation
Planning & budgeting
Statutory reporting & Best Value
An aid to joined up government to improve service
Public Information
Inter-agency liaison (Single view of citizen)
To explore hidden relationships in data
identifying tax fraud and money laundering

Advantages of Business Intelligence Tools

1. Reduced labor costs

The most tangible benefit of BI is the time and effort saved with manually producing the
standard reports for the organization.
BI systems reduce labor costs for generating reports by:
automating data collection and aggregation
automating report generation

2. Reduce information bottlenecks

BI systems reduce information bottlenecks by:
providing individualized, role-based dashboards that collect the most important data
for daily operations
letting the user open and run reports autonomously

3. Better decisions
BI systems help make better decisions by:
providing decision makers with rich, exact and up-to-date information
letting users dive into data for further investigation

4. Faster decisions
A decision can be made the moment you have all the relevant information at your hands. In
other words, the faster the relevant information gets into your hands the faster you can make a
decision.
BI Tools Comparison : Data Access and Management

Access raw data Manage data Import/Export data Transparent Data Da

BI tool
on Hadoop on HDFS into/out of HDFS compression Retention va

Datameer Y Y Y Y Y

Tableau Y

Pentaho Y

Table 13.2. BI Tools Comparison : Analytics

BI tool pre-built analytics Predictive analytics Time series forecasting Recommendation engine Analytics

Datameer Y Y Y

Tableau Y

Pentaho Y Y Y

Table 13.3. BI Tools Comparison : Visualizing

Visual query Rich Multiple platforms Interactive Share with Loc

BI tool
designer widgets (web,mobile) dashboards others ren

Datameer Y Y Y Y

Tableau Y Y Y Y Y Y

Pentaho Y Y Y Y

Table 13.4. BI Tools Comparison : Connectivity

Cloudera Relational Teradata /

BI tool Hadoop HBase Cassandra MongoDB Vertica
Impala databases Aster

Datameer Y Y Y Y Y

Tableau Y

Pentaho Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
Table 13.5. BI Tools Comparison : Misc

Supports
Role based Supports multiple Hosted Fr
BI tool Security Hadoop on
permissions Hadoop Distributions analytics ev
Cloud

Y
Datameer Y Y Y (Amazon) N Y
(LDAP, Active
Directory, Kerberos)

Y
Tableau Y Y Y Y
(LDAP, Active
Directory, Kerberos)

Y
Pentaho Y Y Y
(LDAP, Active
Directory, Kerberos)

Y - feature is supported
N - feature is NOT supported