Introduction
One year ago it was not the same as what it takes today to provide a good buying experience to shoppers. In fact, it’s changing every year. And this is happening because of the constantly changing buyer demands & buying trends. Intuition doesn’t work here, it never had, it never will. You will have to work on hard-core data, but how will you get that precious data? – Thankfully, we have some powerful business intelligence tools which offer precious insights by collecting & processing sales data. These tools reduce the risk of human error. One thing you always need to keep in mind that the best business intelligence software can be a real game changer. With the right tool on your side, anticipating & predicting outcomes becomes a less hurricane task & you will be able to take the most appropriate action on your insight by having a detailed action plan. The latest BI software supports combining data sources, doing code-free analysis, & more. In this blog, we are going to share with you the names of top business intelligence tools for the retail industry.
How to choose the right BI tool?
Though, the BI reporting tool which we have chosen for the retail in this list are just perfect to match your needs. You need to get a pulse over your business to understand the unique requirements which you might have, & then accordingly decide which software fits the bill for you. Here, we are going to share with you some wisdom on how to select the right tool. At the onset, you will have to ask some questions –
- What current programs do you have in your organization that this new BI software will have to integrate with?
- What customizations will you have to do?
- Will this new software tool have the provision of scalability?
- Do I need a modular tool?
- Is it possible to define the role hierarchy with this tool?
It is quite possible that you already have some programs in place for your retail business. A couple of examples could be inventory tracking software & timesheet software. They too could be having some sort of embedded analytics, thus it becomes important that your new top BI Software integrates well with these existing tools to give you a holistic look at the sales data.
WovVBI
WovVBI is a retail analytics software which is designed to generate actionable insights from business data. It is a perfect package of business intelligence tools that generates & offers some great reports. This best business intelligence tool integrates data from multiple sources (it can integrate with more than 50 databases) to build interactive custom reports. With this tool you get a set of 50+ pre-built reports along with a package of instant notifications, quick & easy set up, simplistic UI, user role management automation, & much more. These are some key features of this best BI cloud software in 2021:
- Create custom DIY reporting & pivots using a dedicated report builder.
- You can generate your desired reports in just a few clicks.
- These reports are industry specific— shopping malls, stores, airport retail & others. All key parameters are already defined for users.
- Reports are better represented with customizable charts. You get a way to deep dive into the data with appealing visual charts.
- Design reports & make them available across teams, you get complete flexibility in terms of layout.
- You can integrate data from multiple sources like Yardi, Salesforce to create intuitive, custom reports in this leading business intelligence solution.
- There is a feature of user role & profile management automation.
BOARD
BOARD is a business intelligence system well suited for retail analytics. It’s a software tool with enterprise performance management & business analytics in one platform. This software is perfectly suitable for mid-sized to large companies. BOARD has a set of self-service data discovery tools onboard by utilizing which finding the right information & doing high-level analysis is like a breeze. One key feature which we have found worth mentioning is Dashboard— it has a customizable & interactive dashboard which presents all key reports at one place so that you get the right information at the right time.
It has drill-down & drill-through capabilities which take you from KPIs to minutest of the details. The software provides information which is key to making high-level decisions to low-level operations. This is a unified platform where BI & enterprise performance management capabilities match. You get real-time data to keep you business focused. The software also has some predictive modelling features like reporting, budgeting, forecasting, machine learning, & others. Apart from these features you also get simulation & statistical analysis models built along with the top features.
Tableau
It’s a great business intelligence solution & data visualization tool which has an intuitive user interface; it supports what is called visual query language that supports even non-technical users to conduct analysis without writing code. The visual query language known as VizQL converts drag-&-drop actions into data queries which express the data visually. Users have the option to share their interactive, customizable dashboard which covers A to Z of the technical ability. This Dashboard has interactive bars & graphs to display the trend & variation in data.
Tableau has the ability to blend different relational, semi-structured, & raw data in real time. It has an automatic forecasting feature which automatically selects from eight different time-series forecasting models selecting the right hyperparameters automatically. Top features of this software are drag-&-drop interface, toggle view, a list of native data connectors, data notifications, Tableau reader for data viewing, & dashboard commenting.
Web Focus
This is the next great BI tool for the retail industry on our list of advanced BI tools. It offers retail analytical tools, applications, reports, visualizations, to facilitate real-time decision making & discovering hidden trends. It has an auto linking feature which automatically detects related data among dashboards, reports, & other web focus platforms. With this tool even non-technical users can find data & analytics related to the information which you are looking for without generating the reports. This tool goes beyond the normal analytics functions to offer data science functions. Ability of integration with Python gives you a statistical edge in the analytics game & the included statistical functions help you analyze & interpret data quickly.
Web Focus, the business intelligence software for shopping malls, comes with a ‘What If Assist’ feature providing a host of functions. It offers comparison & operating reports for doing break-even analysis; these tools make you see what will make your business successful. This ‘What-If-Assist’ tool also provides competitive analysis, budgeting, & forecasting to keep your business on top of the competition. You can also do digital marketing & social media analysis with social media adapters, Google Analytics adapter, & sentiment & word analytics.
Conclusion
It may become challenging to pick up a retail analytics software tool. In such a situation you will have to do a close analysis of your business needs. Some retail tools have enough versatility that you might be looking for. With these retail analytics tools on your side you may run countless retail analytics programs & push your company from ordinary growth to extraordinary growth. One more thing which we would like to mention before we wind up this discussion, the first BI tool which we mentioned above in the blog – WovVBI – comes in a FREE-FOREVER plan, which means you can try the software for free without paying any fees. Yes, the solution is completely free.
