Businesses are generating more data than ever. In many cases, it becomes siloed as different departments use different tools and nobody — including upper management — has access to the bigger picture.
Reporting tools help solve these problems by connecting multiple data sources to allow businesses to discover hidden insights and become more efficient. Users can then create dashboards and reports that will help present the data through aesthetically pleasing visualizations.
The Reporting Tools Landscape
Reporting tools is a catchall term used to describe software that can provide analysts and marketers with a clear picture of what’s going on in their company — or what’s going on for their clients. They’re used to visualize data from various sources, aggregate information, and present it in an attractive way using dashboards and interactive reports.
Different tools come with different features, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the ability to sanitize data, and will integrate with 3rd party data sources such as SaaS tools, PDFs, CSVs, and spreadsheets. Some tools will also host data in data warehouses.
Cloud-based business tools analyze and sometimes host the data of companies off-site. This requires less initial capital investment in server equipment and personnel. It also allows businesses to take advantage of new technologies and features as they become available in the cloud.
Each tool has different features, such as:
- Ad-Hoc Queries: This is a non-standard query designed to obtain information when the need arises. In contrast, a non-ad-hoc query is pre-defined and runs regularly.
- Data Visualizations: Marketing data can be complex and require sophisticated understanding of underlying architectures, which can be daulting for marketers who aren’t analysts. A data visualization can allow you to quickly understand complex data in the form of charts, graphs, and other visuals.
- Artificial Intelligence: Some companies produce so much data that it’s challenging, if not impossible, for a human being to sift through it in a timely manner. Artificial intelligence, and Machine Learning algorithms can quickly take in a large amount of data and search for intelligent insights that would otherwise go unnoticed.
- Interactive Dashboards: An interactive dashboard is a visually appealing way to quickly see and communicate KPI’s (far superior to viewing data in a spreadsheet).
How to Pick the Best Reporting Tool for You
Reporting tools are not one-size-fits-all. Each tool is designed to provide analytics and reporting functionality for one of several different use cases:
- Business Intelligence
- Financial Reporting
- Enterprise Reporting
- SMB Reporting
- Self-Service
- Application Performance
If you’re trying to determine which reporting tool will work best for your company, here are four things you can take into consideration:
#1: Define What Problems You Need to Solve
Look at the challenges facing your department or organization. For example, if your company needs to analyze large data sets, it might be worth looking into a tool that has artificial intelligence.
Or perhaps you’re a marketing agency and need something that will help with decision making, client dashboards, or reporting. In this case, a tool like TapClicks can assist with reporting, invoicing, and even client management.
#2: What Types of Data Sources Does It Connect With?
Many companies have their data spread across multiple heterogeneous sources, with differing structures, and schemas, so you’ll need a tool that will integrate with the various data sources in your enterprise. Some of them might have an API, Webhooks, and SDKs that will allow integrations to numerous data sources.
#3: Self-Service Deployment
Some reporting tools are so complicated that only a few users within the company can use them. This can create a bottleneck around IT and slow down the reporting process when multiple people need to run a report. A self-service tool allows end-users to quickly get the information that they need without having to wait on someone to run a report for them.
#4: Cloud vs On-Premise
There are two main ways to deploy business tools: in the cloud and on-premise. Each comes with its distinct advantages. For example, on-premise resides on an internal server that’s in complete control of the company. This usually requires a team of IT experts to maintain, upgrade, and develop new apps.
With those four key points in mind, here is a list of the 20 best reporting tools for your consideration:
TapClicks
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Enterprise reporting, analysis, operations, and performance management.
TapClicks is an enterprise-level marketing operations platform that provides businesses with a robust set of tools to consolidate data and KPI’s. Users can pull in custom data from many different 3rd party data sources, then create visually attractive custom dashboards for internal or external consumption.
The Marketing Operations Platform comes with four robust features designed to help businesses capture, communicate, analyze, and manage. It features four key components:
- TapOrders: This feature helps media companies and agencies with automated order entry. With it, users can view and book inventory in a calendar view as well as manage creatives and workflow. This can help accelerate time-to-cash.
- TapWorkflow: Helps streamline workflow and task management for billing, fulfillment, and ad operations. This workflow management system helps prevent revenue leakage from inefficiencies in processes and incorrect billing.
- TapReports: Enables businesses to collaborate and communicate with clients via dynamic online reports and dashboards that are available whenever you need them. This marketing reporting dashboard can help grow relationships, and upsell new services and products while improving client retention.
- TapAnalytics: The robust analytics platform will help agencies and businesses analyze their marketing efforts. It can help improve efficiencies and team responsiveness by identifying issues and opportunities.
If you’re wanting to test out a reporting solution for your business, you can get access to TapClicks and see if it’s the right tool for you with our 14-Day Free Trial.
ReportGarden
- Pricing: Starts at $25/client (with a minimum of 10 clients); Contact for enterprise rate
- Capabilities: Marketing agency reporting software for digital campaigns
ReportGarden is a reporting tool that enables individuals and SMA’s to monitor and grow their accounts through highly customizable reports and dashboards. It connects to many different sites such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Google Analytics, to name just a few.
The white-label reporting feature is where ReportGarden shines. Users can create professional-looking reports and templates that show essential KPIs. A dedicated client portal features live updates and allows you to log in and check your stats whenever you want.
ReportGarden also provides users with additional functionality such as rank tracking, SEO tools, site auditing, keyword analysis, and backlink reporting. In addition, the comprehensive invoicing and billing feature enables users to pull ad spend data and then import it into one of several popular billing software services.
Try ReportGarden for free with their 7 day free trial.
Zoho Analytics
- Pricing: Starts at $25/client (with a minimum of 10 clients); Contact for enterprise rate
- Capabilities: Marketing agency reporting software for digital campaigns
Zoho Analytics provides companies with a self-service online business intelligence and reporting platform that helps you make intelligent business decisions. Users can import their data from a wide range of sources, including files, business applications, web feeds, on-premise databases, and cloud storage.
One of the more useful features is the ability to turn it into a data warehouse. Businesses can connect multiple unrelated data sources, and from that, create user-friendly reports and dashboards.
Domo (Business Intelligence)
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence, app creation, reporting, report designer, business analytics tools.
Domo is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that allows businesses to connect a diverse array of data sources. Users can create custom dashboards and cards and then share that information with specific departments.
What makes Domo so powerful is its versatility. There are currently over 1,000 sources from which users can pull in data. Once connected, the built-in extract, transform, load (ETL) feature allows businesses to use a simple drag-and-drop interface to perform complex SQL transforms.
QlikView
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence analytics, reporting, end-to-end data integration, AI-powered insights, and developer platforms.
Qlik provides companies with a robust business intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence to uncover hidden insights in their data. It has the ability to analyze large and complex data sets across multiple sources.
Qlik also comes with real-time collaboration and version tracking, which is useful when multiple departments are working with the same data set. It features a wide array of charts, graphs, and even gauge charts, which are easy to set up via the drag-and-drop interface.
Wrike
- Pricing: Free shared task list for up to 5 users. Paid plans start at $9.80/per user/per month. Contact for enterprise pricing.
- Capabilities: Reporting, analytic tools, templates, apps, real-time data, multiple 3rd party integrations,
While Wrike is technically considered a project management tool, many companies use it for the highly customizable reports feature. In addition to custom dashboards, it provides users with Gantt charts, tailored reporting templates, and the ability to build custom reports.
Wrike is very versatile and integrates with many of the popular CRM, business intelligence, and software/IT tools. There’s also a powerful API, which allows companies to integrate their systems as well as develop custom productivity solutions via the app feature.
Birst
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Cloud business intelligence software, BI tool, Data analytics, Data as a Service, Embedded Analytics, and reporting functionalities.
Birst provides users with a robust business intelligence and analytics platform. Companies can use it in the cloud or deploy it on-premise as a software appliance. It uses artificial intelligence to help users extract intelligent insights with predictive analysis tools.
Birst will also connect to many data sources that are located in the cloud and in-house. Data analysts can take advantage of the powerful reporting and analytics features that will enable them to create easy-to-understand visualizations from their data lakes.
Improvado
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Reporting and analytics for marketing agencies, brands, eCommerce and retail businesses.
Improvado allows businesses to connect multiple data sources and then report important KPI’s via a robust dashboard and reporting system. It can connect to a diverse array of marketing tools in such niches as SEO, PPC, CRM, and payments, to name just a few.
Improvado also supports several data warehouses such as MySQL, Amazon S3, and Microsoft SQL Server. This allows enterprise companies to upload their data to the cloud and forgo on-premise data lakes.
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Data visualization, business intelligence, analytics, API’s, and data security.
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira allows enterprise-level companies to compile business intelligence visualization reports to improve efficiencies, assess risk, and identify insights and opportunities.
Users can design and develop dashboard reports for computers, tablets, and mobile devices with basic JavaScript codes. There’s also a CSS feature that allows for the creation of eye-catching reports through components and templates.
Yellowfin
- Pricing: Price points vary based on services. Contact for more details.
- Capabilities: Dashboards, analytics, data prep, mobile app, reporting, data discovery, governance.
Yellowfin BI is an enterprise-level analytics suite that comes with powerful features such as AI-powered custom dashboards, storytelling, and collaboration. Both data analysts and business users can collaborate, share, prepare data, and discover new insights.
Five different products comprise the Yellowfin suite of tools:
- Yellowfin Data Discovery
- Yellowfin Data Prep
- Yellowfin Stories
- Yellowfin Signals
- Yellowfin Dashboards
Users have reported that the commercial terms for embedded use are favorable compared to many open-source alternatives. This allows them to add Yellowfin into their client-facing software applications without any usage restrictions.
AgencyAnalytics
- Pricing: Plans start at $49/month. Enterprise plan is $399/month.
- Capabilities: Reporting for SEO, social, PPC, reviews, email marketing, call tracking, many 3rd party integrations.
AgencyAnalytics provides agencies with an all-in-one reporting tool. Users can create dashboards for PPC, SEO, social, email, and call tracking. The drag-and-drop reporting feature allows users to save time when creating custom reports.
It comes with several SEO integrations such as website audits, backlink monitoring, and rank tracking. AgencyAnalytics comes with many integrations such as Google Analytics, social media, and Facebook Ads.
Grow
- Pricing: Starts at $25/client (with a minimum of 10 clients); Contact for enterprise rate.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence platform, reporting, no database required, email updates, and multiple integrations.
Grow is a business intelligence tool designed for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t require an off-site data warehouse. It allows users to pull in data from a wide range of sources, including SaaS applications, databases, and spreadsheets.
In addition to the filter and drill capabilities, businesses can combine multiple data sources in a dashboard or chart. The user interface is easy to use and designed for non-analysts. This means users can quickly find the data that they’re looking for and then send it off to clients or upper management.
Clear Analytics
- Pricing: Plans start at $89/month for up to 8 users. Call for enterprise pricing.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence, analytics, reporting, IT governance, works with Excel.
Clear Analytics is a self-service platform that allows users to work directly from within Microsoft Excel. It leverages Microsoft’s Power BI features, which gives businesses the filter and model data to extract intelligent insights.
Clear Analytics also comes with the ability to model together disparate datasets, create custom dashboards, take advantage of visualization reporting tools, and publish insights and reports to mobile devices.
SAP Analytics Cloud
- Pricing: 30-day free trial. Plans start at $22/month/per user. Contact for enterprise pricing.
- Capabilities: Marketing agency reporting software for digital campaigns.
SAP Analytics Cloud is a cloud platform that provides users with a centralized dashboard from which to view their analytics. It goes beyond static reports and spreadsheets by enabling businesses to uncover hidden trends and improve efficiencies.
Advanced AI-driven insights, machine learning, and natural language processing abilities give users the ability to ask the software conversational questions, such as “Detect the main drivers of “X” KPI,” and the system will respond instantly.
DBxtra
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Ad-hoc reporting, analytics, business intelligence, dashboards, interactive reporting functionality.
DBxtra is a powerful ad-hoc reporting software that enables users to compile and create interactive BI dashboards without programming or SQL knowledge. It will connect to any data source, whether local, LAN, or on the internet.
It allows for multiple integrations with 3rd party platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, and Google Apps, to name just a few. The visual query builder enables users to create complex SQL queries using just the drag and drop mode.
Pentaho
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Data integration, analytics, reporting, and data pipeline management.
Pentaho provides big data integration and business intelligence analytics for enterprise-level companies. It features an ETL system that can process and manage large amounts of data quickly.
Unlike other cloud-based reporting systems, Pentaho is downloadable software. This allows for maximum flexibility as it can be built into various kinds of framework and tech. There’s also a model and CSS layout feature that will enable businesses to create custom visualizations and reports.
Einstein Analytics
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence, reporting, analytics, Salesforce integration, cloud-based, No code AI, AI-powered apps and widgets, and data management.
Einstein Analytics integrates directly from within Salesforce and uses easy to understand AI models to analyze data and uncover hidden insights. It resides in the cloud, which allows for fast and easy deployment, versus an on-premise solution.
The drag and drop report building functionality allows users to quickly build reports and data visualizations without the need for SQL or programming knowledge. The reporting feature enables users to perform variance analytics, set up targets, use basic graphs, including top/bottom rules.
ClicData
- Pricing: Pricing starts at $29/month. Enterprise plan is $499/month.
- Capabilities: Dashboards, business intelligence, data warehousing, automation, reporting, and predictive analytics.
ClicData is a cloud-based business intelligence platform designed for small, medium, and enterprise companies. It can pull data from over 250 data sources via smart connectors. ClicData will then process that information in their intelligent data warehouse while users focus on creating intuitive dashboards via drag and drop.
The predictive analytics feature uses machine learning that connects with smart, automated machine learning platforms such as Prevision.io and H2O.ai. Users can take advantage of R and Python on all datasets while implementing custom AI algorithms.
AnswerRocket
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: AI-powered analytics, automated data analysis through machine learning and natural language processing, custom dashboards, reporting, and a mobile app.
AnswerRocket uses AI, search engine-based analytics, and data visualization to help businesses uncover hidden insights in their data. It’s designed for the average business user — no programming or SQL knowledge required to generate reports.
The machine learning aspect will search through thousands of variables to locate opportunities while enabling competitor comparisons. Users can then ask the system a question and get an intelligent response by either speaking or typing.
Dundas
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Business intelligence, custom dashboards, reporting, self-service Bi analytics, can deploy on mobile platforms via HTML 5.
Dundas provides enterprise-level companies with the ability to import, prepare, and display their data through interactive, customizable dashboards. Users can also run ad-hoc queries, build custom reports, collaborate, and perform visual data discovery.
There’s no need for SQL or programming knowledge to run a query or report. This user-friendly method makes it easy for the average user to make changes to reports or dashboards. Dundas provides users with a large selection of visualization options and charts that will enable them to view and share their insights.
Prophix
- Pricing: Contact for pricing.
- Capabilities: Financial reporting, analytics, budgeting, planning, and workflow automation.
Prophix is an all-in-one financial management solution that allows users to prepare budgets, plans, perform analysis, and run reports. The Online Analytical Processing (OAP) feature enables users to view their data in one of many different ways.
It allows businesses to deploy in the cloud or on-premise, which provides maximum flexibility for financial planning and analysis. Prophix can help users significantly reduce workbook errors and manual processes while providing them with the analytics and reporting they need.
Which Reporting Tool is Right For You?
The abundance and diversity of reporting tools on the market can help any kind of business become more efficient, discover hidden insights, and better manage their data. We hope this guide can help you narrow down your choices and select the best reporting tool that’s right for your business.
If you’re wanting to test out a reporting solution for your business, you can get access to TapClicks and see if it’s the right tool for you with our 14-Day Free Trial.
