AI meets BI: Key capabilities to look for in a modern BI platform


With the customer at its heart, modern augmented BI platforms no longer require scripting/coding skills or the knowledge to build the back-end data models, empowering even laymen to harness the power of raw data. As a user, here are the top AI capabilities that you need to look for in BI software.



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Supraja K, Marketing Analyst, Zoho

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Businesses across the globe have long relied on spreadsheets to analyze and manage their data. Then the tech revolution brought business intelligence tools into the data field. Although it changed the way data was handled, it remained exclusive to data analysts, programmers, developers, and engineers with technical know-how.

However, with the evolution of sophisticated AI technology, this is set to change. A new age of self-service BI platforms has emerged and democratized data analytics for all. With the customer at its heart, modern augmented BI platforms no longer require scripting/coding skills or the knowledge to build the back-end data models, empowering even laymen to harness the power of raw data. As a user, here are the top AI capabilities that you need to look for in BI software.

Augmented data preparation: Studies indicate that 80% of data analytics time is spent preparing the data before analyzing it. Spreadsheets only add more complexity and cost to this process, with its file duplication, multiple versions, and manual labor prone to errors. Therefore, it's vital to have an AI-driven, smart tool that can connect, model, cleanse, transform, enrich, and catalog your data.

Ask questions, get insights: With cognitive abilities, natural language querying (NLQ) adapts to the users' needs and puts the power of AI at customers' fingertips. Without having to understand SQL or difficult data models and relationships, users can chat with the platform, ask complex questions in natural language, and get insights as answers on the go, all in seconds.

Predictive analytics: Advanced ML technologies can now understand your data, apply contextual forecast models, and predict future trends. Be it stocking up your inventory, planning for a seasonal sale, or future-proofing your finances, it'll even let you simulate scenarios and run what-if analysis to predict business outcomes.

Automated, unified analysis: Gone are the days when users had to manually integrate scattered data, build reports, interpret them, and visualize them into dashboards. Modern BI platforms provide automated, end-to-end analytics which automatically blends and unifies relevant data across line-of-business apps and generate tailor-made reports and dashboards that give instant ROI, enabling users to get to insights in a single click.

AI has made insights more accessible than ever before. With all these capabilities and more, a powerful modern BI platform like Zoho Analytics empowers users with answers, making their data credible and their decision-making more efficient.

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