Top 2024 BI and Analytics Solutions for the Modern Retailer

No other industry evolves as quickly and as constantly as retail. This imposes a huge impetus on retail managers to stay ahead of the curve by proactively discerning the changes in trends, customer preferences, markets and economic conditions.  

Retailers are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) ecosystems based on the foundation of data analytics, for making smarter decisions about inventory stocking, product placement, pricing and marketing. This technology-enabled process helps them enhance customer satisfaction and retention, optimize merchandise planning, strategize marketing campaigns and identify new sales opportunities.  

To simplify the search for the right BI platform, here are curated profiles of the five top performing business intelligence software for retail providers: 

ALTERYX 

Alteryx Analytics Cloud Platform is designed as a self-service, unified and enterprise-grade solution that enables analytics at scale for intelligent decision-making. Alteryx Designer, the flagship product, streamlines the automation of every analytics step, from data prep to data science through its drag-and-drop interface. 

Alteryx provides unified solutions encompassing automated data preparation and analytics, seamlessly integrating accessible machine learning and AI. With its capability to effortlessly work with any data source or type, Alteryx significantly reduces the time required to analyze data and optimizes information retrieval. The standout features include a remarkable time saving in transition of processes from Excel with automated data pulls through a highly user-friendly interface. Additionally, a vibrant and responsive user community provides genuine problem-solving assistance.  

The platform could benefit from better data visualization capabilities, advanced visualizations, interactive widgets and dashboard features. Another area that would benefit advanced analytics users is having better predictive data modelling resources within the platform.  

INTELLICUS 

Having earned the trust of over 14,000 enterprises worldwide, Intellicus’ customizable and modular analytics platform is designed to empower organizations in making data- driven decisions. It features an enterprise-class reporting suite and a business insights platform that span the entire life-cycle of reporting and ad hoc analytics.  

The Intellicus BI (Report) Server is a highly scalable solution adept at handling simultaneous reporting requests. With built-in engines for OLAP, reporting, scheduling, delivery and transformation, it offers a simple yet powerful Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This architecture caters comprehensively to the multifaceted BI needs of the organization, providing a seamless and efficient reporting environment. 

Extending beyond the conventional, the AI- and ML-powered platform provides dynamic, customizable dashboards which offer a rich and drillable interface providing detailed graphical reports. The integration of data science capabilities enables predictive and what-if analysis, allowing users to explore predictions under different conditions. Additionally, Intellicus facilitates social media analytics, automated alerts and on-the-move access to dashboard functionalities through its Mobile Analytics Server and dedicated iOS/Android applications. 

Intellicus empowers users to explore and derive insights from their data with ease, whether it's creating scalable data architectures, performing data discovery and transformation, or leveraging advanced data science capabilities. With a low/no code, user-friendly interface and single-license, self-service analytics capabilities, Intellicus stands as a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking powerful and user-friendly BI tools.  

SISENSE 

The Sisense Fusion Analytics Platform empowers retail software product teams by integrating data from diverse sources to create AI/ML-enriched analytics that can be seamlessly embedded into any application. Leveraging the power of AI-driven, low/no code, embedded analytics application, Sisense enhances product engagement, adoption and customer acquisition and retention. 

The integration of tailored analytics into applications and products provides users with intuitive insights for data-driven decision-making. End users have the flexibility to visualize AI/ML-enhanced analytics using charts and graphs or interact with the data through GenAI. 

Sisense offers the Compose SDK, a developer toolkit that enables embedding analytics in a code-first, scalable and modular manner. By using purpose-built components for analytics and integrating seamlessly with existing tech stacks, tools and frameworks, it simplifies the development process. 

However, usability of the application on mobile devices could be improved, particularly navigation and filtering. When multiple users create dashboards, sharing them can be somewhat challenging for Admins. For those looking to embed dashboards into websites, an additional license is required, a dampener for cost-conscious users. 

GfK 

GfK has a rich history and commitment of providing retailers with reliable market-level analysis and consumer insights. Its sales and market intelligence services cater to various industries and the recent merger with NIQ further enhances GfK's capabilities, providing deep insights into point-of-sale data and a broad range of consumer perceptiveness to boost profits and drive strategic growth. 

GfK's flagship product, gfknewron, is built on extensive point-of-sale data. It leverages comprehensive market, consumer and brand data to deliver useful consumer insights and business intelligence. GfK's Forecast suite has solutions for demand forecasting, supply chain and industry market analytics. It provides businesses with the tools for sales planning, supply chain management and gain a top-line view of market trends. 

GfK market Intelligence comes with drawbacks primarily revolving around higher costs. No one tool provides comprehensive market coverage, and additional investments may be needed to analyze consumer voice from social platforms. Also, with the platform offering unparalleled depth and breadth of insights, it could be somewhat overwhelming and thus an uphill task for organizations to build managerial buy-in and trust for adoption. 

ORACLE ANALYTICS CLOUD 

Oracle offers a cloud-based BI platform with self-service analytics, scalability, collaboration tools and seamless integrations. Key functionalities include Visual Builder, Data Flows, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, providing users with a versatile toolkit for data analysis and visualization. 

Performance analysis against objectives is well-supported through an extensive library of more than 2,000 best-practice key metrics, dashboards and reports across various business domains. Furthermore, the platform comes with very strong data security features. One of the application’s strengths is in its capability to collect data across all external sources, irrespective of size, while allowing users to reuse data models, thereby reducing overall costs. 

However, the absence of a mobile application, particularly for on-premises solution limits users' flexibility and accessibility. The pricing structure is complex, potentially causing challenges in understanding and predicting costs. Users have also reported performance issues, as well as a steep learning curve.