Every industry has a KPI reporting system of some sort—even if that means doing a little number crunching in an Excel sheet. But as customer expectations evolve, so too does your need for real-time, drillable insights. In fact, Gartner research shows that successful organizations are 2x more likely to recalibrate and execute plans in response to real-time insights.
Good news: KPI software offers a centralized, accessible platform that empowers everyone to seamlessly create interactive dashboards, track important KPIs, and make real-time, data-driven decisions. Whether you're an established enterprise or a budding startup, these modern data tools are helping businesses maximize their data’s value. Here are our top picks:
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We’ll kick things off with a shameless plug. To be fair, our entire team and a growing list of world-class customers use ThoughtSpot to find insights and make strategic business decisions with their data.
ThoughtSpot’s AI-powered, search-based interface allows business users to ask natural language questions about their business data and instantly returns interactive data visualizations. Spotter, your AI Analyst, delivers actionable insights for any data and any question, all in real-time. Instead of analyzing data on static KPI tracking software, our Liveboards allow you to track KPIs in real-time, drill into specific searches, and use AI to discover critical trends that help you tell powerful data stories.
And we didn’t forget about the analyst. Power users can leverage AI-assisted data modeling to empower data-driven decision-making at scale and even employ advanced analytics to predict future outcomes.
Here’s how ThoughtSpot is empowering multiple departments of Austin Capital Bank to track the broader health of their business:
Legacy BI tools made tracking KPIs and discovering insights a complex affair as they require SQL and Python input. With ThoughtSpot’s self-service analytics, users of all technical expertise can now effortlessly build and share Liveboards, asking questions about their data without constraint.
Consider their affiliate manager who uses ThoughtSpot daily to track critical marketing KPIs, including lead generation and conversions. Leveraging these insights, the team achieved a 50% reduction in paid search spend and improved the bank's revenue margin by roughly 30%. There is no limit to human innovation when given the right set of tools.
Core features:
Verifiable and interactive Liveboards for KPI reporting
Connectivity with multiple databases and cloud data warehouses
AI-powered search interface that provides instant answers
SpotIQ for AI-assisted insights
AI-assisted data modeling
Mobile app for insights on-the-go
See how ThoughtSpot can unlock granular insights from your business data—sign up for a free trial.
Mode is a KPI software with advanced data analytics capabilities that helps data analysts collect, analyze, and visualize data so business users can consume insights and make data-driven decisions. The code-free, interactive dashboards, SQL editor, and Python and R notebooks allow analysts to perform ad-hoc analysis on the fly. And with the new AI Assist, data teams can now cut out the tedious task of editing and tweaking code, delivering invaluable insights faster than ever before.
Consider Domain, a real-estate marketplace. Before Mode, their data team struggled to keep up with increased ad-hoc requests that kept them from implementing larger data initiatives. With the amount of data they had and the business users they needed to support, just sourcing data and preparing reports took weeks.
Mode changed the game by empowering tech-savvy users across the business org to create their own dashboards and gain instant access to data, speeding up the decision-making process across the organization. This change in workflow led to a 5X increase in time-to-insights and saved Domain’s data team hundreds of hours that they can now allocate to more advanced, strategic projects.
Here’s what Pooyan Asgari, CDO at Domain, has to say about the impact of Mode:
“We now actively promote the use of Mode with individuals across the organization who understand the value of data—even if they are not in technical roles. For those who want to get further into the details, Mode is the answer.”
Core features:
Visual Explorer to help you build charts, graphs, and tables
Real-time, multi-dimensional dashboard reporting
AI-Assist to help analysts efficiently write queries
SQL editor to run and format SQL queries
Python and R notebooks for advanced analytics
Supports multiple devices
Build interactive dashboards and visualizations with Mode today—sign up for a free trial.
Tableau is Saleforce’s legacy KPI dashboard software that allows data analysts to prep and organize data for visualization. With a well-connected system for integrations, data teams can extract data from multiple sources and prepare it for further data analysis within Tableau. Known for its vast library of picture-perfect interactive data visualizations, Tableau also offers a drag-and-drop interface to assist with quick updates. Still, Tableau is largely built to power users like analysts, data scientists, and developers, as it requires extensive training and onboarding for business users not yet familiar with the tool.
Core features:
Connectivity with multiple data sources
Dashboard creation and report sharing
Drag-and-drop interface
Trend analysis
Live and in-memory data
Available on mobile and desktop
💡Related read: Top Tableau competitors and alternatives to consider
Power BI is Microsoft’s data analytics platform that lets users analyze and visualize data through a drag-and-drop interface. This KPI tracker centralizes data in a secure hub, allowing users to create custom dashboards, track KPIs, and share reports. Power BI connects with all Microsoft products and offers AI tools for data preparation and dashboard creation.
Core features:
Data modeling
Change analysis
Real-time data monitoring
Mobile and desktop connectivity
💡Related read: 10 Power BI alternatives and competitors to consider
Qlik Sense is a well-known player in the field. Their KPI software helps users explore and analyze data in real-time and can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Users can utilize the platform’s visualization libraries, such as Vizlab, to create charts, tables, and graphs.
Core features:
Associative data modeling
Low-code interface for dashboard building
Multiple integrations
Flexible deployment options
ML capabilities
AWS QuickSight is Amazon’s unified KPI dashboard software. It helps users in data preparation, exploration, and dashboard creation. QuickSight has a serverless architecture with AI capabilities that allow users to analyze large datasets, ask questions in natural language, and discover insights.
Core features:
Dashboard creation
Drag-and-drop interface
Serverless architecture
QuickSight Q for AI assistance
Available on mobile devices
Domo supports both self-service analytics and embedded use cases. This KPI tracker has a data visualization library that lets data teams combine data from various sources. Users can also explore data using filters, dimensions, and segments, however, drill-down paths may not be unlimited based on the models. Domo’s AI capabilities enable users to gain more insights about their existing KPIs.
Core features:
Extensive library of data visualizations
Customizable dashboards
Pre-built data connectors
AI capabilities
Data modeling
Accessible on mobile and desktop devices
MicroStrategy is a legacy KPI software vendor known for its data analytics capabilities. The platform connects multiple data sources to help users manage and analyze data. With AI features, filtrations, and drill-throughs, users can uncover trends, patterns, and anomalies in their business data. You can also embed MicroStrategy into applications or websites.
Core features:
Integration with multiple connectors
AI features
Real-time dashboards
Embedded analytics
Data discovery
Available on mobile devices
In the fast-paced business world, frontline workers and decision-makers need uninterrupted access to data. But if a lot of time is spent on modeling, transforming, and analyzing data, it’s impossible to make timely decisions.
To become a data-driven organization, you need a true self-service data analytics solution that allows business users to ask questions in natural language and build interactive KPI dashboards. With ThoughtSpot, you can reduce the time it takes to realize value from data and monitor KPI changes in real-time for optimal business performance.
The result? You stay on top of all your KPIs, swiftly identifying both past successes and areas that need improvement. Plus, you get an intuitive search experience that makes data exploration and analysis accessible for everyone on the team.
Schedule a demo, and leverage the power of our AI-powered Liveboards today.
