Top 10 Mobile Business Intelligence Apps
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Just as business is no longer confined by the walls of a company's physical facilities, business intelligence (BI) has largely untethered itself from the centralized workstation.
Industry-changing apps such as Uber are using mobile BI functionality to overwhelm a technologically conservative industry.
“Mobilizing data has the potential to facilitate new business models and disrupt entire industries,” said Martha Bennett, an analyst at Forrester Research in a report entitled, The Key Ingredients for Mobile BI Success. “Mobile BI will be a differentiator between industry leaders and laggards.”
The number of North American and European companies making business intelligence applications available on mobile devices has quadrupled over the past three years, she reports. Another Forrester analyst, Boris Evelson, said companies are now beginning to port mobile BI to smartwatches.
These 10 apps show the range of what is now available to meet different mobile business intelligence niches and needs:
- Zoho Analytics
- SAS Mobile BI
- Birst Mobile BI
- Tableau Mobile
- WebFOCUS Mobile
- QlikView Mobile
- Logi Info
- MicroStrategy Mobile
- IBM Cognos Mobile
- Roambi
Zoho Analytics
Zoho’s self-service approach to analytics allows users to easily connect more than 500 business apps, native files, and custom databases and blend them together to create a consolidated foundation for deep analytics insight. The Zoho Analytics mobile BI apps enable Android or Apple users to access and manipulate the data, reports, and dashboards created in the desktop interface while on the go. Visualization and organization options are easy to navigate with a wide range of data views and reports automatically sorted according to file type, folder, and related views. For quick interactions, users can also “favorite” frequently used reports and share them with colleagues for collaboration with fine-grained permissions.
SAS Mobile BI
“We also offer a native mobile app called WebFOCUS Mobile Faves, which is an iOS and Android helper app that interacts directly with WebFOCUS to enable access and presentation of analytical content on mobile devices,” said Andy McCartney, director of Product Marketing, Information Builders. “Business users can create reports, charts and dashboards and choose to make them available to other users via Mobile Faves.”
QlikView Mobile
Qlik is another vendor utilizing HTML 5 browser technology to make its mainline business intelligence applications available on any device. This makes things simpler, as there is no longer a need to have one app for the desktop and another for mobile devices.
Most recently, the company released Qlik Sense Cloud Business so SMBs and enterprise workgroups can create, manage and collaborate with visual analytics in the cloud. The QIX Associative Indexing Engine enables users to probe any associations that may exist across all of their data. Together with a subscription-based payment system, this lowers the cost barriers for those seeking to engage in mobile BI.
Logi Info
Logi Info business intelligence applications are available to all users regardless of their device. They produce HTML5 output, which makes interactive business intelligence applications instantly accessible on Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows mobile devices. They use touch interactivity and can also be embedded within native mobile apps, offering the same functionality and interactivity as the browser-based content.
MicroStrategy Mobile
MicroStrategy Mobile‘s native mobile apps provide analytics on the go. They include touch-optimized reports and dashboards. In addition, the MicroStrategy platform can be used to create custom mobile productivity apps with built-in analytics capabilities so there is no need to exit those apps to conduct mobile business intelligence actions.
IBM Cognos Mobile
IBM's mobile BI app extends its Cognos business intelligence platform to devices such as Apple iPhone/iPad and Android phones. Users can view and fully interact with Cognos reports, dashboards, metrics, analysis and other information.
Roambi
Roambi, which was acquired by SAP earlier this year, takes data from sources such as SAP BusinessObjects, IBM Cognos, OBIEE, Microsoft Reporting and Analysis Services – as well as Excel, Google Docs, Salesforce and more – and presents the data on an iPad or iPhone. It does not have its own back-end infrastructure; instead it presents the data generated by other business intelligence applications.
Drew Robb is a freelance writer specializing in technology and engineering. Currently living in Florida, he is originally from Scotland, where he received a degree in geology and geography from the University of Strathclyde. He is the author of Server Disk Management in a Windows Environment (CRC Press).
Drew Robb is a writer who has been writing about IT, engineering, and other topics. Originating from Scotland, he currently resides in Florida. Highly skilled in rapid prototyping innovative and reliable systems. He has been an editor and professional writer full-time for more than 20 years. He works as a freelancer at Enterprise Apps Today, CIO Insight and other IT publications. He is also an editor-in chief of an international engineering journal. He enjoys solving data problems and learning abstractions that will allow for better infrastructure.
