Various software programs have been developed to ease the work of gathering and analyzing large quantities of data .The areas that are most important when selecting a software program to aid business intelligence ventures are ease of use, collection and analysis of real-time data, integration with data sources, format outputs, seamless data integration and business-process management.

The ideal BI solution should, in a single integrated application, support the diverse needs of a organization including planning, reporting, monitoring, modeling and analysis. It should provide a financially accurate core of information and the ability to expose it to all employees, from finance to sales to operations and beyond. A BI application should support the challenges of complex financial processes and the increasing compliance demands of tighter timelines, firmer controls and higher degrees of accuracy, while providing a single repository of financial truth enterprise-wide. The right BI application will enable you to turn volumes of data into meaningful information that will lead to more strategic business decisions and impact the way you run your business.