Do a quick Internet search of “best business intelligence tools for CEOs.”

Seriously, go ahead. We’ll wait.

Yeah, it’s not that heartening of a picture. And unless something has seriously changed in the time since we’ve written this article it’s especially depressing that the first site to pop up isn’t a list of amazing BI tools for the C suite, but rather an article entitled “sell your CEO on business intelligence software tools.”

We’re here to solve that problem by providing not only a list of current business intelligence tools for CEOs but also why our search didn’t turn up much.

The Usual Suspects

First, let’s go down a list of the major business intelligence tools for C-levels that we know of.

Domo– the obvious candidate, and the only business intelligence company that actually showed up on the first page of the search. The thing that makes this platform particularly valuable for the CEO is the ability to gather all of the pertinent information into one place.

If you check out there CEO page you’ll see that principle stated over and over again- they call it the single source of truth and it’s a good point: you need all of the information in front of you before a decision is made so you can make sure you’re not missing anything.

Tableau – The other big contender in the data visualization space, Tableau markets a little less directly to the C suite than Domo does, but it offers many of the same services.

Much like Domo, Tableau will gather all of your data into one place and then let you choose the visualization you think best suits that particular data set. You can then gather all of those visualizations into a dashboard.

Oracle – The best way to describe Oracle’s approach to business intelligence is customization. By far the pricier option (or at least that’s the stigma) their business intelligence efforts tend to focus on what they call “Enterprise Performance Management” or EPM.

They also tend to speak more directly to the mid-large sized companies as their solutions tend to be more customized, though at it’s heart it still offers a single source to store data and then put it into charts and graphs for dashboards.

Why weren’t those three all on the front page?

Those are just the three biggest business intelligence companies we know of that offer the sorts of tools a CEO might need to analyze their business and make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Which begs the question- why was the search so abysmal? It’s not like they don’t have a marketing team, or publicity. So why did not all three show up on a list of “best business intelligence tools for CEOs?”

We couldn’t help but think it’s because the best business intelligence tool for a CEO either hasn’t been invented or discovered yet. We’ve even already written about what a solution would have to include.

Look at it this way- all three of those platforms, while distinct in some respects, all share the same basic makeup: aggregate a company’s data and then put it into charts and graphs for a spreadsheet.

Maybe the reason they aren’t the best business intelligence tools (and why BI still only has about a 20% penetration rate into most businesses according to Gartner) is because CEOs don’t need or want another dashboard.

Perhaps what is needed is a new way to look at data that not only delivers a big picture, like a dashboard, but also offers immediate, visual insight into the actionable details you can normally only get from a spreadsheet.

Oh, if only there were a platform like that.

Until next time,

The VisualCrew