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Business intelligence tools are a kind of application software which has been designed to analyze, report and present data. These tools are used to read data pre-stored in a data mart or data warehouse (not necessarily).

Can you guess what is the most common business intelligence tool? It is Microsoft Excel. Surprised? Well, it is true and there are many reasons for this. First of all Microsoft Excel is cheaper than the other business intelligence tools.

It is easy to use and can be easily sent to any one. Excel sheet has most of the functionalities one needs to display data. Microsoft Excel is widely used for goals tracking or business operations reporting.