At Creative CFO, we work with a multitude of clients who vary in size, industry, and culture—but most of them have one thing in common: they want to understand their business more deeply and make informed decisions in real-time.
This is where we come in. We strive to help you understand your business through data-driven decision-making through our Business Intelligence for SMEs service. Of course, ideation is great, and giving you a good-sounding mission/vision statement on how we think about this is nice—but practical, workable solutions are where the real value lies.
Where better to start than by reviewing the tools we believe you should be using when developing an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline to automate your decision-making process?
1. Power BI: The Old Faithful

Power BI is one of the best-defined tools in the business, and for good reason. It is affordable, easy to integrate (for Microsoft users), and is well understood in the market—because it delivers the functionality people expect.
One of the standout benefits of Power BI is how easily you can expand its functionality without driving up costs. Whether you need simple dashboards or more complex data modelling, Power BI scales with your business as it grows, fitting any level of data sophistication.
Now, this is all coming from a Google disciple—we live, work, and breathe Google—so putting this at the top of the list might come as a surprise. However, we do so with good reason. Power BI is the most powerful solution when you consider its low start-up costs coupled with its extremely secure and reliable ecosystem.
2. Looker Studio: The Visionary

Looker Studio is a pathfinder in the BI industry. As data becomes a core competency for how businesses operate, Google has taken an agnostic approach with its visualisation tool. No matter where your data resides (inside or outside the Google ecosystem), Looker Studio will most likely be able to interact with it. This approach allows businesses to figure out their tech stack in real-time, without being locked into a suite of solutions that don’t necessarily suit them—they allow you to work the way you want.
Google also prioritises user experience. Every update comes with concise, easy-to-follow documentation on changes, which Google keeps up to date and easy to find. This significantly lowers the barrier to entry and makes the tool much easier to understand and use.
The biggest feather in its cap compared to Power BI—Looker offers full native cloud-based capabilities. This is a big benefit to Macbook users—no more need for secondary applications to run Microsoft OS just to make use of Power BI on your machine.
In essence, Looker Studio is the low-cost, agnostic BI platform you deserve. It is scalable, user-friendly, and designed to seamlessly integrate into your business—not the other way around.
3. Make Automation: The Workhorse

Make Automation is a game changer. It’s the tool every professional should layer into their workflows (along with ChatGPT, in my opinion).
Any repetitive task that you currently do, whether it’s reporting, downloading data for reporting, or sending out information to stakeholders, should be automated. Gone are the days of pressing buttons just to move data from one place to another—that’s what computers excel at. Let them do what you hate and focus on the things that drive value for your customers and other key stakeholders.
So, how does it work? Make Automation is the lowest barrier-to-entry API management tool on the market. It allows you to connect to over 2,000 external apps, with very little knowledge required to initialise.
Make Automation will extract and load data in your pipeline like no other tool you’ve used. Go over some introductory courses, start building, and you won’t be disappointed.
4. BigQuery: The Innovator

Data storage and transformation are sometimes seen as the less glamorous, backend part of your data needs. However, sometimes less flair and more repeatability can lead to incredible success (as we’ve seen with the Springboks’ back-to-back World Cup victories).
Likening a data warehousing tool to the most successful rugby team of all time may be a bit of a leap, but there’s definitely one thing they have in common—innovation. BigQuery’s columnar approach to data modelling is quite extraordinary. Gone are the days when your data model required a dimension for each repeated data context. Fewer dimension tables with more columns per table allow you to simplify your models without sacrificing performance or increasing load times.
Most other tools are still using practices developed in the ’90s, but Google is paving the way for users to leverage the cloud, massively improved computing capabilities and hardware advancements. As technology changes, so should the way we interact with it.
5. Microsoft Azure: The Guardian

Microsoft Azure is the dependable gatekeeper for your cloud computing and infrastructure needs. Just like Power BI is the trusted old faithful in the BI space, Azure has become a cornerstone for businesses looking to build, manage, and deploy applications across a secure cloud platform.
Azure shines in its ability to handle complex data pipelines and seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft ecosystem, making it an ideal choice for businesses already leveraging Power BI, SQL Server, or other Microsoft services. It provides a robust and secure environment for storing, processing, and transforming data, with the scalability to handle everything from small projects to large enterprise-level operations.
One of the biggest advantages of Azure is its security. Microsoft’s commitment to enterprise-level data protection makes Azure a safe and reliable choice, particularly for businesses working with sensitive information. Like a trusted guardian, Azure ensures your data stays secure while giving you the flexibility to innovate and scale.
If your business needs reliable cloud infrastructure that integrates effortlessly with your existing tools, Azure is the guardian you want in your corner.
Conclusion
When choosing a BI tool, it’s important to consider both your business needs and how your current systems are set up. This list of our top 5 tools is a guide, but it’s by no means exhaustive or prescriptive. At Creative CFO, we believe in making BI accessible to everyone. We build solutions that fit your needs, no matter what your constraints are. While we have our preferences, we hope that by reviewing this list, you’ll find the right tool for you.