As data becomes increasingly essential to making business decisions, organizations are adopting new tools that can help their users access important information more easily.

One of the startups working to capitalize on the trend is San Francisco-based Periscope Data Inc., which raised $25 million in funding this week from a group of big-name backers led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The investment follows 12 months of rapid growth for the firm that have seen its customer base more than triple from a year ago. Salesforce.com Inc., New Relic Inc. and about 600 other organizations now rely on its cloud-based business intelligence platform to visualize their information.

The company offers a straightforward analytics interface, which it says makes it possible to import data without most of the time-consuming preparatory work normally involved in the task. As a result, business intelligence professionals can start developing their dashboards faster and have more time to spend on addressing end-user requirements, according to the company. One of the sample dashboards depicted on its website shows food delivery statistics overlaid on a map of San Francisco, while another displays revenue data in a standard column graph format.

Periscope will use today’s funding to expand the appeal of its service to even more use cases. Cofounder and Chief Executive Harry Glaser told TechCrunch that his team will place a particular emphasis on the requirements of large enterprises, which demand various advanced features such as integration with on-premise security systems.

Periscope will need all the value-added capabilities it can muster to compete with the industry’s established data visualization providers, particularly Tableau Software Inc., which is also hard at work expanding its value proposition. The company unveiled a new data preparation product at its annual user conference in Austin today along with over a dozen other planned enhancments for its flagship dashboarding platform. Among the additions is a speedy in-memory data engine based on technology that it acquired through the purchase of German startup HyPer in March.

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