Alex Solutions vs. Informatica Cloud Data Quality

If you have information systems with lots of information but need a solution that ties together the data Alex Solution is really a great tool for this. We're a large international company, so this was our case. But if you are a smaller local company with not that much data available it could be you should look for other solutions for a start.

Incentivized

For effective data collaboration, systematic verification of customer information, and address, among others, Informatica Data Quality is a fruitful application to consider. Besides, Informatica Data Quality controls quality through a cleansing process, giving the company a professional outline of candid data profiling and reputable analytics. Finally, Informatica Data Quality allows the simplistic navigation of content, with a dashboard that supports predictability.

Incentivized

• Easy and fast data sharing across platforms
• Single platforms solution
• Able to handle cloud and on premise

Incentivized

• The matching algorithms in IDQ are very powerful if you understand the different types that they offer (e.g., Hamming Distance, Jaro, Bigram, etc..). We had to play around with it to see which best suit our own needs of identifying and eliminating duplicate customers. Setting up the whole process (e.g., creating the KeyGenerator Transformation, setting up the matching threshold, etc..) can be somewhat time consuming and a challenge if you don't first standardize your data.
• The integration with PowerCenter is great if you have both. You can either import your mappings directly to PowerCenter or to an XML file. The only downside is that some of the transformations are unique to IDQ, so you are not really able to edit them once in PowerCenter.
• The standardizer transformation was key in helping us standardize our customer data (e.g., names, addresses, etc..). It was helpful due to having create a reference table containing the standardized value and the associated unstandardized values. What was great was that if you used Informatica Analyst, a business analyst could login and correct any of the values.

• Alex Solutions has lots of features and you need to invest time to understand how to do best deal with the solution in your own business case
• Australian-based solution with no local support in Denmark. Not the biggest issue for us, but potentially is a place with room for improvement.
• Making it easier for users to adjust visuals and colours.

Incentivized

• Several partnerships diminishing the value of technologies
• Unable to get list of objects from Repository (like sources & targets) that don't have any dependency
• Scheduling: The built-in scheduling tool has many constraints such as handling Unix/VB scripts etc. Most enterprises use third party tools for this.

As pointed out earlier, due all the robust features IDQ has, our use f the product is successful and stable. IDQ is being used in multiple sources (from CRM application and in batch mode). As this is an iterative process, we are looking to improve our system efficiency using IDQ.

Easy to use not only for developers but also business users

Incentivized

The application works well except an occasional error out while using the system. It usually gets fixed when restarting the Infa server

Incentivized

Performance works just fine. It was able to load 200+ business terms, 150+ DQ automation, etc. very well.

Incentivized

I have seen companies with Alex and Collibra, and if I should choose one of these tools based on my knowledge and feedback from the users, I would definitely choose Alex Solutions. From a user perspective Alex Solutions is easier to use - it really is just more intuitive and for most users that can make the difference between using and not using the solution

Incentivized

IDQ is used by a department at my organisation to ensure and enhance the data quality.
The usage was started with address standardization and now it had been brought to altogether a next level of quality check where it fixes duplicates, junk characters, standardize the names, streets, product descriptions.
In the past we had issues mainly with duplicate customers and products and this were affecting the sales projection and estimates.

Scalability works as expected and it is truly an enterprise system.

Incentivized

• It's always difficult to predict the future, but the feedback from our organization is clear. Data-driven decisions are better decisions for sure.
• No service or solution is free, but seen in the bigger picture the better decision making surely outweigh the costs of Alex Solutions
• Our organization has way more focus on data and ensuring correct data collection. This is probably the best impact we have had seen from a data manager's perspective

Incentivized

• Integration with tools like PowerCenter helped faster delivery of product, and at the same time conversion
• Reduce overall project cost due to bad data , bad quality, exceptions identified nearing go-live and post production
• Employee efficiency is increased exponentially due to more automated, customized tool