Likelihood to Recommend Based on my limited experience and use, and therefore limited global knowledge of the software, I would recommend it especially if the data that will be used as inputs to the model has previously worked on a spreadsheet such as Excel. I would also recommend it to analyze problems of medium and small size. Given the experience I have had when I have used it with large problems, there have been noticeable decreases in the speed of response (which are not associated with the size of the system of equations involved in the calculation). Excellent for processing linear programming models.
Read full review SPSS is well-suited for the following: 1) User Behavior Analysis: SPSS handles large datasets to analyze user behavior data. 2) Customer Satisfaction / Foundational Surveys: SPSS facilitates analysis of quant data from satisfaction surveys, keeping us informed about customer needs and preferences. 3) A/B test analysis: SPSS statistical tools for A/B test analysis, which helps optimize user experience of our products. Scenarios where SPSS are less appropriate: 1) Qualitative Data Analysis: I do not use SPSS for open-ended survey responses/qual data. 2) Live/in-vivo data analysis: SPSS is not ideal for real-time data processing. 3) Complex Data Integration: SPSS isn’t the best fit for complex data integration tasks
Read full review Pros Easy to use and learn. Strong optimization platform for business and supply chain problems which can be modeled in Excel It can handle multiple objectives and more than 8000 decision variables in a problem. Lots of tutorial and examples are available to solve the problem Read full review SPSS has been around for quite a while and has amassed a large suite of functionality. One of its longest-running features is the ability to automate SPSS via scripting, AKA "syntax." There is a very large community of practice on the internet who can help newbies to quickly scale up their automation abilities with SPSS. And SPSS allows users to save syntax scripting directly from GUI wizards and configuration windows, which can be a real life-saver if one is not an experienced coder. Many statistics package users are doing scientific research with an eye to publish reproducible results. SPSS allows you to save datasets and syntax scripting in a common format, facilitating attempts by peer reviewers and other researchers to quickly and easily attempt to reproduce your results. It's very portable! SPSS has both legacy and modern visualization suites baked into the base software, giving users an easily mountable learning curve when it comes to outputting charts and graphs. It's very easy to start with a canned look and feel of an exported chart, and then you can tweak a saved copy to change just about everything, from colors, legends, and axis scaling, to orientation, labels, and grid lines. And when you've got a chart or graph set up the way you like, you can export it as an image file, or create a template syntax to apply to new visualizations going forward. SPSS makes it easy for even beginner-level users to create statistical coding fields to support multidimensional analysis, ensuring that you never need to destructively modify your dataset. In closing, SPSS's long and successful tenure ensures that just about any question a new user may have about it can be answered with a modicum of Google-fu. There are even several fully-fledged tutorial websites out there for newbie perusal. Read full review Cons On the few occasions when I have used it to deal with problems of optimization of relatively large parameters (with a large number of restrictions and decision variables), the program has been slower, not substantially but slower, than programs such as the WinQsb, even when the latter runs on 32-bit machines and not 64. That has caught my attention, even though it is not a real problem for the uses I give to the program. Given my partial function as a university professor, it has been much more effective and practical to use other software, due to the limited options that the educational license associated with the software has. Read full review It would be beneficial to have AMOS as part of the SPSS package instead of purchasing it separately. It would be beneficial to have other statistical tests, such as PROCESS, be part of the standard SPSS tests instead of having the need to run a syntax to have it installed. My dataset tends to be smaller, and I have never had any issues with using SPSS. I heard that SPSS may not be optimal when handling large datasets. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Both money and time are essential for success in terms of return on investment for any kind of research based project work. Using a Likert-scale questionnaire is very easy for data entry and analysis using IBM SPSS. With the help of IBM SPSS, I found very fast and reliable data entry and data analysis for my research. Output from SPSS is very easy to interpret for data analysis and findings
Read full review Usability Probably because I have been using it for so long that I have used all of the modules, or at least almost all of the modules, and the way SPSS works is second nature to me, like fish to swimming.
Read full review Reliability and Availability SPSS can tend to crash when I am trying to do a lot of data. This can slow me down when I need to do a lot of data
Read full review Performance SPSS does the job, but it can be slow. I do have to plan a lot of time to get through a huge amount of data.
Read full review Support Rating I have not contacted IBM SPSS for support myself. However, our IT staff has for trying to get SPSS Text Analytics Module to work. The issue was never resolved, but I'm not sure if it was on the IT's end or on SPSS's end
Read full review Implementation Rating Have a plan for managing the yearly upgrade cycle. Most users work in the desktop version, so there needs to be a mechanism for either pushing out new versions of the software or a key manager to deal with updated licensing keys. If you have a lot of users this needs to be planned for in advance.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We believe in building the models in Excel. A limitation with Excel is that Excel Solver can not take more than 200 decision variables with multiple constraints. It is cheap in terms of license and maintenance fees against other softwares which are available in the market.
Read full review I have used R when I didn't have access to SPSS. It takes me longer because I'm terrible at syntax but it is powerful and it can be enjoyable to only have to wrestle with syntax and not a difficult UI.
Read full review Scalability I am neutral because I have not had to look into scalability since I am using as a student.
Read full review Return on Investment - It has allowed finding ways to optimize (minimizing costs or times) the field processes involved in various projects. It has even allowed, in specific cases where it was used for that purpose, to optimize the allocation of resources (people) to work in different jobs that present weekly variations of the activity that these people must perform. It has allowed the sensitivity analysis of projects to changes in the decision variables related to them, which, and in very dynamic and changing environments, resulted in substantial decreases in money losses. Read full review IBM SPSS has allowed me to quickly analyze data for research. IBM SPSS has allowed me to complete analyses in order to submit research findings to conferences and complete manuscripts. IBM SPSS has enabled me to meet research objectives set out in grant proposals. Read full review ScreenShots