BigTime Software vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

I'd like to start by saying, I rarely give 10's on anything, almost always 9's, the main reason for my 10 rating is the support I've received from this team/company. BigTime Software has been well suited for our company b/c it's giving a window into the project budget and time frames to our Project Managers to proactively manage their projects and look for areas to improve and celebrate with support staff. I would say efficiency in time management. BigTime Software is not an accounting software and I love that about it. We were looking for a tool for staff to manage their projects and stay on budget and track time and generate invoices all in one place and we've found that with BigTime Software.

Incentivized

Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.

Incentivized

• I like the functionality of being able to make payments electronically and the amount of banks and payment methods that are available.
• Another very useful feature of this tool is that the system allows to set a parameter to perform automatic invoices.
• I also really like the amount of templates that this tool has. Since it allows us to make customizable reports to our clients.

• Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
• Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
• Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
• Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.

Incentivized

• For some types of projects, we are unable to use BigTime's invoicing feature. It would be nice if we could further customize invoices to fit our needs. We still have to use Quickbooks to complete certain invoices.
• Being able to create Purchase Orders in BigTime would be extremely useful to us. We currently use Quickbooks for this.

Incentivized

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

Its been a huge help in saving time and making billing more efficient. Would like to see the product grow and be able to continue to use it.

Incentivized

Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.

Overall most areas of the software are easy to use. I tend to spend a lot of time in analytics and reports. Those are not as user friendly, in my opinion, and could use some improvements. I think it just takes time to get familiar with where items are stored in the program and what changes affect what.

Incentivized

The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.

Incentivized

BigTime is available 99% of the time. At times there are bugs, but most are resolved quickly

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

have not noticed a slow integration issue using QBO

Incentivized

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.

The support is amazing! They are always available through the chat interface in the program. Each support person has fully answered my questions the first time. I have had a positive experience with each inquiry. It is very important to me that I am able to get instant access to help so that I can make the most of the software and all of its capabilities.

Incentivized

MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.

Incentivized

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.

I touched on this briefly, in another survey section, but my implementation manager, Kevin, was exceptional. The actual implementation process took 3 months, not 1 before I was comfortable rolling it out to staff. We also had to wait/schedule time and coordinate for our custom xml. invoice to be generated and in a place we felt comfortable sending it out to clients. In the end I was very satisfied, but during the first few months it was challenging.

Incentivized

We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.

I liked the client management, but it didn't do time tracking, billing or syncing with quickbooks. It was too robust for my needs. I tried it for the client management and thought I might use it along with bigtime, but it was too cumbersome and would involve too much double entry. And it didn't track time or bill which are necessary functions

Incentivized

We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.

Incentivized

The product is useful for faster billing and efficient timesheet logs. I do like the report features however there are many options and can be overwhelming for the user. It is most helpful to set up reports speaking to an agent to ensure the right fields are set, etc.

Incentivized

• Before BigTime, we were using Excel to track everything, creating invoices, and run reports. Getting on BigTime has saved us tons of time and effort which equates to dollars saved on labor.
• From a legal standpoint, BigTime has allowed us to be organized and prepared in the event we would need to present financial details to anyone.

Incentivized

• As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
• However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.

Incentivized