Bilflo vs. SAS Business Intelligence

It aided the smooth operation of our recruitment process. Anyone who is interested in working with the company can gain access. Assume I'm a salesperson looking to expand my team. In that situation, I have the ability to approve or reject candidates, as well as add follow-ups to the dashboard. This is where I explain why I'm rejecting an applicant or why the interview has been rescheduled.

Incentivized

SAS Business Intelligence is more suited to organizations which are already using SAS as the primary software for their analytics needs. Learning curve is relatively shorter for teams already skilled in BASE SAS. For organizations already working with open source software like Julia and Python, it doesn't make much sense to use SAS BI.

Incentivized

• Bilflo gives me access to achieving my goals. It is very user-friendly system.
• The GP calculator is very helpful.
• This system allows for many different time-keeping and pay-structure.

Incentivized

• SAS BI makes it very easy to create interactive dashboards even for someone who is not from an IT background. For some specific requirements, basic knowledge of SQL is good enough.
• A lot of functions have been predefined which makes it very convenient to create dashboards and reports. One doesn't need to be from an IT or a programming background to understand and create dashboards.
• It supports other programming languages like R and also has a seamless API integration with various data management platforms.

Incentivized

• Releases are irregular and often contain bugs.
• It takes time to integrate for the first time.

Incentivized

• There will be a steep learning curve for individuals transitioning from BASE SAS to SAS BI. Our department was filled with experienced SAS programmers, but that did little to prepare us for the challenges of SAS BI. Training will be a must.
• It is possible, but extremely difficult to customize the web-based portions of SAS BI, like the Information Delivery Portal or Web Report Studio. Having an out-of-the box solution is great to get up and coming quickly, but customizing the look and feel for the web-based users will require some previous web design skills.
• In order to fully appreciate the features of SAS BI, you absolutely need someone on your team with a background in platform administration, security, web design or some other basic IT skills. Alternatively, you may just need strong support from your IT department. Simply having a group of individuals experienced in BASE SAS will not cut it.

There is no other product that can match SAS. There are some products that can compare to ETL but lack the analytics that SAS has. Others can perform a limited set of analytical procedures but lack the data processing that comes with SAS. Using thin client allows users to access data whenever they have an internet connection.

SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.

Incentivized

The support team cares for the success of the party. They even provided full scale help in the implementation process.

Incentivized

When you call tech support, you are immediately routed to a person who can answer your question. Often they can answer on the spot. However, if they cannot, you are given a track number and then followed up with. There have been times when I have had multiple track numbers open and they will actually TRACK YOU DOWN to ensure that your problem has been resolved. Issues do not fall into black holes with SAS. They are also willing to do a WebEx with you to diagnose the problem by seeing your environment, which is always helpful.

SAS Business Intelligence is not the cream of the crop for business intelligence applications, but it is not far behind. The software is generally easier to apply than most other business intelligence software. Additionally, SAS Business Intelligence runs smoothly in the background when making real-time updates. With that said, the software is not as efficient of many of the other business intelligence software applications that have been on the market for longer than this one.

Incentivized

• It definitely made an positive impact overall.
• The features are amazing and useful.

Incentivized

• Having a stable reporting environment. That is, everyone is using the same starting data, thus alleviating differences for timing, etc.
• Allows for a simple reporting environment for executives which do not have the technical knowledge to gather the data