Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams in most major industries, including higher education, government, healthcare, and technology.
Included is Clive, an engagement and real-time personalization tool for collecting information and using it to craft personalized…
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Domo
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Domo is a full self-service business intelligence software that combines several data analysis and reporting tools into one platform. It helps users connect to multiple data sources, create robust visual reports, manage their data, send messages in real-time, manage projects, and develop new apps.
Cascade Server is well suited with it's WYSIWYG editor being better than most editors that I have used in other systems. In context, editing makes adding content easy compared to the last CMS I used where you had to wing it and view the page outside of the CMS to see if it was correct. The ability mix HTML, CSS, and the Script of your choice anywhere and with ease.
The scenarios were Cascade Server is less appropriate would be in the use of compilers or programs like Visual studio. You need to go out of Cascade Server and go to other environments to perform tasks and then copy the result to Cascade Server. You can write directly in Cascade Server, but it's easier to do in and editor that is specific to a function.
I believe that companies that record large amounts of data about their product, service employers KPIs, etc, can make the best out of Domo for reporting and data analysis, but if a company handles little data and is not recording this consistently, it will not be of much use.
Exceptional Transform area of the platform - any/all raw data can be manipulated and combined to create datasources that are very useful for our departments.
Visualization layer is clean and is very business presentable. Its simple but includes depth. Visuals can be created/used by all roles throughout our firm, its not limited to analysts.
Ability to communicate and talk about insights in the data - the communication tool is exceptional. I can @ mention specific users to bring attention to a discovery. I can start a private chat. I can annotate and communicate what I am seeing. I love it.
Mobile experience is excellent. When I am on the road i can actively monitor and engage with my team due to my Domo dashboard on my mobile device. Its amazing to run the business and not worry while away from the office.
Cascade CMS is not an out-of-the-box pre-built system that you can install, turn on and expect to be serving sites and pages on day one. It's not a blogging system like WordPress, or a drag-and-drop system like SquareSpace (both of which I've used for their own purposes). You need to have someone tasked with management and system administration – and if you implement the on-premise self-hosted version, you ought to have several people. We have the university's IT shop handling infrastructure (server hardware, containers, clustering, operating systems, load-balancing, DNS, database servers, NAS/SAN drives), our Web & Design team managing Cascade CMS (system settings, sites, templates, permissions) and managers coordinating each respective academic unit (A&S, business, education, law, marine science).
Copying Reports - In Excel or Google Sheets, I like to make copies of similar reports and modify them as necessary for users. In Domo, makes copies of reports (called cards) but all copies are connected. So if you adjust the copy, it changes the original. This means a user has to recreate the report from scratch and then adjust it.
Unforgiving SQL - Domo does allow users to write their own SQL codes, which is great. However, Domo's SQL code is pickier than the other SQL database I've used (Metabase).
Text Alerts - Domo's alerts aren't always the smartest. Some of my dashboards are about the sales teams monthly performance and I get notified when there is a change of more than 20%. I always get notified at the start of the month that reports have changed from 'x' number to zero. This is expected because it's a monthly report and I hate getting texts about it. The only reason I don't term them off so I can be aware if something breaks in the middle of the month.
Changing systems would require too much effort. Our institution is using Cascade Server, WordPress and Drupal but we only serve 2200 students so we have 1 too many content management systems. Reflecting on current technical resources we would like to drop down to 2. This effort hasn't moved forward because of the extensive work required to migrate content and train users in a new system.
Domo is a great up-and-coming product. There are many fantastic features that are extremely compelling to our end users, which makes Domo a great fit for our organization. As with many BI tools, there are items on the wish list that could make implementation, administration and usage easier, but I believe these will be addressed over time as the product matures and evolves. The overall concept and approach of this solution has definitely raised the bar in this area of expertise and I would like to see things advance in giving the enterprise tools that will make decision making easier and more robust in the future.
Cascade CMS is completely usable on mobile devices, we can train our content editors in a single 2-hour session, and we support 1,000 users with a very small team.
There is a level of complexity for the system administrators, site managers and web programmers who implement templates and content types. But the complexity is neither arbitrary nor inconsistent – and once learned provides a powerful environment within which we can develop robust sites that are beautiful and powerful, yet easy for our content editors to manage.
The built-in user support and intuitive design of Domo makes it simple to learn and use. I find I can spend hours drilling deep, or else quickly gain an overview in just a few minutes. This is a great advantage since the flexibility fits well with the demands of my role. I enjoy using Domo since I know it will give me comparative data across almost every variable I might want to explore - I look forward to it!
They have always regarded any question or problem we encountered as very important. We have never felt that they ignore or downplay any issue and not once has anything been left unresolved. They also hold an annual conference where users are invited to attend and share their experiences and wisdom with the entire Cascade community. And with the care and support the provide, we all feel a part of that community.
Pretty responsive. It took a while to get a response in selecting data points for our particular cards. Might have taken about a month? I am not sure if this was something on our end or Domo's end. But haven't had any other issues yet that required additional support from Domo.
The key to any CMS implementation is PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. Proper planning with Cascade can increase your satisfaction exponentially once the site migration/creation is complete. When all is said and done, your implementation can make your site run like a Yugo or Maserati. Be smart and deliberate in your decisions. Drive the Maserati. It is already paid for.
It is a true web-based application so implementation is much easier and smoother compared to other non-web based BI solutions. Also, they offered consulting services during the implementation process, which was helpful. Also, they provided lots of on-demand training courses and videos, which I liked.
We selected Cascade server seven years ago, and the CMS environment at the time was clearly different than it is today. We decided to go with a vendor solution rather than a free solution because the long term cost in hosting a free solution is not, in fact, free; we've found Cascade to have been an excellent choice for us.
At the end of the day, end-user adoption and taking the burden of IT to build reports was my goal. Demoing and testing many BI tools, DOMO is the one that allowed both to happen.
Initially, ROI was positive - because we completely redesigned the website when we implemented Cascade.
Over time, the inability to keep up with the latest interactive tools has reduced visitors time on site.
Also over time, the difficulty of use has led to less buy-in by backend users, leading to outdated pages, little timely information, and lower visitors.
I mentioned a "previously un-analyzable" dataset that we were able to visualize in Domo - the result was business re-alignment for increased productivity, cost savings and ROI.
It's tough to quantify the ability to provide insights that have been desired for years but not possible - we continue to amaze our executives and product managers with the analysis we can provide.
