ClicData vs. Entrinsik Informer

We used ClicData dashboards in a somewhat unorthodox way: we used "Indicators", or icons within tables to represent data, and the results looked great. The ability to integrate 3rd party HTML into dashboards was valuable (although Clic Data correctly warns that response time may suffer). The ability to start small and release dashboards incrementally suited our needs very well. We also valued the responsive account team getting us quickly pointed in the right direction.

Incentivized

It makes creating queries very easy for end users so not only research or technicians can do it. The availability for creating Live reports that are accessible via Excel on the network has given many of our users the ability to get the information they need in a format they can use without needing someone to translate the raw data

Incentivized

• Ease of use, I can put together a dashboard in about an hour that is used by daily.
• Support, their support team is super helpful and always has detailed insight.
• Connectors, they have a huge number of connectors that allow easy integration of your data sources.

Incentivized

• Simple user-interface: Informer is relatively easy to learn and end users can begin running reports and creating new reports quickly.
• Email "burst" functionality: This feature allows emails to be sent out based on data in the report. So for example, a report could be scheduled that would email all student employment managers listing out the specific employees that report to them that haven't submitted their time sheets. Each manager would only see the rows that correspond to their email address.
• Analytics and grouping: Users can quickly drag columns to group and sub-total, and can use the analytics tab to get deeper insights into the data.

Incentivized

• More widgets.
• Sometimes it takes a while to refresh.

Incentivized

• There are a lot of reports that we have in Informer that say they have never been run, even though I know they have been run. So that makes it really difficult to determine which reports can be deleted to keep a tidy report list.
• The only other complaint I have about Informer is that there doesn't seem to be a properly detailed error code/message when the student information system can't be accessed. For example, I am currently trying to move Informer to its own standalone server and I get an error message saying that our license isn't valid. Informer Support sent a new license, which prompted the same message, and the only explanation they have given me is that Informer can't reach the student information system. I would think that if that were the case, the error message would say that instead of an invalid license.

Incentivized

Informer has been handily meeting most of our reporting needs, and we've created a library of hundreds of reports that are used every day. They have a terrific support service to help when you have questions, and I've found them to be great at listening to what customers would like and adding new features. They are a small company that really listens and really cares, and I've been very pleased over the past few years getting to know them.

Like I mentioned before, the ease of use means we not only get very quick results and beautiful dashboards in minutes, it means my team is actually using it because they aren't frustrated in the learning curve or wasting time trying to accomplish simple tasks.

Incentivized

From the perspective of the new user and a seasoned user I would say eight would represent both parties. It presents a 'familiar' interface and easy to navigate display. Tagging is quite nice and allows for organization of reports based on those tags. These have to be monitored like anything else to keep them consistent but provides a better than average means of organizing reports.

We have 10 concurrent licenses and we average between 6-8 at any given time during the day; and we host the application.

We've only needed support a couple times in the beginning as we were learning the system and how to display our data in interesting ways. Every time we reached out we got very detailed responses and were connected to someone that you could tell was very interested in making sure we were happy with how things were going.

Incentivized

I would have given 10 but no one and no system is perfect. The only issue with support is not the staff nor the response but the support Wiki and support pages in general run very slow at times. I believe this has been addressed by the company but the technical speed of the pages have been an issue.

We bought the product on a Thursday morning, and we were writing reports on Friday afternoon. We did take about a month to manage the Mapping, Linking and Security to allow us to open it up across campus. We are now mapping from as many third-party vendors as we can to enable the creation of more ad-hoc reporting.

ClicData was the most flexible. It is cloud-based and even has WebService access. You can publish your data for access from other applications. The sheer number of data connectors is amazing. The ability to not only create dashboards, but you can schedule them to be delivered to specific recipients on a scheduled basis via PDF or a static HTML page.

Incentivized

I have experience with Advizor AnalystX, and it was just awful. It is advertised as an interactive reporting tool, in which you can use your mouse to select and segment constituents by where they live (by clicking on a map), how much they've given to your institution, when they last gave, etc. In practice, their map feature was unusable; it's a static map image (imagine a paper map hung on your wall), rather than draggable and zoomable Google Maps, and it required hours of work to configure one map region. As far as computing constituents' giving statistics, it required way too much back-end work to build simple giving totals.

Incentivized

• ClicData was by far the most reasonable cost-wise, and we were able to get ROI within just minutes of using it.

Incentivized

• We have definitely improved customer service due to better reporting using Informer. All departments are better empowered to help our students in a more timely and accurate manner.
• Using Informer has given us the ability to eliminate functionality within our ERP system and offload reporting to a data store instead of the transactional system. This has resulted in successfully upgrading our core systems and improved response times.