Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Cymbio

IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.

Incentivized

It is less expensive and more accurate than paying staff to update inventory numbers in Mirakl and then type the orders into an ERP. A product like this is needed. Ideally, Mirakl Connect would improve their product so that it mapped orders into one customer record, but until that time, this is the best option that I have found.

Incentivized

• IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
• The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
• The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
• The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.

Incentivized

• Automated processes like uploading inventory numbers frequently
• Cymbio is able to map the dropship orders to the company customer record in Shopify and does not create a new record for every customer (like Mirakl Connect does)
• I like that the orders come through to Shopify without being marked as "Paid". I find this accounting easier to manually "pay" them in my system when I actually receive the payment from the vendor (this is another key difference between Cymbio and Mirakl Connect)

Incentivized

• The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
• Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
• Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
• Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
• Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.

• Customer Service. It would be great if they had service hours that matched business hours in the USA, but even accounting for the time difference, the customer service is not quick or friendly.
• They take away services. I am not sure if they hook you with extra services and then take them away over time or if it just happened to be that I started at a time they offered a lot more for the same price. When I started, they completely handled setting up a new retailer. Then they would set up the data, but I had to reformat all of images. Then they did nothing to set up a new retailer. Not only do you now have to set up in Mirakl all on your own, when you send them the file from Mirakl to map, you then have to go into Cymbio and upload the prices as well - a whole new extra step.
• A more user-friendly customer interface. In my opinion, there is not much of a user interface at all. I think the interface for pricing uploads is terrible and cumbersome and they are not open to any feedback about that. It would be great if you could directly change a price, but even to change one price, you have to format an upload file. And that's all you can really do there. All other requests to add to assortments, etc are done though what looks like Google forms.

Incentivized

IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements

Very easy to implement and use.

In my opinion, not easy to use. Based on my experience, they started with employees only directly using the system. Having an app to have customers log in and do tasks on their own seems like an afterthought that has not been well executed. However, once you have these things in place, you really don't have to mess with it very often. If you change your prices frequently, it might be more of an issue.

Incentivized

Never had any issues

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.

Mirakl Connect created a new customer record for every order. This was messy, difficult to figure out which customers went with which retailer and I was concerned about having my retail partner's customer data mixed in with my own. For me, this was a deal breaker which was such a bummer since this is a free product!

Incentivized

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

• We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
• We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
• Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.

Incentivized

• Better customer service because our inventory is accurate
• It pays for itself in saved staff time compared to doing all of these steps manually
• It is much more accurate to have the data transmitted electronically, there is no concern for mistyping

Incentivized