Entrinsik Informer vs. iDashboards Enterprise Suite

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

iDashboards is well suited for an office environment or organization with fewer personnel and resources. Its efficiency allows for less "man" hours. In terms of selection, the primary key question during process was cost, great tech support service, and efficiency. About where it may be less appropriate, it will be an office where information production, consumption, and dissemination is not a priority

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

• Designing a dashboard is easy. In other words, it is fairly easy to make data look really nice!
• Data Analytics. This makes it easy to do calculations on your data (averages, etc.)
• Training and examples: Our introduction to iDashboards was thorough. There are plenty of tutorials as well, plus manuals.

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

• Provide basic video training tutorials
• Ability to upload/convert Excel data to non-Windows servers such as Linux or AIX
• Increase the data row limitation

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.

Our executive leadership relies on the dashboards provided through the iDashboards software. Thus, there is no doubt the contract will be renewed.

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.

iDashboards are fairly logical and easy to use once you get started. I have taught myself most of what I know on my own, by taking webinars, reading through all the knowledge base, and doing the tutorials. Expertise is needed to do some of the data manipulation, but most graphs are simple to make.

Incentivized

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

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.

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

iDashboards is easy to use right out of the box. The price point is very, very appealing and it offers everything the other products offer - ease of use and low cost.

• 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.

• iDashboards saved us from making a sizable investment in another HR dashboard
• iDashboards has improved the patient flow metrics
• Multiple FTEs have been repurposed as a result of automating the visualization and dissemination of data