Entrinsik Informer vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Entrinsik Informer
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Entrinsik Informer is a web-based reporting and business intelligence application popular in the higher education vertical market. It helps organizations transform real-time data into actionable information by delivering ad-hoc reporting, data analysis, and interactive dashboards.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
7.6
8 Ratings
8% below category average
Tableau Server
9.3
95 Ratings
13% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports5.51 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.07 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.47 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
8.6
11 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.09 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.110 Ratings8.493 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.21 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.010 Ratings9.489 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
9.1
11 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web9.14 Ratings9.585 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.09 Ratings9.284 Ratings
Report Versioning9.13 Ratings8.070 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.07 Ratings7.477 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.11 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
7.3
1 Ratings
10% below category average
Tableau Server
8.4
90 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.31 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.31 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings7.764 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
9.1
11 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
95 Ratings
16% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.011 Ratings7.393 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.19 Ratings7.390 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.18 Ratings7.392 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.362 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
9.1
1 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Server
7.6
79 Ratings
5% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.11 Ratings7.177 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile9.11 Ratings7.768 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Entrinsik Informer
8.2
1 Ratings
3% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
46 Ratings
8% below category average
REST API8.21 Ratings9.040 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.137 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings4.67 Ratings
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Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(77 ratings)
7.1
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(67 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(14 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
8.3
(2 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(11 ratings)
3.4
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(2 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(5 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Entrinsik InformerTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Entrinsik
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
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Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
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Pros
Entrinsik
  • 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.
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Tableau
  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
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Cons
Entrinsik
  • 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.
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Tableau
  • Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
  • Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
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Likelihood to Renew
Entrinsik
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.
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Tableau
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
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Usability
Entrinsik
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.
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Tableau
Tableau Server is unbeatable at creating easy to use, interactive dashboards for busy executives. The software also saves time for the busy analyst that is tired of always using Excel. Tableau Server is a head and shoulders improvement over Excel.
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Reliability and Availability
Entrinsik
We have 10 concurrent licenses and we average between 6-8 at any given time during the day; and we host the application.
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Tableau
Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
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Performance
Entrinsik
No answers on this topic
Tableau
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
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Support Rating
Entrinsik
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.
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Tableau
We have consistently had highly satisfactory results every time we've reached out for help. Our contractor, used for Tableau server maintenance and dashboard development is very technically skilled. When he hits a roadblock on how to do something with Tableau, the support staff have provided timely and useful guidance. He frequently compares it to Cognos and says that while Cognos has capabilities Tableau doesn't, the bottom line value for us is a no-brainer
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In-Person Training
Entrinsik
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
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Online Training
Entrinsik
No answers on this topic
Tableau
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
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Implementation Rating
Entrinsik
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.
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Tableau
Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
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Alternatives Considered
Entrinsik
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.
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Tableau
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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Return on Investment
Entrinsik
  • 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.
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Tableau
  • Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
  • There are some significant setup for the server product.
  • Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.
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ScreenShots

Entrinsik Informer Screenshots

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Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.