Epicor Grow vs. Jaspersoft Community Edition

Grow.com is well suited if you have a lot of data or client data to manage. If you do not have tons of data, there are other options out there that are a bit more simple and easy to use and a better price.

Incentivized

Any scenario where you need to reach back into TIBCO support is something I would highly avoid. Most responses at the second round get you pointed to engaging their professional services. The general mentality seems to be "since our product acquisition cost is low, why don't you engage PS to get the value you need" If you are looking at enterprise scenarios, I would highly recommend looking at other more established products.

Incentivized

• I love the fact that you have a team of developers who can help me build metrics or fix metrics that I do not create properly. I had to learn SQL in order to really build the metrics that mattered, which was a lot of fun, but resulted in many broken metrics. The vendor's team was great in responding to me requests for help!
• Really, really appreciate the fact that Grow has SQL formulas to reference when building metrics. Again, as a novice, this accelerated my ability to learn and not have to leave your site and resources and stay within the Grow web properties.
• Great account managers who check in regularly and are willing to help out whenever needed.

Incentivized

• Very intuitive tool - An Advanced reporting user can figure out in a day on the end to end operations.
• Easy customization - Simple changes in UI makes it less headache for the end user who maintains the tool. Being an open source product (offers Jasper web services) makes a lot developer friendly compared to SSRS, Cognos etc.
• Easy Connectivity - Can connect to any data source (can connect to multiple data sources) for a single report - can be customized.
• Community - A very strong community available online, videos - on basic how to questions, also provides assistance to use case specific scenarios.
• Ease of Reporting - Can create a reports with in few clicks with out struggle.
• Domain Designer - A very powerful tool you can create a dataset using clicks with out writing SQL code.
• OnDemand Scheduling - A very good scheduling feature and a has got lot more simplistic compared to other popular tools like Cognos.
• Jasper Studio - Very good programmatic tool (desktop tool) lets you customize the reports more company specific, can embed complex coding with 3rd party languages like Java, Groovy (scripting language).

Incentivized

• There are basic labeling issues with some of the graph types. Wish there was more customizability here, especially on complex graphs.
• Could help more with analysis of data and trends, but that's going into full-fledged BI territory.
• The functionality of being able to snapshot data isn't quite there.

Incentivized

• Easier to customize the Jasper Server GUI. More flexibility with the input controls look and feel and maybe more input control types to select from.
• Have browser event functionality in the reporting itself.
• An easier way to iterate through an object. Maybe an option that tells the report Java run-time to stop following the report sequential flow and first integrate through this stated object many times.
• An easier way to create a list and add values to this list.
• Maybe one could stipulate the process flow of what needs to be computed first in a given field.
• The crosstab is a bit buggy on the Jasper studio side, so if that could be improved.
• Better and more examples of custom components
• The jive functionality on the tables needs an update. It looks so old and outdated.

Incentivized

Even though there are challenges with Architecture, sizing and other areas with Jaspersoft provided that Jaspersoft comes up with the right set of innovation, performance, scalability, and documentation in future it will be great expansion (win-win) situation for the clients and as well as Jaspersoft.

Incentivized

This tool is definitely a little bit difficult to be able to figure out at first, but after some time of learning you can definitely pick it up. I do wish there were more resources online that would be able to help speed up the learning process

Incentivized

The overall performance of this platform has been excellent. It is easy to work with the user interface. Creation of digital content and publishing on our social media platforms during marketing has been easy. Running our applications and upgrading our system to meet international standards has been successful. The user dashboard displays reports and performance of all departments effectively.

Incentivized

The support team is very helpful and in every situation we have needed help in, they have been able to assist. So I have had a good experience with them

Incentivized

We have only had a couple of tickets to be open while using Jaspersoft. Each time we have a very prompte responses that would meet our expectations. We always felt that our issues were being address in a timely manner

Incentivized

While the training was somewhat beneficial, a lot of what was taught to us was what we managed to figure out in the weeks prior. It did provide some useful tips and reference material, but overall something more tailored to our requirements would've been better.

Incentivized

New releases can be very buggy, also lacking when it comes to standard time zones and formats that are outside the US. As a company we never feel comfortable implementing a new release for at least 3-6 months due to errors that are found

Incentivized

Grow doesn't have as many advanced analytics features and other capabilities as some other 'dashboard' platforms on the market. Simply, if you want a tool for internal use only that has high-level analytics capabilities (regressions, completely custom visualizations, modeling), Grow probably isn't the platform for you. To put it another way, if you have a team of data engineers and scientists doing complex analysis, Grow might not make the most sense. However, if you understand the value of data/visualization/dashboards, but lack some of those skillsets in your company, Grow might be the perfect fit. Not only is it incredibly scalable and reasonably priced compared to other market solutions, but their transform capabilities really stand out. They have many native data transformations that mimic SQL coding of a dataset, without requiring any knowledge of SQL. They've converted these transformations to easy-to-use tools in the platform, which are perfect for the less-technical user.

Incentivized

Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the opportunity to build BI on case by base basis including Dashboards.

Incentivized

• Made it so much easier and faster to access data across tools
• Lessened the time exporting and uploading data to excel/sheets for analysis
• Made data and metrics more easily accessible to others in our orgs

Incentivized

• Jaspersoft Community Edition has not had any significant impact on our ROI as we have purchased the commercial edition of the product.
• The only impact on ROI is that when we bring on new developers, he or she can begin work using the community edition while awaiting the installation of the commercial edition.

Incentivized