Epicor Grow vs. Lightning Tools Data Viewer

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

Lightning Tools Data Viewer is well suited for re-surfacing data and customizing its look and feel.

• 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

• Shows Lists created on different sites to be seen and controlled on another site in a Tenant
• Allows selection of layouts and coloring way beyond what other programs do.
• Easy to learn and very functional.

• 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

• Data Viewer has a graph feature that is old school flat design. We loved the In House real 3D graph Lightning Tools program.

Grow.com is structured in [...] such a way that it is easy to get started for individuals that known SQL. For individuals that are not as well versed at SQL, the learning curve is much steeper. In such cases, it would be better for users to learn SQL and then go for data visualization with Grow.com.

Incentivized

If there is one area that Grow.com excel[s] upon much better than other data visualization tools, it is Grow.com's customer/tech support. Grow.com responds much quicker and does a better job of getting to a solution [than] any other business intelligence tool on the market. The support staff gets the big picture [...] and knows how to help.

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

Lightning Tools Data Viewer is much easier and more powerful than Infowise similar viewer in their lineup. In this case, we use Data Viewer over the one offered by Infowise.

• Grow.com has been a positive ROI in that it has improved management communication and discussion.
• Grow.com has been a positive ROI in that it has improved coordination among individuals at the same business.
• Grow.com has sometimes been a negative ROI for entities that don't change their behavior to use the software the best way.

Incentivized

• It allows us to do things that would take a great deal more time to duplicate in SharePoint
• It cuts down on ugly looking built in SP list layouts
• Users find it easy to access, thus this product is more productive