IBM Cognos Dashboard Embedded vs. SAS Visual Analytics

During the project development phase it becomes easier to visualize the code development in almost real time with charts and drop down and drag and drop features makes it really easy for the effective development process during different phases of the project. Dashboard itself is of great help with features like drag and drop and visualize the artifacts in real time as we are developing those. It wouldn't be very effective with high massive coding and huge coding projects as we may encounter performance issues.

I was in a meeting with the client and there I have to show them some analytic data to them. But I was confused about how I will manage to show big data to clients with accuracy. But then the SAS Visual Analytics software helps me in presenting accurate data at the moment and it was very presentable and through that, I got the deal for that business.

Incentivized

• Easy to learn and apply in real time projects.
• Multiple query can be combined to generate simple and easy to understand reports.
• Mobile access feature helps to integrate with multiple devices.

Incentivized

• Provides the flexibility to the end user to slice and dice the data.
• Anyone can make predictive models with the help of in-built algorithms without the need to write a single line of code or knowledge of what's under the hood of algorithms.
• The feature to simply ask a question related to data and getting a response in form of text, chart or graph is amazing.

Incentivized

• How to do guide and there is definitely more training opportunity that company can offer
• Performance improvements can make the tool more efficient
• Can be more open to accept the external files

• SAS is relatively expensive when compared to other BI tools and requires a large amount of upfront fee which becomes an issue for smaller organizations.
• UI for the dashboards looks a little date in comparison to competitors like Tableau and Microstrategy.
• Integration with other open source software like Python needs to be built in.

Incentivized

SAS really is the cutting edge in Business Intelligence. That is all they do! They are constantly coming out with new products, product upgrades, and their tech support is second to none. In addition, their support of Education has made our ability to acquire their product possible.

SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.

Incentivized

When you call tech support, you are immediately routed to a person who can answer your question. Often they can answer on the spot. However, if they cannot, you are given a track number and then followed up with. There have been times when I have had multiple track numbers open and they will actually TRACK YOU DOWN to ensure that your problem has been resolved. Issues do not fall into black holes with SAS. They are also willing to do a WebEx with you to diagnose the problem by seeing your environment, which is always helpful.

Lower costs—reduces maintenance due to complete report coverage and a zero-footprint environment. Ability to create complex, multi-page layouts using different data sources. Multiple export formats—Excel, Portable Document Format (PDF), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and Comma Separated Value (CSV).

Incentivized

I have used Crystal Reports, Jaspersoft and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). I would recommended Business Intelligence over SSRS and Crystal Reports. SSRS is very SQL-centric and Crystal Reports is more of an end-user tool. I would recommend Jaspersoft over Business Intelligence for developing a seamless web-based reporting interface but I highly recommend Business Intelligence for end-user ad-hoc reporting.

Incentivized

• Effectively solves the project blockers by mitigating the integration challanges
• Monetary impact is not negatively impacted on the projects budgets
• Great ROI and positive impact on the business because of breath of features and great dashboard features

• SAS Visual Analytics licensing cost should be reduced to enable users to use it in mass scale.
• More statistical and mathematical equations and theories should be converted into SAS functions for reusing.
• Because of enriched ETL and reporting capabilities SAS Visual Analytics is most preferred by business users.

Incentivized