IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs. Lob

You can use infosphere: -If you have multiple targets and source systems and they are different than each other. -If your infostructure is so big and unplaned well so you can't find what you want to see. -If your databases not so strong to process your data

Incentivized

It is great for low-cost, high-volume mail campaigns for our agents. The price is very reasonable, and they can send out a lot. Once the design is approved and they send a list, we handle it, then Lob. When we have agents who want to handwrite the addresses, we choose someone else (a local print shop) to print and send them to our agents.

Incentivized

• It is very strong to make transformations/data derivations
• It is very easy to connect to various external data sources. It has an interface (stages) for each connection that simplifies the task
• It is a stable platform. And that parallelism helps make it fast for loading, if the process is well designed

• Address Verification and NCOA Cleaning
• Autocomplete for our forms that allow a user to SKIP typing
• Printing and mailing documents automatically over API

Incentivized

• Lack of a strong web development environment.
• Metadata propagation in Jobs is somewhat complex.
• The possibility to develop jobs in Parallel and/or Server Engines is confusing.

• An automatically scheduled data export would be nice.
• Functions such as adding or editing bank accounts, updating check details, and querying data require knowledge of the specific code and API infrastructure. It would be nice to do these things without being an engineer trained in their specific interface language.
• They reduced their retention period on their interface to like 3 months, which is not ideal.

Incentivized

• Scale of implementation
• IBM techsupport

Incentivized

will continue to use for specific mailing requirements

Incentivized

I am rating it a 9 because even though there is a strong learning curve once you have an understanding of the platform it is very powerful. You are able to fully automate and run a multitude of tests at scale and because of that I believe the usability is quite strong

i never witnessed a problem with lob

Incentivized

perfect except from a minor tracking options missed

Incentivized

good support, not many examples I can think of

Incentivized

didn't participate but as for my information it was smooth

Incentivized

I particularly believe that Information Server, especially DataStage, is superior in many aspects to the Oracle Data Integrator tool. Several market analysts such as Gartner and / or Forrester better position DataStage on the Oracle solution.

Root keeps Lob because it is already deeply integrated into our systems, and replacing it would require significant engineering effort with limited expected cost savings. As well as the unknowns that come with other options, switching vendors would likely require a significant multi-quarter effort without clear cost savings or efficiency gains.

Incentivized

it will scale very well if its for saas companies

Incentivized

• Information Server can positively impact the costs of companies by increasing the productivity of development and therefore reduce their time and costs. It is estimated that DataStage can increase a developer's productivity by 40% on average.
• Better data governance
• Improve data quality and reduce bad data impacts

Incentivized

• The hard part is that the agents mostly see the returns over us, so I don't know the specific numbers.
• Some agents have great responses; others not as much. Or they get 75% of their mailers returned, and we don't know why.

Incentivized