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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Infor Birst

    Score6.5 out of 10
    N/AInfor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools, and an open client interface.N/A

    Looker

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ALooker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.N/A
    Pricing
    Infor BirstLooker
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Infor BirstLooker
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
    Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Infor BirstLooker
    Considered Both Products
    Infor
    Chose Infor Birst
    During the vetting process, we looked at 14 different products (one of them internal) to see if they would fit our needs and whittled it down to this one over a three month period. We did not contact sales for all of them (sales sites were enough to rule out some), but did have …
    Incentivized
    Chose Infor Birst
    Birst was the only tool that did the following:
    • robust enough ETL for our data warehouse team
    • data would remain within our data warehouse and not within the tool's proprietary store, in case the company went out of business.
    Incentivized
    Chose Infor Birst
    Birst allows direct access to an internal data store, which none of the products we evaluated provided. We also found the birst ETL layer far more powerful than the other platforms we considered.
    Incentivized
    Chose Infor Birst
    The ability to scale was the primary factor for our CIO's approval. The other products had solutions for scale, but Birst has the one we preferred. As an IoT company our CIO concentrates on products that will meet our requirements today and far into the future. The other …
    Incentivized
    Google
    Chose Looker
    • Birst: very opaque for teams accustomed to DevOps (i.e., programmable infrastructure)
    • Tableau: no cloud strategy. Does not scale horizontally
    • GoodData: flexible, but cumbersome. Requires Java
    Incentivized
    Chose Looker
    I evaluated everything under the Gartner BI quadrant (i.e., Tableau, Birst, MS SSRS, MicroStrategy, etc.) — from the niche players, all the way through the powerhouse (supposed) "leaders" in BI. Looker was a nice fit for my company, because all though we are quite large (in …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    75 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    87 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    69 Answers
    Features
    Infor BirstLooker
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.4
    77 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Looker
    7.4
    134 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.068 Ratings6.5110 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.077 Ratings8.2133 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.159 Ratings7.5115 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.0
    78 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Looker
    6.8
    132 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Drill-down analysis8.078 Ratings6.3128 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities7.077 Ratings6.6130 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages6.127 Ratings5.655 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration7.068 Ratings8.8131 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.0
    75 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Looker
    7.9
    128 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Publish to Web8.052 Ratings7.7105 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.067 Ratings7.8113 Ratings
    Report Versioning7.28 Ratings7.984 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling9.066 Ratings8.3110 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    6.9
    72 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Looker
    6.6
    128 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.072 Ratings7.7124 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.058 Ratings7.5110 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics5.833 Ratings4.66 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.3
    72 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Looker
    7.3
    128 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.070 Ratings7.6120 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model8.068 Ratings7.2105 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.069 Ratings7.2122 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings7.360 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Infor Birst and Looker
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    5.0
    54 Ratings
    43% below category average
    Looker
    5.2
    95 Ratings
    39% below category average
    Responsive Design for Web Access7.052 Ratings4.991 Ratings
    Mobile Application3.034 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.042 Ratings5.885 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Infor BirstLooker
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Infor BirstLooker
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.5
    (99 ratings)
    8.0
    (134 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (35 ratings)
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    8.8
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (19 ratings)
    8.8
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.3
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    6.0
    (24 ratings)
    8.5
    (51 ratings)
    Data Sources
    7.6
    (76 ratings)
    7.3
    (51 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Infor BirstLooker
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Infor
    Infor Birst OEM and embedded analytics are well suited for advanced analytics and business intelligence. It has flexible deployment features and a lot of configuration ability with low code - no coding ability. Ability to ingest data from multiple live data sources. Source data from multiple sources can be segregated into multiple sections based on business criteria. Easily searchable business terms (metadata) across all enterprise analytic content.
    Read full review
    Google
    When data drives potential for new orders, Looker earns its place in our tech stack. If, on the other hand, we are hoping for pipeline generation, Looker is useful if you are willing to repeatedly go check customer utilizations .... it is not appropriate if you are hoping to automate data analysis for this purpose.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Infor
    • End-to-end solution, from raw source data, ETL, warehousing and reporting, Birst is able to do everything we need in one package instead of needing to develop and maintain multiple technologies
    • Intuitive report development. The drag and drop creation of reports is simple. More complicated queries are easy to generate.
    • Very user-friendly and interactive. A lot of nice features are available both for developers and end users to streamline the process of preparing and consuming data
    • Rich API which allows us to programmatically interact with Birst
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Show visited pages - sessions, pageviews - which programs are viewed the most.
    • Displays session source/medium views to see where users are coming from.
    • It shows the video titles, URLs, and event counts so we can monitor the performance of our videos.
    • It gives a graphic face to the numbers, such as using bar charts, pie graphs, and other charts to show user trends or which channels are driving engagement.
    • Our clients like to see the top pages visited for a month.
    • I like the drop-and-drag approach, and building charts is a little easier than it was before.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Infor
    • Birst prices are fairly expensive. License plus cost of users can add up pretty quickly
    • Depending on the size of data, rendering of reports can take a little bit. Need faster processing of data
    • Takes a little time to understand how to build reports, not the most intuitive UI
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Documentation is scarce, and very difficult to find when you need it.
    • Pricing is unclear, particularly as you look to scale your reports across the business.
    • Data from other sources is not represented in the system as well as first party Google services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Infor
    We have been able to overcome any of the drawbacks we've found with Birst easily and it has fulfilled almost all of our analytic needs to date. Having seen their roadmap it would be highly unlikely we would move away from this platform any time soon. You simply can't beat the functionality that Birst provides for the price and the things I see coming out of the company solidify that our decision to choose Birst was the best possible choice. We have never regretted the decision.
    Read full review
    Google
    I give it this rating because it deems as effective, I am able to complete majority of my tasks using this app. It is very helpful when analyzing the data provided and shown in the app and it's just overall a great app for Operational use, despite the small hiccups it has (live data).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Infor
    I would like to see additional usability put into the ETL scripting. Recently, Birst added a nice function reference inline to formula creation which has kept me from having to return to documentation so much. The same in ETL would be very beneficial. The interface problems related to the Flex framework are being addressed in a rewrite to HTML 5, but for now they are still a hindrance to a higher usability rating.
    Read full review
    Google
    Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Infor
    We frequently experience -103 errors due to us using the Live Connect functionality, which does not seem to handle even minor interruptions in connectivity, and treats all future connection attempts or data requests as errors, even if the issue does not exist any longer
    Read full review
    Google
    No objections
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Infor
    Everything runs very fast and smoothly. The only process that I wish was faster would be processing the data after uploading new data or making changes to the existing data model. It can take 15-20 minutes (roughly) to upload and process new data once you start getting into 10's of millions of rows. Given my experience with how long it takes me to pull the same data using SQL Server Management Studio, I don't think Birst is unreasonably slow - but for me to give a higher rating, I would want it to be unreasonably fast
    Read full review
    Google
    Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Infor
    • Poor turnaround time
    • Low response rate when the problem at hand are large
    • Lack of infrastructural knowledge when it comes to scaling solutions
    • Lack of inter team work noticed
    • Most of the tickets are open for a long period of time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Infor
    I have attended two different training sessions. The first one was my initial training on the system. It was well paced, clear and concise. If there were questions that were not able to be answered by the instructor, he took down the question and actually followed up and provided us a response quickly. The second session was specific to the dashboard and report design components. This training was very good though there were some attendants who had little or no experience and their questions slowed the class.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Infor
    Although I found the online resources helpful, a lack of appropriate examples for certain tasks key to report creation and advanced modeling make the online training/documentation less than perfect. For an inexperienced BI professional, the online training would not enable a streamlined launch of the product.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Infor
    Have clean data! Birst flexibility allows - Start small, then introduce functionality and complexity along the way. If you try to present all the functionality [bells and whistles] and wow them, but bad data is uncovered, the end user blames the new application and turns away.
    Read full review
    Google
    Very satisfied, easy to implement
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Infor
    Birst was better than Domo for our needs because we could get in and tinker with it. Our impression of Domo was that it had a lot of connectors and ready to go reports, but it made too many assumptions about applications we use. We customize too much to use a "ready to go" solution like that. When we looked at Tableau, we liked its visualization capabilities, but it wasn't going to help us do the extractions, ETL, and warehousing of data. It may have come some distance since then.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Looker Studio, you can easily report on data from various sources without programming. Looker Studio is available at no charge for creators and report viewers. Enterprise customers who upgrade to Looker Studio Pro will receive support and expanded administrative features, including team content management. So it's good.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Infor
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    Perfect price to performance
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Infor
    we can see that loading a lot of data can cause a noticable slow down in performance. Birst support indicated that they don't really consider anything less than 30 seconds to be an issue, but that is not the case for our customers, so we have had to change some of implementation to address this
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Infor
    • Being a manufacturing company we tend to lag behind technologically. But having all the data for different ERP systems in one place has been an eye opener for the executives. It has lessened the need to convert some legacy ERP systems.
    • Having such a simple reporting tool is a great asset to some of our sites that have traditionally had trouble gathering data from AS400 systems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Looker has a poignant impact on our business's ROI objectives. As an advertising exchange we have specific goals for daily requests and fill, and having premade Looks to monitor this is an integral piece of our operational capability
    • To facilitate an efficient monthly billing cycle in our organization, Looker is essential to track estimated revenue and impression delivery by publisher. Without the Looks we have set up, we would spend considerably more time and effort segmenting revenue by vertical.
    • Looker's unique value proposition is making analytical tools more digestible to people without conventional analytical experience. Other competing tools like Tableau require considerably more training and context to successfully use, and the ability to easily plot different visualizations is one of its greatest selling points.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Infor Birst Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    Looker Screenshots

    Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.