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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 Studio

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/ALooker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.

    $9

    per month per user per project

    Pricing
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Looker Studio Pro
    $9
    per month per user per project
    Looker Studio
    No charge
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    Considered Both Products
    Infor
    No answer on this topic
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    38 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    40 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    33 Answers
    Features
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.4
    77 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Looker Studio
    7.0
    62 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Pixel Perfect reports7.068 Ratings6.643 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.077 Ratings7.361 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.159 Ratings7.259 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.0
    78 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Looker Studio
    7.7
    61 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Drill-down analysis8.078 Ratings6.851 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities7.077 Ratings7.057 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages6.127 Ratings7.129 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration7.068 Ratings9.759 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.0
    75 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Looker Studio
    8.1
    60 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Publish to Web8.052 Ratings8.453 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.067 Ratings8.753 Ratings
    Report Versioning7.28 Ratings8.139 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling9.066 Ratings7.942 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings7.524 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    6.9
    72 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Looker Studio
    6.6
    60 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.072 Ratings7.160 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.058 Ratings7.757 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics5.833 Ratings5.330 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings6.36 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.3
    72 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Looker Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.070 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model8.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.069 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Infor Birst and Looker Studio
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    5.0
    54 Ratings
    43% below category average
    Looker Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application3.034 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
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    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Chartio (discontinued)
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Jet Reports
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Kibana
    Score8.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.5
    (99 ratings)
    8.3
    (63 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (35 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    8.4
    (14 ratings)
    Availability
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (19 ratings)
    6.7
    (10 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.3
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    6.0
    (24 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    7.6
    (76 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Infor BirstLooker Studio
    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
    Visualizing cross-channel campaign performance can blend data from a few different sources to compare performance metrics like spend, clicks, and conversions side-by-side in a single view, which helps in quick budget reallocation decisions. When dealing with massive volumes of data (millions of rows) or highly complex queries, Looker Studio dashboards can become slow, laggy, or even crash. Performance issues are a frequent complaint when working with large datasets, making it unsuitable for enterprise-level companies
    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
    • Breath of data - the number of ways to interrogate the data is endless, and the options to view metrics alongside each other make for comprehensive datasets.
    • Data visualisation and customisation - the options for presenting data and separating out across pages allow for clean visuals and segmented information.
    • Easy shareability/usability - a quick and simple tool to introduce colleagues to, and easy to grant access for them to be able to view the data, without having to understand the setup itself.
    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
    • It needs better handling of complex logic. We often need workarounds to perform complex custom calculations, and it can be really unpleasant at times.
    • Felt it got slow with a larger data set, and in one minor report, we had to set up time filters so that calculations during spikes could be traced more quickly.
    • Compare to competition they need to improve with notification things.
    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.
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    Google
    It is the simplest and least expensive way for us to automate our reporting at this time. I like the ability to customize literally everything about each report, and the ability to send out reports automatically in emails. The only issue we have been having recently is a technical glitch in the automatic email report. Sadly, there is almost no support for this tool from Google, but is also free, so that is important to take into consideration
    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 Studio is easy to use, and it offers a sufficient variety of predefined visualizations to choose from. It's easy for us, and anyone can set up basic reporting without extensive data visualization skills. The interface layout is easy to understand, and it doesn't take long to get used to.
    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 answers on this topic
    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
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Google
    I give it a lower support rating because it seems like our Dev team hasn't gotten the support they need to set up our database to connect. Seems like we hit a roadblock and the project got put on pause for dev. That sucks for me because it is harder to get the dev team to focus on it if they don't get the help they need to set it up.
    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
    No answers on this topic
    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 is far easier to implement, stand up, and learn. The interface is simpler and user-friendly for various levels of data visualization/analysis knowledge and experience. The biggest benefit of Looker Studio, however, is its ease of connection to GA data and speed. Furthermore, since it is an online program/tool, it requires less CPU/battery/storage on the user's device.
    Incentivized
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    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
    • Free, so the only investment is time
    • Because it doesn't have native support of non-Google sources, it can cost more money than Tableau
    • The time spent formatting the templates or building connectors can have a negative impact on ROI
    • As a agency, charging for the reporting service is profitable after the first month or two after building the dashboard.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Infor Birst Screenshots

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