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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

    Microsoft Access

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.

    $139.99

    per PC

    Pricing
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft Access
    $139.99
    per PC
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    Considered Both Products
    Infor
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    29 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    21 Answers
    Features
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.4
    77 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports7.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.159 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    7.0
    78 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis8.078 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities7.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages6.127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration7.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.0
    75 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.067 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning7.28 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling9.066 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    6.9
    72 Ratings
    15% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.072 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.058 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics5.833 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    8.3
    72 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    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 Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    5.0
    54 Ratings
    43% below category average
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application3.034 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Relational Databases
    Comparison of Relational Databases features of Infor Birst and Microsoft Access
    Feature
    Infor Birst
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Access
    7.7
    3 Ratings
    5% below category average
    ACID compliance00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
    Database monitoring00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    Database locking00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
    Encryption00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
    Disaster recovery00 Ratings7.73 Ratings
    Flexible deployment00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    Multiple datatypes00 Ratings8.03 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    SAP IQ
    Score5.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.5
    (99 ratings)
    7.4
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (35 ratings)
    10.0
    (15 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    7.6
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (19 ratings)
    6.4
    (5 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)
    -
    (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)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Infor BirstMicrosoft Access
    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
    Microsoft
    As a Material Purchasing/Planning/inventory tracking application, Microsoft Access serves its purpose well. It's presentation is clean, data entry is simple and the ability to customize search fields is welcome. It does, however, come with some caveats; namely, when setting search filters and the need arises to back up a step or two, with Microsoft Access you have to reset, or "clear all", adding extra steps/time to a query.
    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
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    Microsoft
    • Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts.
    • Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite.
    • It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join.
    • Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language!
    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
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes.
    • The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things.
    • Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names.
    • I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object.
    Incentivized
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    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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    Microsoft
    I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Microsoft
    I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Microsoft
    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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    Microsoft
    While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
    Incentivized
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    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.
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    Microsoft
    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.
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    Microsoft
    there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
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    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
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    Microsoft
    Excel is a fantastic - robust application that can do so much so easily. Its easy to train and understand. However - excel does not provide a reporting function and that is typically where we will suggest a move to [Microsoft] Access. [Microsoft] Access requires a little more knowledge of data manipulation.
    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
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    Microsoft
    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
    Microsoft
    • Not having to recreate queries or reports every time you want to use them.
    • Once an item is created and saved as part of the database, you save manpower by not having to recreate them.
    • ROI from a usability standpoint is great. Solid product with great functionality that requires low maintenance usually.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Infor Birst Screenshots

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