Synergies is a cognitive application service provider that combines business knowledge, artificial intelligence technology, and software development. Their mission is to help businesses through their digital transformation journey, become leaders and innovators in their industries by unlocking the power of data in the hands of business users and decision makers. Their product, JarviX, is an AnalyticOps Platform . JarviX uses NLP…
JarviX is very good at data integration, creating charts and reports for data visualization. It is really impressive that Jarvix can let our marketing team know the number of members living in a specific area in seconds. In addition, the product manager from Synergies is willing to help us with all problems we encounter. I accidentally changed one of the settings in a data table which threw the existing dashboard into chaos. However, after assistance from the product manager, we were able to successfully bring the data back to normal.
SAS Business Intelligence is more suited to organizations which are already using SAS as the primary software for their analytics needs. Learning curve is relatively shorter for teams already skilled in BASE SAS. For organizations already working with open source software like Julia and Python, it doesn't make much sense to use SAS BI.
SAS BI makes it very easy to create interactive dashboards even for someone who is not from an IT background. For some specific requirements, basic knowledge of SQL is good enough.
A lot of functions have been predefined which makes it very convenient to create dashboards and reports. One doesn't need to be from an IT or a programming background to understand and create dashboards.
It supports other programming languages like R and also has a seamless API integration with various data management platforms.
There should be more flexibility in changing the data tables uploaded into JarviX. For example, it should enable users to edit the syntax of the table or change the data format of the columns without affecting the existing dashboard and charts already created using that data table.
There will be a steep learning curve for individuals transitioning from BASE SAS to SAS BI. Our department was filled with experienced SAS programmers, but that did little to prepare us for the challenges of SAS BI. Training will be a must.
It is possible, but extremely difficult to customize the web-based portions of SAS BI, like the Information Delivery Portal or Web Report Studio. Having an out-of-the box solution is great to get up and coming quickly, but customizing the look and feel for the web-based users will require some previous web design skills.
In order to fully appreciate the features of SAS BI, you absolutely need someone on your team with a background in platform administration, security, web design or some other basic IT skills. Alternatively, you may just need strong support from your IT department. Simply having a group of individuals experienced in BASE SAS will not cut it.
There is no other product that can match SAS. There are some products that can compare to ETL but lack the analytics that SAS has. Others can perform a limited set of analytical procedures but lack the data processing that comes with SAS. Using thin client allows users to access data whenever they have an internet connection.
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.
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.
Tableau and Power BI. Obviously, they are not in the same category. Tableau and Power BI only provide data visualizations plus a little bit of analytics. JarviX not only provides data exploration, so you can find out what the problem is, as well as model management and App builder. If you only look for a dashboard, yes BI is probably enough, but if you constantly feel lacking actionable insights for actual implementations of improvements, JarviX is the choice for you.
SAS Business Intelligence is not the cream of the crop for business intelligence applications, but it is not far behind. The software is generally easier to apply than most other business intelligence software. Additionally, SAS Business Intelligence runs smoothly in the background when making real-time updates. With that said, the software is not as efficient of many of the other business intelligence software applications that have been on the market for longer than this one.
I think the best part of JarviX is that we can get the analysis results in several minutes. We spent lots of time making reports and managing our data in the past. All in all, it helps us save the time, cost, and labor of managing data.
