Jaspersoft vs. Varicent

It is well suited for the fact of scalability itself and the breadth of features this application has in order to make the migration from legacy systems to the newer different versions more seamless and effective. Data integrity and security are the main aspects of this tool which does not lose their value when doing day-to-day operations for data mapping.

Incentivized

For the use cases we have at the bank, ICM is a perfect solution. For any bank or institution that has similar requirements, ICM would be a perfect solution. But I also think for any use case that has any sort of incentives based on Sales done, this would work amazing, as both Calculations and reports are handled by ICM very well; it's an all-in-one solution, I feel like.

Incentivized

• TIBCO Jaspersoft allows you to embed reports into your own application, which gives users the feeling they are using a single product.
• TIBCO Jaspersoft Studio allows for more advanced report development, such as adding subreports, drilldown to detail reports, images, page headers, page footers, maps, and more.
• TIBCO's Jaspersoft Domain Designer is very easy to use and navigate.

Incentivized

• Flexibility - Varicent is not template based. You can implement the model specifically for your organisation.
• Scalability - Since it is not stick to templates you are able to expand the model for other domains as well.
• Reporting - Several ways of reporting are possible and each has their own benefit/purpose.
• Strong/Powerfull Calculation Engine delivering fast results/speed to insight
• User Interface is minimized to what you need and is not showing off all the functions it can "also" do
• Strong audittrail
• Appears to be almost unlimited in what you are able to create

• One of the issues we found during our implementation was that the reporting software would work faster for certain data sources and not the others. Extracting CSVs and XML was slower in comparison to JSON in our experience.
• Jaspersoft Studio was the main IDE we used for development. Built atop the Eclipse IDE, we found that the tool was really resource intensive and generally take long time to initialize.

Incentivized

• As [the] model gets more and more transactional data, the calculation time increases. This should/can be handled internally with better model optimization.
• Migrating from one env to other sometimes is challenging. There can be better 'Alerts' or 'Explanation' provided to handle it or at least to give a hint of the error.
• For managers viewing their rep's report, the access part can be made easier. It should be linked to Payee hierarchy and access can be done automatically.

Incentivized

JasperSoft has been amazing. It is well documented, fast, and transparent in how it functions. We have been very confident in JasperSoft in every aspect of our business and offerings where we've used it. On top of that, their improvements to the product have been fantastic. I am really looking forward to seeing where they take their product and how we can leverage that to please our clients

Incentivized

Customer support from IBM is impeccable. They are quick to respond and they don't nickel and dime you for every request you make. Their goal is to ensure your success and as a user, I really feel like they listen to my concerns. That's not to say there are no problems. All software has its issues, but I don't feel like those issues fall on deaf ears.

I think it's a tool well suited for a software developer. Others with less coding skills could struggle somewhat with the tool. I find java a little unforgiving as a language for expressions and not very user friendly for the technically dis-inclined. Sometimes the numeric conversions cause issues (who knew that 0 and 0.0 would cause different things to happen). Previous experience with a reporting tool that used visual basic for its' expressions that I found much simpler to use. On the other hand, java is so widespread, you can easily google the syntax to accomplish what you need to do.

Incentivized

Any calculations can be implemented as there are hardly any limitations on complexity. However, online real-time usability is lacking - a simple user enters, and the system calculates work in a way that it is in the browser and hence still needs overnight to be properly reflected in the batch calculations and backend tables.

Incentivized

We've never had an outage of the software itself. If it was unavailable, it was due to a network outage, not a problem with Jasper.

Incentivized

Never went down in last 3 years that I worked with it (every hour of the day basically). That is a 10 in my book.

Complex reports on heavy data load may take considerable amount of time. We have experinced some latencies/misfires regarding to this.

Incentivized

All is fast, but with API's it is sometimes slower due to the application we are pulling data from. Reports are loaded directly or within seconds and our reports are very detailed with many columns and rows.

They have a great customer support ticketing system in which they always respond same-day. They offer conference calls with srcreensharing as well in order to better understand your issues.

I wish that the lower level support access came with more than just 12 cases per year though as this makes us less likely to reach out for questions on things that we then instead try to solve ourselves which results in loss of time in trying to acquire new features and or solve a problem.

Incentivized

Giving a 10 would suggest there is no room for improvement. I don't feel like their support is perfect. However, I have never met another team that was more dedicated to making sure we get what we want and need.

It did the job of getting us to our deadline we set for ourselves for initial launch. The customer we launched the product for was also there to learn about it at the same in order to better understand the capabilities. This helped greatly so that the customer was on the same page on what was possible when using jaspersoft. I think most people would not want their customers aware the product they are using is third-party but in this case it was a new experience for us both and so as we learned more about jaspersoft, we both had better communication on what the future road map was for their business needs in BI.

Incentivized

The training was good in general with a nice trainer as well. But, the training could be better if it is more focussed on our process/data etc.

Resources available in the TIBCO Knowledge Base are covering almost everything. They are well organized, and covering almost every possibility. There is always the change to get back to the TIBCO support or to the dedicated Customer Success Manager whenever something very specific or bound to a customization is not covered.

Incentivized

There is a learning portal with many videos about navigation, creating reports and managing your model.

Having just completed an upgrade to the latest version of Jaspersoft, I am happy to say their support was very good. There were a couple of small challenges which were not easily resolved, but they were primarily related to the fact that we had skipped updates for a couple of versions. The current update procedures assumed we were upgrading from the prior latest version (6.4) to to the new version (7.1).

Incentivized

Test test test. Make sure that the product is calculating everyone 100% correctly. DO NOT accept a 70% pass rate as some companies would like to have you believe is acceptable. This means conducting thorough testing by providing 100% of all expected results, but it will be worth it when you know that the compensation plans are working entirely as expected.

When looking at the different features of these reporting engines, and what we were going to be using it for, the answer seemed clear. Jasper offered exactly what we were looking for, and did so for a price that we were happy with. For a scalable, feature-rich reporting engine that doesn't break the bank, Jaspersoft is the way to go.

Incentivized

In 2015, we used a scorecard containing 80 attributes in our review of Oracle, Callidus, and Xactly & Varicent. Oracle did not have true self serve capabilities- programming was heavily required, not intuitive, out of the box functionality was limited. Callidus & Xactly could not provide us a demo using our data, statements could not be sent out in bulk form, difficulty in importing/exporting to CRM. Varicent excelled in most areas and was the clear winner.

We haven't really started to explore the scalability of the product as yet, but in terms of existing deployments it has done what we need it to do.

Incentivized

It is very scalable and adaptable to changing complexities of calculations and business rules under a variety of different scenarios. It does not get full points because in large data loads the time needed to calculate and import the data increases exponentially and may cause issues related to timing potentially.

Incentivized

• When we demo our Jaspersoft environment to potential clients, their eyes light up and they sit up in their chairs a bit more. A lot of our meetings have ended with with the client very interested in our product due to Jaspersoft.
• Our existing clients have been very satisfied with the adhoc features of Jaspersoft. We've been able to provide them better access to their data on their terms instead of ours. Of course this turns into a huge win for us.
• We've always used SQL Server Reporting Services to deliver our reports to our clients. Converting to Jaspersoft has allowed us to generate the reporting layer that our clients demand. They no longer feel like they are settling for what we offer.

• Compliance - with a central system used for calculation incentive payments and commissions, we are able to provide reports and data showing every detail of how payments are calculated and why they are justified. We can also identify anomalies and outliers.
• Integration with our payroll system is seamless. Except for regular pay, nothing goes to payroll without going through ICM. The process for paying incentives/bonuses/commissions is now very structured and efficient.

Incentivized