Logi Symphony vs. Salesforce CRM Analytics vs. SAS Visual Analytics

For all the scenarios I have so far worked on or I am currently working on, Dundas BI has proved to be more than adequate and apt to handle all of those. It is a very easy-to-use tool with quick shortcuts enabling you to prepare ad-hoc reports or dashboards in a matter of minutes.

Incentivized

For us it really comes down to that book management and next best contact for our advisors. When we're thinking about a book of business that may range, depending on the advisor, from 400 clients to a thousand clients, how do they really optimize their time? Who do they call next? Who do they work with to make sure not only they're keeping those clients engaged, they're not leaving the firm going to other advisors who they haven't talked to in a while who might need their attention. That's really where that CRM analytics is really proven pretty powerful for us.

Incentivized

I was in a meeting with the client and there I have to show them some analytic data to them. But I was confused about how I will manage to show big data to clients with accuracy. But then the SAS Visual Analytics software helps me in presenting accurate data at the moment and it was very presentable and through that, I got the deal for that business.

Incentivized

• Project organization from Development to Production, you get a production and development license but I think the best way to do it is with DEV and Prod project in the Production box. Use the development box for testing updates and really crazy things. With the Dev and Prod projects on the same box, you just publish from Dev to Prod and you are done. Users only have access to the Prod projects so no one can mess up what you are working on.
• Security - If you have a hierarchy (subsidiaries, divisions, department, teams) and you want each group to see only their data, then Security hierarchies are for you!
• Dependent filters! What's this you ask? Here is an example of how it can be used, in your company you have departments and who works for what department is in your database. You make a dashboard that has a department filter (only show these departments), a managers filter, and employee filter. Not every manager or employee is in multiple departments usually only one. With dependent filters you can say that the manager and employee filter are dependent on what is selected in the departments filter so when you go to filter them they only show the managers or employees that are part of that department, and you can even it do so employees are not only dependent on department but on manager as well. Then it gets even better as it can be done in reverse as well so when you select a manager then go to the department it only shows the departments he works for (there are better situations where this is more useful).
• It is scriptable! From calculate columns, null replacements, button actions, load actions, hover over events there a way to do what you want.
• They are constantly improving and listens to your suggestions.

Incentivized

• Interactive Dashboards, it [consists] of wide variety of charts
• Data from different sources can be easily integrated with it
• Security, it provides easy way to secure and share the information with the users
• Support actions like opening hyperlink etc
• Almost everything can be done from configuration
• Data can easily be managed from dataflow.

Incentivized

• Provides the flexibility to the end user to slice and dice the data.
• Anyone can make predictive models with the help of in-built algorithms without the need to write a single line of code or knowledge of what's under the hood of algorithms.
• The feature to simply ask a question related to data and getting a response in form of text, chart or graph is amazing.

Incentivized

• Not too many cons for how we use the application. It really is easy and powerful. Very powerful.
• Licensing is one thing that could be looked into. It is simple, but a little confusing. For example, if I get a license today, but a new release comes out tomorrow, it seems that the license doesn't work with the new release. Maybe that is by design, but it would be nice to clearly understand.

• Implementation takes time and resources. It is a heavy lift to implement and at first, it can take a little bit of time to understand what you are looking at. But once it's implemented it's easy to get started.
• Without any BI expertise or resources available to your organization, the implementation of this is difficult. If you aren't used to BI tools and don't have an expert in house, the terminology can be difficult to understand at first.
• Their support is not on hand to help you if you encounter any issues, at least not on all the plans or the basic plans. Real-time support service is an add-on, so you'll need to be patient if you require help or pay extra money.
• More functionality for the tool is needed to compete with other heavyweights in the arena like Tableau, Qlik, and Microstrategy. Still lacks the robustness, functionality, and flexibility other competing products possess.

Incentivized

• SAS is relatively expensive when compared to other BI tools and requires a large amount of upfront fee which becomes an issue for smaller organizations.
• UI for the dashboards looks a little date in comparison to competitors like Tableau and Microstrategy.
• Integration with other open source software like Python needs to be built in.

Incentivized

SAS really is the cutting edge in Business Intelligence. That is all they do! They are constantly coming out with new products, product upgrades, and their tech support is second to none. In addition, their support of Education has made our ability to acquire their product possible.

We are still in the implementation phase, but so far we are finding it to be easy to use and learn. The eLearning courses that they have made available for free, as well as User Forums and other training videos have made even difficult concepts easier to understand.

For someone who don't have coding background, this could be a useful tool and fairly easy to learn and use given the good support. However, if you know other open source tools, it would be much easier to use the other tools and the knowledge is more transferable in the future.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We have bi-weekly calls with our Success Manager, as well as access to support as needed. Any question that I have had, multiple people have been willing and able to jump on a call to talk me through it, or send an email with the solution

I was not able to be in interaction much with Salesforce support team since every feature works the way it should be working. So far I have not experienced any bug or major glitches that would delay the result of my work and performance. There is also a hotline in our company for Salesforce issue but so far I have not used it.

Incentivized

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.

Providing that you have the client's needs well known, creating BI content using Dundas BI is a walk in the park!

An implementation partner would certainly result in greater output in a more efficient amount of time. However, I have found implementation partners to be extremely expensive for the output received (at least working for a non-profit company they are frequently unaffordable). Internal implementation does help with usable output though since internal knowledge would better know the data architecture and business processes

Incentivized

Per dollar spent, it offers the widest range of features of the tools that we evaluated. It offers lots of options for how to configure your environment, though they are not always intuitive to figure out. Having an ETL layer was a must have for us, as well as the ability to host to secure HIPAA compliance. It is not a replacement for ad hoc reporting, but does a great job of creating parameterized reports and dashboards that look great.

Incentivized

Tableau is the absolute top of the class when it comes to business intelligence, but it doesn't make sense for every business case. In our case, we needed a simple data visualization platform for our CRM platform and sales pipeline. Salesforce Analytics, while nowhere near as robust, did the job we needed it to do perfectly in a significantly more cost-effective manner.

Incentivized

I have used Crystal Reports, Jaspersoft and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). I would recommended Business Intelligence over SSRS and Crystal Reports. SSRS is very SQL-centric and Crystal Reports is more of an end-user tool. I would recommend Jaspersoft over Business Intelligence for developing a seamless web-based reporting interface but I highly recommend Business Intelligence for end-user ad-hoc reporting.

Incentivized

• Coming from an SQL based standard delivery model, Dundas BI has provided a fantastic rate of ROI.
• The preparation and delivery time has reduced from weeks to just a few hours.

Incentivized

• I would say it's been positive just because as a company, anyone that has access to it can go in there and pull any company information and we're very up to date then on all of our client base. So I would say it's been a very positive impact.

Incentivized

• SAS Visual Analytics licensing cost should be reduced to enable users to use it in mass scale.
• More statistical and mathematical equations and theories should be converted into SAS functions for reusing.
• Because of enriched ETL and reporting capabilities SAS Visual Analytics is most preferred by business users.

Incentivized