Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$14
per month per user
OrgMapper
Score9.1 out of 10
N/A
OrgMapper is an online diagnostic tool that analyzes and visualizes the human networks employees use to collaborate, communicate and exchange information over in order to do their daily jobs. It produces lists of key employees and network maps to identify communication and collaboration patterns, uncovering embedded organizational issues.
Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
OrgMapper is especially useful in mapping the soft-relationships within teams and organizations: communication, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and information flows.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
OrgMapper uses appropriate questions to understand the different aspects of networks in organizations. These questions are conceptually sound and appropriate and diverse. They are easy to understand.
There is a direct path from the survey to the visualization of data in network maps. Though having an official report is of great value, I rely on the ability of OrgMapper to translate raw data obtained via survey into actual maps potentially in real-time if needed.
I appreciate the use of modules like Knowledge Mapper or Team Mapper which pull together questions to respond to particular issues in organizations. This makes marketing easier and facilitates the decision making process on the part of clients.
I have found the technical support for OrgMapper to be helpful. I appreciate that the Maven 7 people like many of us users are all on a learning curve with regard to the translation of network science into practical usage. Thus, ongoing communication back and forth between we users and Maven 7 is helpful and important. I appreciate the inquisitive approach taken my Maven 7 and their dedication to resolve technical issues that arise.
Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Emailing out the survey to respondents can be a complex undertaking. Helping them gain access via their password can also take effort. The survey respondents must be entered by hand. I did not have a great deal of trouble doing this with 30 people. Questions are clear and understandable. However, if the context of the question differs from the normal way the question is used, this may present some difficulty to the respondents to understand and make sense of the question. Support here is important. It is extremely easy to select questions based on the identification of a focused challenge. Translation of the raw data to the visual map is done by the software and this is of great benefit and makes the product quite useful to me. Filters and the ability to manipulate the maps are also helpful though there is a learning curve to this.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For our clients Orgmapper/the Network Approach has the potential to become a foundational approach to organisational transformation. It is early days as we are working in partnership with our clients to develop the best approach based on our explorations to date.
In some instances including Orgmapper in our offering has actually slowed the lead conversion process down - which has been good from the perspective that we are working larger propositions, over the longer term. So for Better Change - Orgmapper provides a significant uplift and complimentary capability to our core capabilities.
