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
ResultsBI
Score5.1 out of 10
N/A
ResultsBI (formerly RESULTS.com) offers a cloud-based objectives and key results (OKR) software built around foundational features such as key performance indicator dashboards, project and task management functionality, and collaboration tools.
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
Results.com would be a fantastic platform for a distributed team that has its data stored in a simple/single/common method and is looking for a single visual platform around which the culture of the company can collaborate, see relevant company metrics (and each other's metrics), and discuss the same. RESULTS.com is likely unnecessary for any team that is physically located together within an office and who can physically meet together. Such a scenario likely already has wall-projected charts and physically posted information. Further, we found RESULTS.com to be a bad choice for a company that has its data in several different locations, requiring the integration of several different APIs all coordinated together. Our somewhat complicated/disparate data simply didn't work well in the system to the point where people eventually were conditioned to NOT believe the numbers shown in RESULTS.com.
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
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
It has a very nice graphical/visual display of metrics/KPIs that are fed into it.
It has a fantastic meetings agenda and communication module that helped better connect our geographically distributed offices.
It solved the problem we had of using several different platforms for each need - providing a central place for results-orientated information sharing and discussion.
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
Like all BI software, the pretty graphics and charts and information are only as accurate as what is put into the system. It does not have parameters that will flag suspect data, which became a problem as our data sources increased and the results.com integration required more and more results.com-side development.
The promise of having the corporate mission/vision/values/etc. all connected to individual priorities and associated KPIs never came to pass. Being early adopters, we purchased partly on the promises of salespeople. As time marched on, support and development dropped off in favor of increasing their sales department.
We believe, through our experience with results.com, that the company was built to sell quickly. That is, we believe the owner/s blasted through their funding in the first year to onboard as many users as possible so they could increase value for a quick sale. Then we believe that when the money was mostly spent, and there was no sale, the company had to become a normal, profitable, long-term business which led to expense cutting, a RIF of developers and customer support, and the resulting slowdown/stoppage/inability to develop and support the product. Our feeling in the last months on the platform was one where it seemed the employees/owners were unhappy and disgruntled to have to actually run it as a business and deal with customers. (This is our guess and belief based on what we saw over time and without any knowledge whatsoever on what was actually happening over there.)
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
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
When it worked, it worked nicely. Unfortunately, it didn't work for us all the time - and less so as the months went on. So, although relatively "easy to use," it stopped providing value due to its data integration problems. Thus, when the data was incorrect, people stopped using 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
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
This is a solid 5 because the first year we had fantastic customer support. We had a comprehensive training, a (seemingly) dedicated support staffer, a fair amount of development help to integrate things, and consultations with people associated with RESULTS.com who have made a name for themselves in this general method of business operations. But, after the first year that mostly dried up. It was a 10 the first year, and a 1 the next years - averaging to a 5.
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
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
We have examined a variety of similar products both before, during, and after our time with results.com. We are currently using Sisense which is an entirely higher level than results.com in terms of B.I. - not only in the drill-down type of data access and reporting but certainly in its ability to handle multiple data sources effectively.
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
We did not utilize a BI dashboard nor a standardized meeting agenda system before results.com so in that respect, it helped us establish a results/performance-orientated culture which was badly needed.
Unfortunately, beyond that first year, results.com didn't keep up with our struggles with data imports. That, combined with the inability for us to see direct ROI $ increases, led us to eventually leave the platform. Unfortunately, they locked us into a longer term (even without providing promised services) and so we technically were on the system (but not using it) for 6+ months past the date where we'd all agreed it was not useful for anyone anymore.
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
