Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. TARGIT

Microsoft BI is well suited for Stream analytics, easy data integration, report creation and UI/UX designs (limited but what all available are great ones) Microsoft BI may be less appropriate for handling huge number of datasets and difficult queries. It may also be difficult for a company with heavy data.

Overall, TARGIT is a valuable tool, and more and more associates are realizing this every day. It's become our standard for sales reporting. I would recommend the software for use at other companies, and I often encourage fellow associates to gain access and basic training.

Incentivized

• The layout of Power BI is very intuitive. Someone that is familiar with Excel and working with Charts and Graphs in that environment will find the learning curve a rather short one to start using Power BI.
• I like the way Power BI fits an assortment of users and how the functionality that you engage is replicated in Excel, that being Power Query and Power Pivot. So what you learn in one tool can be readily applied towards the other which allows you to more effectively apply your training.
• I appreciate how Microsoft is working to develop tools that go a long ways to empowering the end user. Prior to Power BI I would have had to consult with a "BI" professional to develop a dashboard. With Power BI I don't have to consult with anyone, I can work to put together the dash board I want and using a tool set that is really robust and allows me to engage an enormous amount of data. It's provides a great deal of flexibility and the types of data I can connect to.
• Updates...Microsoft is working diligently to keep Power BI current with monthly updates. They do a really good job of listening to the end user, if there is functionality not currently present just give them a month or so.
• Just to be clear, even though it's easy to get going right out of the gate with Power BI it provides plenty of opportunities to create some really sophisticated reporting solutions. With DAX in Power Pivot and M language in Power Query, you are provided with plenty of head room to do some really amazing things in Power BI.
• Training...there are resources across the web for learning and growing your skills and Power BI. And what's even better is the majority of those resources are free.
• Data engagement, when presenting the data to the end user Power BI goes a long way to allowing that end user to engage the data and begin to identify root cause by simply interacting with the graph/chart/data set. It allows for really fluid engagement. Prior to Power BI so many times during the presentation of data we often times ended the engagement with that data with more questions than what were answered. With Power BI, more often than not, the end user is able to get answers to the questions by simply clicking on the data in the graph/chart/dataset to see the details. This tool really does have the capacity to make you look like a rock star.

Incentivized

• The in-memory cube in the Targit suite is an excellent tool that can replace SSAS in theMicrosoft BI suite of tools. InMemory aggregations are lightning-fast compared to Microsoft SSAS.
• Targit also has a cool HTML5 reporting tool.
• It is a complete suite of BI tools including ETL, cube and reports.

Incentivized

• The race to perfect gathering of Non-Traditional datasets is on-going; with Microsoft arguably not the leader of the pack in this category.
• Licensing options for PowerBI visualizations may be a factor. I.e. if you need to implement B2C PowerBI visualizations, the cost is considerably high especially for startups.
• Some clients are still resistant putting their data on the cloud, which restricts lots of functionality to Power BI.

Incentivized

• I think including the Data Discovery module in the base package instead of charging extra for it would go a long way to making the software better. If you don't have much background with SSIS or SSAS and you do not buy the module, it will be difficult for you to add or modify data sources.
• There are a couple small tweaks to the interface that would be helpful but are far from necessary. For example, unlike an Excel pivot table, you cannot move the measures above the dimensions in a table interface. There are workarounds for this, however.
• I understand the need to make their calculation language as complex as it is, but it still seems like it could be made simpler. It's helpful that it comes with several standard calculations that you can easily add to an object, but if you want to modify a calculation or create your own, it can be more complicated than I would like.

Incentivized

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 use of Targit is widespread throughout our organization. Our users are becoming comfortable with the tool and Targit has allowed our company to truly grasp the concept of Business Intelligence and making better business decisions through the analysis of our data. Our users are not waiting for IT to create reports for them, they have full rich self-service BI with Targit and are able to turn a great analytical idea or ad-hoc query hypothesis into concrete answers with actionable responses within minutes.

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.

Incentivized

Everything on the back end needs to be correct, which sometimes it may not be set up or missing some variables. Some of the more difficult parts of Targit require a lot more attention and object creation to work properly

Reports are stable and always avaiable when needed.

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.

While support from Microsoft isn't necessarily always best of breed, you're also not paying the price for premium support that you would on other platforms. The strength of the stack is in the ecosystem that surrounds it. In contrast to other products, there are hundreds, even thousands of bloggers that post daily as well as vibrant user communities that surround the tool. I've had much better luck finding help with SQL Server related issues than I have with any other product, but that help doesn't always come directly from Microsoft.

Everyone I've dealt with at Targit genuinely cares about me and my success, and they respond to questions quickly and accurately. There is literally nothing more I could ask for from their support.

Incentivized

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

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.

Make sure all of the back end work is done prior to getting Targit set up. Every variable you may need for calculations needs to be correct and every item needs to be uniform so it is read properly.

We use Microsoft BI because our organization has all of its software in the Microsoft ecosystem. It just made sense to utilize Microsoft BI because it can so seamlessly connect to all of the other Microsoft tools and data sources that we were using before. We often find that more people have experience with Microsoft BI than other tools that we looked at due to its popularity and widespread use within other organizations.

Incentivized

While their product is top of the line and works very well for us, we ultimately selected Targit because of their team. We love working with them and they are always super helpful. Whenever we have a request or issue, they are there ready to happily help us resolve it and move forward.

• Profit increase due to MSBI output and a better understanding of multiple functions other than cost.
• Data compatibility will be improved, and MSBI will have the opportunity to handle the API more effectively. The MSBI ETL stack works well with relational databases, but with cloud-based data sources emerging, non-relational data sources should be supported.
• Save time interpreting data. Our analytics capabilities have helped our clients understand complex data with simple reports. Thus, it facilitated decision-making.

Incentivized

• It really has answered questions during decision-making conversations where a task item would have been created with days of turnaround time instead of getting the necessary information within minutes during that same conversation.
• Unified Reporting that maintains in alignment with business needs.

Incentivized