Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. ZilicusPM

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.

Incentivized

ZilicusPM is suited for any business that has difficulty managing and keeping track of office related work as well as project management. Its an efficient way to manage just about anything necessary. It is well-suited for our office, as structural/civil engineers - we are able to keep track of our projects as well as office/human resources related work.

Incentivized

• Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
• Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
• Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
• Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.

Incentivized

• ZilicusPM is great for an office regarding meetings and site visits. It's hard to keep track manually of where everyone is at. By sharing our calendars through ZilicusPM, we are able to access where someone is within a few seconds!! It is very convenient and less of a hassle.
• This a great tool to use to manage all documents that enter in and out of our office for certain projects. It is hard to keep track of everything through our office, so this programs helps us manage things very efficiently.
• This is great for prioritizing! I know many people in our office have an issue to do so. With the Project Issue Management feature, we are able to do this more effectively without causing any stress to our employees!

Incentivized

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

• The only thing I would suggest that needs room for improvement is that you should break down Zilicus PM into different sectors. What I mean by this is that you branch off this program into different areas of expertise like accounting, engineering, etc. Every business is managed differently, so other options should be provided to accommodate each field.
• Other than that, I am very pleased with this program. It was WELL worth the investment. Saving a lot of time and money spent per worker by using this!
• N/A

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 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

The product has been reliable.

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.

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.

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.

Incentivized

We have used Microsoft Project for years. We loved it until we found ZilicusPM. ZilicusPM is more efficient and directive in our field. Microsoft Project does not provide as many features as ZilicusPM does. I am extremely grateful for having found ZilicusPM. It was recommended to us by an architectural firm that swore by this software.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• A positive impact that ZilicusPM has made is we are able to work more efficiently and prioritize what needs to be sent out, what invoices need to be sent out to clients, where are project engineers at certain time of day, etc.
• We also have a higher ROI. I am able to manage what invoices need to be sent out without having to track people down for a summary of the work , which is extremely time consuming. I am able to get more invoices out while returning a higher investment for the company.
• A negative impact it has made is we had to hire someone to manage this software entirely. It is very time-consuming for myself to manage and make sure everything is entered in correctly. We hired someone who is familiar with ZilicusPM and is able to certify all work.

Incentivized