Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review If we have very huge data that has to be filtered based on the selection in the workbook filters, then passing the control IDs of the filters as the parameters directly in the SQL query is a great help. This way helps us in optimizing large SQL queries as well. If we want our front end application filters with the Sigma Computing dashboard filters to communicate with each other, we can certainly do that in embedding with the help of the control_ids.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Allows end users to easily dive into the data without having direct access to the table in our database management software. Can easily turnaround dashboards that are detailed and visually pleasing. Sigma is intuitive and as new features are rolled out it is easy to adopt and incorporate them into new and existing dashboards. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Viewer level license is quite limited. These users can't download data or even add filters on datasets. Something to keep in mind. Directly querying the underlying data warehouse will lead to increased usage. Not a big deal on something like Redshift, but your Snowflake consumption will increase, potentially by a lot. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Sigma has helped us a lot and has become an integral part of our daily workflow. It would be difficult to switch to another platform and have to rebuild the numerous metrics and performance reports that we have already established
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review It has a clean and modern interface. However, it is not completely intuitive. I think it would be better and easier to navigate with more Windows style drop down menus and/or tabls. There is a significant learning curve, but that may be due in part to the technical nature of this type of software tool.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Yes, as long as you don’t conduct user error sigma is always up and running and waiting for you to complete your dashboards
Read full review Performance It depends, it loads quickly for smaller dashboards but when loading larger amounts of data it takes more time to do so
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Support team is helpful in answering questions and providing help with using the UI. There are knowledgeable people within the support team. There are also good online support tools. There are significant community support resources available. There is however lack of a live support. It would be useful to have live phone number or chat to use.
Read full review Implementation Rating Was not involved in implementation
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Sigma is by far the best. It is easiest to learn and easiest to use on a day to day basis. I never have to wait for dashboards to load and it's very easy to understand the variables that are going into my visualizations. Best of all I can manipulate the data within Sigma very easily. In these other platforms data manipulation is difficult or must be done in the data warehouse
Read full review Scalability It is a cloud service offering that is able to expand based on your usage
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Monitoring health of cloud platform has allowed the company to anticipate issues before they affect customers – Sigma prompted us building a canary monitoring process that provides customer container health. Customer success has used an activity report to discover customers running runaway processes that they were unaware of, creating an alert to contact the customer and prevent an embarrassing situation. Customer success uses the activity report to prompt conversations regarding increases or declines in behavior that led to increasing contract limits or addressing churn concerns. Read full review ScreenShots SAS Visual Analytics Screenshots