Spotfire Data Science vs. TARGIT

If you have an analytics department, Data Science is perfect for making analyses quicker. Data Science works well for web querying, automating analyses, sharing advanced analyses with others, and performing lots of other advanced analytical processes. Data Science is not a good fit if the analytics you do is stuff that Excel can do. The software is powerful, with lots of features, and unless you actually plan on using those features, it's not worth paying for.

Incentivized

Targit is very strong when the data is presented to the system. Because of this, we are able to report on almost all of the information that is valuable to us. When we have questions or ideas on how to better leverage Targit, they are great to work with. We track our sales progress/process in Targit and AP tracks things such as outstanding invoices, open invoices, etc

• It has a great user interface, easy to navigate and learn on the fly.
• There are lots of great options for data organization and analysis! Makes it a handy tool for presentations as well.
• A collaborative ability is highly valued for my company where we often work from home or on site. Being able to share the data with those in the office so multiple people can look at it is a great tool!

Incentivized

• Quick start-up and report turnaround time.
• Easy drag and drop capabilities as well as user friendly command options.
• Ability to share reports among other users making it easy to use an already created report and simply changing the criteria to suit your own needs.
• Ability to save a base report that can be modified as needed repeatedly, instead of recreating from scratch.
• Easy visual for final layout.
• Ability to run multiple reports within one screen without jumping around.

Incentivized

• Unfortunately, some functionality is hidden per upgrade to other versions. Feel data mining functionality would be useful, but not budget for software. At the current price point, would have expected more (such as Mathematica breadth of functionality for one price).
• It is light on optimization capability.
• Slow when considering very large datasets, performing things such as distribution identification

Incentivized

• Probably one of our biggest complaints from the user community is the inability for the user to see the details behind the data. I know with the tool you can write reporting services reports that would allow users to see the detail by right clicking on a measure and selecting Actions, but for a very lean IT shop there simply has not been time to build these Actions for every possible scenario a user might want to see detailed reporting on.
• Another complaint I've heard is the inability for the user to know exactly what the data represents from the source. If Targit had maybe some type of capability to hover over a measure or dimension and see a pop up of a more detailed description this might help resolve that issue.
• The most difficult concepts to teach our users is how and when to use comparisons and the syntax for calculations. Creating comparisons has become much simpler with the 2k11 release but it is still difficult for my users.

The company is hesitant to spend this much on software. They are primarily an engineering firm, and they don't understand the use of analytical software for environmental professionals.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use and I am proficient at this point to be able to figure out how to run most of the reports I need. I have had the time to "play around" in TARGIT and really teach myself about the visibility settings and other aspects - though other users have needed help with some of these aspects - but once you conceptually understand how to build the reports, it is very simple from a power user perspective.

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

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

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.

I prefer Spotfire Data Science's approach. It is more natural and fits the way I think. I prefer to use Spotfire Data Science's VB for writing macros. It is real code, meaning that I do not need to trick the software to do what I need and there are no implied loops over solving simple problems. The graphs are publication quality and can be edited by hand or using a macro if I am building hundreds of them. Spotfire Data Science had a user-friendly approach to building lengthy data processing streams (in its workspaces). It is just so fast for analyzing a dataset that you have never seen before and efficient for ongoing work on the same data.

It really met our business requirements when we were searching for a reporting/Bi tool and the flexible business model of being able to introduce additional functionally as your organization grows and requires it made the investment decision the right one for us. The functionality available in comparison to the investment is well worth it.

Incentivized

• Our company has had the program for less than 1 year. We don't expected a positive return this year. The goal is for Data Science to led to defined projects by the end of the end of the year and implementation in the following two. Overall, we are planning on 4 years to fully recoup the cost of the software and the cost of implementing identified projects.

Incentivized

• We have been looking at our Product Hit Rate by Customer instead of just looking into Customer hit rate and adjusted our offerings accordingly.
• Giving people the ability to run their own ad-hoc reports rather than to request them from IT is a great benefit to my department.