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Infor Birst

Infor Birst

Overview

What is Infor Birst?

Infor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools,…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Birst is a versatile business intelligence tool that caters to multiple departments across organizations. Users from Sales, Finance, …
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Birst almost live access

6 out of 10
January 09, 2019
Birst is used as a delivery mechanism to display data to our client. We collect data on mobile device usage patterns, as well as analyst …
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Birst review

2 out of 10
March 30, 2018
Incentivized
We used Birst as a visualization tool for selling our analytical services to our clients. It was used by multiple people internally (data …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 20 features
  • Drill-down analysis (78)
    8.0
    80%
  • Customizable dashboards (77)
    8.0
    80%
  • Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.) (72)
    8.0
    80%
  • Formatting capabilities (77)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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Basic License

$30,000

On Premise
Per 20 Users Per Year

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://bit.ly/2n6VznO

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Extending Analytics in CloudSuite Distribution - Demo

YouTube

Analytics Anytime, Anywhere - Birst Mobile Demo

YouTube

Automated Data Refinement in Infor Birst - Demo

YouTube

Best Practices For Increasing Adoption of Analytics - Demo

YouTube

Infor Birst How-To Series – Connecting to Databases

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

7.4
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

6.9
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.3
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

5
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Infor Birst?

Infor Birst is a BI product that enables a single view of data and eliminate data silos. Additionally, decentralized teams and individual users can augment this shared analytic fabric with their own local data, without compromising data governance. This consistency comes from a unified semantic layer, which maintains common definitions and key metrics, no matter where users sit.

Birst achieves Networked BI through a 2-tier architecture that aligns back-end enterprise data with line-of-business or local, edge data. Birst’s Automated Data Refinement extracts data from any source (data stores, applications, warehouses, big data, and unstructured external sources) into a unified semantic layer. The result is a consistent view that enables users with self-service analytics through dashboards, reporting, visual discovery, mobile tools, and predictive analytics. Birst Open Client Interface also offers integration with Tableau, Excel and R.

Birst goes to market in two primary ways:

  • Direct, for enterprises using Birst for analytics on internal data to drive improved business outcomes
  • Embedded, for all size companies who offer data (analytics) products, by embedding and white-labeling Birst capabilities into their products

Birst’s product is packaged in 3 available formats:

  • Platform and per-user fee
  • By Department or Business Unit
  • By end-customer (for embedded scenarios)

Infor Birst Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Windows App
  • Supported: Administration via MacOS App
  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer
  • Supported: ETL Capability
  • Supported: ETL Scheduler

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: ParAccel
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP
  • Supported: Google Analytics

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Infor Birst Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

Infor Birst Videos

Infor Birst Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesAll
Supported LanguagesArabic, English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Spanish

Frequently Asked Questions

Infor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools, and an open client interface.

Alteryx, InsideSales.com / XANT Predictive Pipeline (discontinued), and Datameer are common alternatives for Infor Birst.

Reviewers rate Report Delivery Scheduling and Multi-User Support (named login) highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Infor Birst are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(186)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Birst is a versatile business intelligence tool that caters to multiple departments across organizations. Users from Sales, Finance, Accounting, and HR departments rely on Birst to establish a single source of truth and move away from individual definitions of data. Zalora, for example, utilizes Birst as their primary tool for self-service data needs, including data extraction for operational purposes and simple ad-hoc analysis. The fulfillment center employs Birst to track item or product level KPIs, while the marketing teams make use of Birst Live data and dashboards to monitor campaign sales and discounts. Birst integrates with various data sources like Google Analytics, event tracking, operational data, and sales data through a separate data warehouse. By distributing reports and dashboards across the company for viewing, Birst serves as an enterprise-wide BI visualization and distribution platform that supports different revenue models while providing reporting automation, visualization, and distribution capabilities. Furthermore, Birst is embedded into cloud-based software provided to customers, enabling the monitoring of software utilization and tracking of marketing campaigns. Salesforce users benefit from BIRST Dashboards integrated into Salesforce pages as it provides sales analytics and pipeline tracking. The time-to-delivery advantage offered by Birst was one of the reasons it was chosen by many organizations. It allows for simple gathering of company-wide data streams without the need for manual data warehouse construction or report building. With Birst's robust features, it is used across various industries and departments such as SCM & Operations teams, Sales teams, partners, finance, marketing, product management, clinical data analysis in hospitals, education institutions for measuring performance effectiveness and much more. Overall, Birst fulfills a wide range of use cases and enables businesses to analyze data effectively and gain valuable insights to drive informed decision-making throughout the organization.

Highly versatile and user-friendly: Users have found Birst to be a highly versatile and user-friendly business intelligence tool. They appreciate the intuitive user interface, which makes tasks easy to perform. Many reviewers have mentioned that even users with limited technical skills can quickly navigate the platform and start using its features effectively.

Knowledgeable and proactive support: Many users highly value the knowledgeable and proactive support provided by Birst. The support team is responsive and helpful in providing excellent guidance. Reviewers have expressed satisfaction with their interactions with the support team, highlighting their expertise in resolving issues promptly.

Customizable user interface: Users appreciate the customizable user interface of Birst, which allows them to tailor the platform to their changing business needs. The flexibility of the interface is seen as a major advantage by several reviewers who mention being able to personalize dashboards, reports, and visualizations according to their specific requirements.

Confusing User Interface: Users have found the user interface of Birst to be perplexing and not user-friendly. Some reviewers have mentioned that it has a steep learning curve and lacks proper organization and categorization of custom expressions.

Lack of Support from Technical Team: Several users expressed frustration with the lack of support from Birst's technical team. They reported difficulties in reaching them over the phone and dissatisfaction with their insistence on scheduling calls even after submitting detailed tickets.

Difficult Data Modeling Process: Users encountered challenges with data modeling in Birst, especially for those who were new to the platform. The ETL tools were described as inadequate, leading some users to rely on alternative platforms for data warehousing.

Users commonly recommend Birst for its intuitive and effective business intelligence and data analysis capabilities. They attribute Birst as a comprehensive solution with a low total cost of ownership. Additionally, users suggest Birst for its cloud-based central BI solutions, emphasizing their focus on security and scalability. Another frequently mentioned recommendation is Birst's top-notch visualization capabilities, making it an ideal choice for organizations seeking advanced data visualization tools. Users also find Birst to be highly capable and user-friendly, highlighting its excellent analytics and AI capabilities.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 96)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Norman Hussey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BIRST is used as a self-service platform for business units to have their much needed full independent capability. Although BIRST has full capability, our use case was to increase bandwidth for avoiding the bottleneck of our existing data warehouse and BI platform efforts.

Business units are finding value in the capability to resolve issues and improve processes. They can see the impact of their effort in days.

Having a fully integrated data store and data warehouse is a great value. Data connectivity is also very powerful while simple. Lastly, Visualizer's interface is very intuitive and easy for adoption. The capability to carve out a topic, build it and deploy stand-alone supports great time-to-market. The Network BI capability allows you to come back and merge, enhance. Very flexible.
  • Intuitive navigation. Fast and clean interactive output.
  • Back-end incremental updates out of the box. This feature alone is huge.
  • Role playing time dimensions are extremely easy to set up. No sweat.
  • Back-end administration is very capable, but rustic, rough on the edges. Just a little improvement here (mainly UI) will make a huge difference.
  • Having two reporting authoring tools is a little strange, but after all they do have different use-cases, so not terrible.
The main value is capability to deliver. BIRST does almost everything very well. Data sourcing and preparation is very good. Presentation is clean and intuitive and mobile ready (nothing to do!). Allowing the user to upload and merge their own content is a great step to eliminating know-how silos. Self-service data preparation (Birst 6/pronto) and write back goes a long way to wean an organization from Excel.
February 28, 2017

Nerd Crush.

Andy Olson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Right now we are using Birst to integrate our Salesforce.com instance with sales data from multiple ERP systems into a singular data model housed in Birst. The use is mostly sales right now, but other departments also use the data within Birst for their needs. A major need for the company was being able to compare forecast and budget data that is entered into salesforce with actual revenue invoiced in the ERP systems. Creating a link between a Salesforce account and being able to track that all the way down to revenue generating customer is a big deal for us. Eventually we will be rolling out Birst solutions for all facets of the company including supply chain, quality, finance and operations.
  • The way Birst simplifies and integrates the ETL with the creation of the star schema is the biggest strength in my opinion. I didn't find any competition that was even close.
  • The all-in-one cloud solution is a huge plus as well. Because they have the back end and front end in one solution they have a huge incentive to see that the customer's projects succeed. The overhead for managing multiple products or disaster recovery for a data warehouse has the potential to be a huge headache.
  • The pre-built Salesforce.com connection/ETL/DataModel was another big deal for us. This probably took 6 months off of our timeline. Also, being able to look at the code for how they did it continues to be a boon to my learning curve.
  • The user interface for the administration and development could use a face-lift. Although I believe this is happening very soon.
  • As a small implementation we've had some issues finding a suitable outside partner for consultation.
Well Suited:
Any data-warehouse solution that is going to include Salesforce.com.
Any implementations that are going to be handled by small teams. I think everyone should take a look honestly.

As far as less appropriate? I don't think I'm really qualified to give an answer on Birst's technical limitations, although I'm sure they exist.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Birst to deliver analytical and operational dashboards/reports to sales, marketing, finance, HR, corporate strategy, legal and customer aupport. Data sources include Oracle ERP, Salesforce, Jobvite, third party data providers, various database repositories, flat files, etc. Our Birst solutions provide varying levels of the organization's visibility to corporate metrics, sales revenue performance, pipeline management, headcount analysis, support indicators, etc.
  • End-to-end S/PaaS BI platform: ELT, data warehouse repository, semantic layer, reporting. Using the UI, command window or web service calls we can create, clone, refresh all or any part of the platform. This means we can manage the environment with greater agility, smaller team size and no need for specific DBA, Sys Admin, etc. type skills. The team can focus on their core competency as BI specialists.
  • The automated semantic layer, created as you add data sources and map them to facts/dimensions, allows us to be more agile than typical on-premise solutions, or former on-premise solutions that have been ported to the "cloud", and so we are able to greatly reduce the time-to-value for the customer. This in turn, leads to better user engagement and support.
  • Birst's Networked BI functionality allows us to define dimensions/facts in one subject area (Birst language: Space) and reuse them in others. This feature means we do not need to create a large centralized warehouse, nor involve DBAs to create database specific links across schemas/databases (the feature is a simple configuration). Development time on subsequent subject areas can be greatly reduced whenever you can reuse existing dimensions/facts.
  • The new release of Birst 6 allows business users to create their own sandbox environment in which they can import and analyze their own datasets, linking this to already curated (IT managed) information from the Birst subject areas (spaces). Once they have generated information that has value to a broader audience, this can then easily/quickly be linked back into the curated subject areas.
  • User administration could be greatly improved. Most user administration tasks (creation, security assignments, etc.) are singular i.e., one action at a time. If you want to batch these activities up, it is up to you to have scripts or create your own mini app to do this.
  • ELT development is still using old Flash technology and still requires a lot of coding. It would be nice to have a GUI approach to defining load and transformation processes.
  • There is a need for supporting multi-developer teams e.g. ability to lock objects being worked on, check-in/out, version control, etc.
We have not come across a scenario as yet that Birst was unable or not suitable to address. We cannot opine on potential data size limitations (we process 2gb files daily, interfaces that return several million rows, very fat data sets, etc.) We could see larger installations with many complex subject areas and multiple developers needing to work in the same subject area, as being challenging. Having said that, we have a reasonably large implementation and manage with just two BI specialists.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are using Birst in multiple ways. Some customers embed the dashboards into an application, other just look at the Birst dashboards.
  • Combining multiple data sources
  • ETL and reporting functionality
  • Very simple mobile support (Tablet and Smartphone)
  • Better GUI when scripting
  • Fix bugs in the software much faster
  • Have some kind of version control
It is well suited for small/mid size companies.
RJ Corcuera | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Implemented Salesforce Solution Accelarator v2.0 for numerous customers
  • Agility and speed to deploy a datamart or data warehouse very quickly.
  • Drill down and drill through capability from summary to detail level data.
  • Easy Integration with Salesforce.com.
  • More visibility into the backend, troubleshooting still has a large split still between support and professional services.
  • Improved multideveloper support (check-in and check-out capability).
  • Better versioning of metadata.
Largely depends on budget and the landscape of data sources that need to be analyzed.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Birst is used accross the whole organization. The main project involves sales&orders data but there are another projects for Customer Care analysis.
  • Dashboard design are pretty easy
  • Predefined Geo-Reports (maps) for US Zip Codes.
  • BirstConnect could be more assisted.
  • Visualization limits (ie rows shown) cannot be modified.
  • Lack of advanced security configuration to compose advanced security architectures.
Birst's Designer works great if you have vivacious users who like to create report by themselves.

It could not fit well if you have a complex security architecture in your organization.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have implemented Birst for Fortune 500 company for providing powerful and dynamic insights.
  • Birst has inbuilt application connectors for most common purposes - ERP/CRM etc.
  • It comes as a single suite module from ETL to reporting and dashboards.
  • The most important is Birst is a cloud based BI and can be accessed from anywhere anytime from mobiles/iPods/tablets and PCs.
  • Have to provide functions to apply color palettes and themes based on individual users/clients
It will be very helpful for clients who like to avoid expenses on infrastructure and man power, since Birst is based on a Cloud platform and a highly secured environment.
July 06, 2016

1 year of Birst

Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Birst has been used in Catho as the main access to data, across all the organization. There is a small resistance to change in the internal report but we in the strategic department are trying change that mindset. I see two big problems:

First, the learning curve for a new developer is quite long. There are some paradigms that make Birst a little hard to learn. It’s a very bureaucratic tool.

Second, Catho is a Brazilian enterprise and we use the cloud storage from Birst. But the upload time and the process time is really long.

  • The Visualizer, is really easy for the end user
  • The creation of Virtual Cubes
  • The Data enrichment and cleaning
  • Long learning curve, an uncommon paradigm
  • Long time to process many lines of data (10kk) data
  • Usability needs to get better
There are a few resellers in Brazil. Birst is a nice tool and setup and preparation is easy. But it lacks assistance and help in Brazil. The support is good but some times when you use your language, you get things faster.
Jean Jennings | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Birst as a sales support tool, applying ad hoc predictive modeling to identify cross sell/up sell opportunities. We also use it as a reporting and analytics tool for sales metrics. Both applications have met with great success. Currently, Birst is in use by one department.
  • We have data in so many disparate places/sources. Birst allowed us to aggregate all the data together fairly easily so output was unified, consistent and accurate.
  • The development tools in Birst allow us to easily adjust, change and create new reports and dashboards quickly. Sales is an 'in the moment' business - we need in the moment data and we get that with Birst.
  • Their customer support is top tier. We've been a client for a very long time and still get the same attention and support that we did when they were a much smaller company. And really - no matter the value of product, if you don't have good support from the company, it's about worthless.
  • The new upgrade process is a bit clunky and takes a considerable amount of time.
  • They've apparently stopped supporting the use of fixed width delimited flat files. That may be a bit of a problem for us in the future - still trying to work through it with them.
If you have users that are *not* technical, Birst is perfect for them. It can be designed as simply as it needs to be and yet still provide maximum value. It's the perfect tool for sales people that don't want to be IT people - they just want to get to the information they need quickly. Visuals are also great for the sales audience.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Our organization is a Platinum Partner with Birst and we help companies realize the benefits of using Birst for their reporting needs. We help them understand the value of using cloud based technology to leverage cost savings and speed of development. Our clients really like the ease of use of the new visualizer tool and how it has helped them to create stunning reports within minutes after the data-set is imported and processed by Birst. Another advantage that we highlight is that Birst has the ability to automatically take your data and build the fact and dim tables into a star schema warehouse; taking most of the headaches out of Business Intelligence design.
  • Cloud based platform means lower cost and faster development.
  • The visualizer tool is great for quickly producing visually stunning reports out of the box.
  • Birst can build your BI warehouse for you which allows more time for designer and delivering reports.
  • The layout tools in designer are hard to use if you try to modify the layout after you have already added content to the report.
Birst is not suited for situations where you want to generate mailing lists. It can drill down to an individual grain but that is not an efficient use of its resources. Birst is perfect for a start up organization with immediate reporting needs but a conservative budget.
Eric Lagace | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Birst is used two different ways: embedded into the cloud-based software we provide our customers, and internally to monitor utilization of the software and to track marketing campaigns.
  • The integration of all the elements of a BI platform into a single tool is a big advantage. All the components are tightly coupled (ETL, business layer, report creation, dashboards), and that makes it easier to manage.
  • The fact that it is based on a cloud platform makes deployment amazingly simple. The appliance version can be run on AWS, which gives access to all the capabilities of the Amazon platform.
  • The move towards HTML5 is very effective, the reports and dashboards look good and are based on responsive design.
  • Coming from a traditional data warehousing background, the data modeling in Birst is difficult to understand. The use of hierarchies, measures, "targeting" of fields needs some time to get used to.
  • The transition from the Flash-based tools to the HTML5 tools has not been smooth, and some features still only exist into the Flash tools.
  • Maps are not working well at all. It is possible to use the Geo Maps and Bing Maps in the Flash-based tools, but only Bing Maps in HTML5 tools. This is very limiting, and the features available for formatting, adding bubbles and labels, positioning etc. are weak.
Complexity of data modeling from the various sources is a big consideration. Global implementations may be an issue, as there is no tool or feature built in Birst to enable synchronization between data centers located in different geographies. For most simple to medium implementations, Birst is a no-brainer. For more complex implementations, a POC should be considered.
Price Hatfield | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
3coast began tool review and selection for a new business consulting partnership that was taking shape about 3.5 years ago. I reviewed what was available in the market at the time, and ultimately selected Birst for one reason: time to delivery. It alleviated the pains traditionally associated with gathering company- or enterprise-wide data streams and turning them into scorecard and actionable information. The drilling capabilities out of the box made me wonder why I had been building SSRS reports all of these years. We immediately signed up as a partner and haven't looked back. I haven't manually built a data warehouse or been forced to string together reports for real insight since, and implementations for other companies still see a huge rampon the time to delivery of a full-function solution.
  • Automated Data Warehouse
  • Single interface for admin, design, and consumption
  • Reports/dashboards are dynamic and aware of model navigation
  • UI is slowly getting sexy, but didn't start there
  • Modelling is limited to single user. Waiting for multiuser concurrency in this area.
Birst is not for someone just looking for a visualization tool. If you just need reports, move along. It does enable other interfaces (Excel, Tableau) for governed data and mashups. If you need a business intelligence solution, Birst does wonders to cut the man-hours necessary. Full appreciation of the product comes from folks that have been through that sort of exercise and understand the underlying work. Departments sometimes need the infrastructure without the IT overhead, which is one use case. Another is small teams having to provide support for large organizations. The most value is really found by larger organizations that have found traditional tools require too long to turn around, and the business is moving faster than those requirements can be met.
Timothy Humphreys | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Dashboard presentation and updates. Allows the user to "run" varying reports and see data based on comprehensive prompts. Reduces the time necessary to run "more" reports. Saves time, improves accuracy and consistency in reviewing data.
  • Designing reports. Simple reports take minutes yet offer extreme flexibility when used within the dashboard. Reduces response time to internal and external clients.
  • Data Management. The process to setup and manage data requires planning and accuracy. Because of this, data is stable.
  • Copying Dashboard Prompts (filters). While the product has very flexible prompts and the ability to add them readily, you can not copy prompts from one dashboard page to another. You have to either copy the dashboard or manually add the prompts.
  • User Management: The system provides a robust set of security layers for data, users, etc. For user security, the process requires more screens than it appears to need.
I have yet to find a perfect BI or reporting tool. After 20+ years of performing/managing BI and analytics, the Birst product provides us with:
  • Flexibility in design
  • Speed to deployment
  • Customer and technical support
  • Financial value and ROI
  • Comprehensive solution with scalability
We learn more every day with the product as well as receive alternate ideas and support. I have no regrets selecting the Birst product and would do so without hesitation again.
April 13, 2016

New User

Chris Williams | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We just purchased Birst. We are going to use it internally and our customers will use it too.
  • Great development team
  • Great management team
  • Great service plan
  • Don't know of any yet.
The user interface was a big reason we chose Birst.
February 04, 2016

Base jump into BI cloud

Nir Carasso | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
  • Deployment time was fast.
  • Since it is on the cloud, my users get 100% availability. and I do not have to take care of it.
  • The BI front-End is very flexible. we get great looking reports and dashboards.
  • Good mobile device integration. (Apple).
  • No future integration with google mobile androids.
  • Missing some deep metadata analysis of report consumption by end users.
Birst can work with customer on 3 levels of service:
  • Full support, with BI analysis and project management.
  • Minimum intervention. just use the platform.
  • Intermediate solution.
December 23, 2015

Birst Analytics

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We embed Birst into our product to extend the analytical capability of our product
  • Very easy to quickly iterate
  • Great support team
  • Wonderful user community
  • Part of the old Flash based components need to be updated
October 01, 2015

Birsting with BI Success

Deborah Stillwell Judy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Birst was selected as our single business intelligence solution solving our "single source of truth" challenge moving away from spreadmarts and individual definitions of the truth. We started our Birst development as support for individual functional departments [Sales Analytics, Team [HR], Finance and Service/Warranty]. The current year objective is to pull together the integrated organizational view across functional areas.
  • Single solution, integrated end to end [ETL, database, Administration, Design, Dashboards presentation].
  • Very stable application - uptime is great, software upgrades seamless.
  • Administration Tools: users, groups, security, customization very intuitive.
  • Quick start.
  • Pace of introduction of new features.
  • Community sharing portal is an excellent resource of Knowledge Base documentation, and discussions of challenges/resolutions by other customers.
  • Community is also used to submit ideas and enhancement requests, so that voting raises top recommendations, Birst listens and responds.
  • Birst defines their success as achieved by our success.
  • Ability to find things in Think Tank Community, need a better way to keep similar topics grouped, inconsistent tags.
  • Community: assumption that this is the first place for answers to issues; which causes time extension for resolution of business challenge.
  • Training: need some freebee's like single topic Lunch & Learn webinars
Birst has proven by example that it is well suited for many - from a departmental fit to large organizational solutions.
When we compared Birst to other BI tools we had these questions:

  1. Infrastructure - what is required for hardware/software/connectivity, data storage and ability to handle data growth?
  2. Security - how do they handle the risk areas?
  3. Staffing - how many roles are required to support the application, can a non-programmer administer the application and design data visualization?
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Birst will be used by the whole organization as our enterprise data warehouse tool.
  • We will begin training on Birst next week and begin Blueprint the following week.
  • Birst Support will be our SI on the project.
  • Expect the major advantage will be one source of the Truth and getting organization to understand visualization.
  • Majority of our users are in China. We need to ensure that the speed is acceptable so the users do not get discouraged about the application.
  • Importing Excel data and combining it with data in the Master Space will be very powerful and hopefully will be rolled out soon.
We will start with marketing and sales data, then move to operations, and finally finance.
September 30, 2015

Dazed and confused Newbie

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are a small start up company that needs to collect data from various sources to compile and analyze to prove the effectiveness of our product.
  • Data Modeling
  • User Interface
  • Mid-level training resources
What resources are available to implement Birst and how long does it take for internal employees to get up to speed on the product
September 30, 2015

Onward and upward

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Birst across the whole organization. It is our primary report and dashboarding tool.
  • We use the cloud edition and have grown to appreciate this aspect of the product. Not having to maintain the BI infrastructure has allowed us to focus on our core business.
  • We utilize the live access feature to deliver real time operations reporting to our exec and sales teams.
  • Support to export to a native excel pivot table is highly desirable.
  • The pivot control in the designer is very difficult to use. There needs to be better way to reorder the measures and dimensions.
I have no issues recommending Birst to anyone.
Brian Flood | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Implementation was incredibly quick and easy. I did the full implementation in-house with some help from our Birst support team. No internal engineering support needed.
  • Vast customization capabilities. Due to the nature of the Birst Cloud Data Warehouse, it can handle just about any and all data sources. Scripting in the warehouse is quite robust allowing for better integration across source systems, data quality and consistency.
  • Support is great. Without any internal support from engineering, I rely heavily on Birst support when things start acting up or I just have some simple how-to questions. They are always very prompt and helpful and have great knowledge of the product.
  • They're still using some flash components in the product although I'm told they will be replaced with HTML5 versions soon.
  • Advanced statistical analysis (i.e. Bayesian) requires separate systems. It would be great to see Birst implement some R functions to allow more flexibility in this regard.
I would make sure that if they were planning to do more advanced statistical analysis that they knew it required a separate tool such as R or Weka. Make sure you know not only what the current product offering is, but also what is being released in the near future.
Nicholas Dureault | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We were evaluating several BI platforms, and one that stood out was Birst. The intention was to get a tool that could do what traditional analyst tools can do, and much much more. We performed an initial test with a "land and expand" model in mind, but as an initial test, while testing several other BI tools, it proved difficult to set up - even with the help of their engineers.
  • Easy model development
  • Good visuals
  • Solid blending capabilities
  • Difficult setup
  • Not "Land and Expand" model. Must be organizationally committed.
I think it's a good platform, if you are only testing it out for feasibility and further recommendations, it may be cost prohibitive. That said, if you are seriously ready to look at a new BI tool, Birst is definitely a competitor.
June 05, 2015

Got Birst?

Daniel Kayce | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using Birst for internal reporting. The first series of dashboards are focusing on our sales team. The dashboard is being used by our Sales Executive team, as well as our regional sales managers. The report is really intuitive and user friendly. Users are able to easily drill down to Swift's top and bottom performing sales reps and customers. With this data, we can refocus and restructure short and long term goals.
  • User friendly interface - easy to adapt to and start creating valuable reports
  • Birst's Customer Success Team - always responds to emails in a timely manner. This is really important to new customers, and Birst has a great, intelligent, and hard working CSM assigned to every customer
  • Think Tank - this is a great tool for immediate help and feedback. You can always expect someone in the Birst family to help assist you with any of your needs
  • More features in Visualizer would be great. I am currently using designer to complete most of my reports
  • A better Geo Map - The Birst standard geo map is not as robust and most of their chart options. A geo map with zip code capabilities would be a great feature
  • Faster data processing
Birst is one of the easiest BI tools to adopt; however, I would first be clear on what you are trying to accomplish by implementing a BI tool. If it is to simply re-create Excel reports, then I would probably stick with Excel, BUT if you want to use it for micro analytics and diagnostics, then I would highly recommend this tool.
June 02, 2015

Birst

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are currently using birst to create a data model and centralize our data marts. Also creating dashboards and transistion off from Tableau
  • Cloud based
  • Ease of use
  • Drill down on dashboards
  • Data modeling is not user friendly
  • Lack of support
  • Interface freeze from time to time
To able to access the data and dashboards at the same time is very convienent
May 12, 2015

Birstastic!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Birst is used to display customer analytics on usage of our products.
  • Data visualization that is consumer friendly.
  • Listening to their customer base.
  • Effective prioritization of roadmap
  • More focus on the developer experience.
  • Flexibility for automated event notification and customization
Determine what key metrics you need and what questions you are trying to answer is pivotal to success. Birst allows a lot of flexibility but you need to know what you are trying to answer.
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