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Birst is a versatile business intelligence tool that caters to multiple departments across organizations. Users from Sales, Finance, …
Starting at $30,000 Per 20 Users Per Year
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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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Popular Features
- Drill-down analysis (78)8.080%
- Customizable dashboards (77)8.080%
- Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.) (72)8.080%
- Formatting capabilities (77)7.070%
Pricing
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
Product Demos
Extending Analytics in CloudSuite Distribution - Demo
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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
Features
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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
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
Infor Birst Videos
Infor Birst Competitors
Infor Birst Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
| Supported Countries | All |
| Supported Languages | Arabic, English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Spanish |
Infor Birst Downloadables
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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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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
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
(76-96 of 96)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
May 06, 2015
Birst is a great way to initially engage with BI
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Birst has one of the most robust data modeling capabilities in the industry.
- The visualization engine is among the best in the industry from ease of use and in look and quality.
- Getting up to speed takes weeks and not months like other BI offerings.
- Visualizer and Designer offerings need to merge into one product. We shouldn't have to go to 2 different visualization tools to get things into a dashboard.
- I haven't been impressed with the "major" releases. With each release there are too many bugs that keep the new features from working the way they are promised.
- Data blending
- Embedding
- Ease of creating the schemas
- UI and flexibility for creating visualization
- Does not support traditional (paper based) reporting anywhere near as well as promised or advertised
- Access to the data in the warehouse is much needed. This can be achieved though API or ODBC
May 05, 2015
Birst Analytics
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Embedding into SFDC
- Automated Datawarehouse
- Performance
- Professional Services / Implementation
May 05, 2015
Birst BI capabilities assessment
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Ease of use
- Time to proficiency for development
- Thought leadership for BI technology and methodology
- Transparency of the roadmap for dashboards 2.0
- Training insight and guidance
May 05, 2015
Go Big!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Visualize. It provides clear and actionable graphs and charts. All of which are fully interactive, providing a great end user experience
- Data warehousing
- ETL
- More intuitive data logs. To help newer users, new to BI, better understand the problems as they occur.
- Features in visualizer and working to create the functionality currently available in designer.
March 13, 2015
Birst, a dashboard tool for any size company
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Availability 24x7 makes the product attractive. Our users know they can get their information whenever they need it.
- Flexible charts allow our users to select dashboard data based on time periods and other dimensions.
- Adhoc report dashboards allows our users to build and save custom dashboards as needed.
- Some errors are difficult to understand and solve without support. Better help content would benefit admins trying to solve issues.
- The system can have limitations with large amounts of data. Too much data can slow down processing or cause the report to not render a result.
November 12, 2014
A Great Product with Even Better Customer Service
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Report building is quick and easy.
- Creating a data model for a reporting structure and data warehouse is easy.
- Our users can access it whenever they want, whenever they want using either a computer or iPad.
- Birst seems like it can do almost anything either myself or the users can think of. When my users ask me for things I don't know how to do, I typically just say "sure", assuming that it's possible and that I'll figure it out. I'm sure this will come back to bite me one of these days, but it hasn't yet.
- There were a number of "quality of life" issues, I'll call them, when we first got started on the Appliance version - for example, upgrading was very clunky. Those issues have been cleaned up and I have no complaints about them now. Birst seems to do a really good job of listening to their customers and giving them what they want.
- The Birst Mobile iPad app doesn't have the full functionality of the browser-based version, but I understand that this is being fixed with HTML 5. In fact it may already be fixed - I know that some of the HTML 5 implementation is done, but I'm waiting for it to be fully in place before making the switch.
February 25, 2014
First product ever purchased where promise was fully delivered.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Birst is best at implementing and validating data warehouse models. I have been able to prototype multiple models in under 4 hours of effort - this is really amazing. As a past user of a big-3 reporting stack, these same tasks would have taken days. It is also extremely easy to publish dashboard of reports for users to view and interact with.
- Birst supports both our internal analytics needs related to usage as well as external partner metrics utilized by our customers to determine efficiency of our products within their websites.
- Birst's interface can be slow at times. On dashboards, I regularly see 3-5 second load times BEFORE the data begins being loaded (interface load time for the Adobe Flex framework). In addition, I have had numerous occurrences where I have to back out of the report designer and come back in due to failed refresh of the design palette.
January 14, 2014
My Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- It allows me to better understand our business.
- It allows for analysis of trending within our business functions.
- Provides a more intuitive solution compared to some of the other BI tools the company provides.
- Would like to see more options for customization.
December 11, 2013
Perfect tool for data visualization
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Report visualization - data can be visualized in many different ways with interactive charts and graphs
- Data detail - Birst provides drill downs that can show a lot of detail in the data
- Ease of use - reports are intuitive to drill down into, even for non-technical people, as long as you have some excel experience
- Column mapping, make it easier to remap changed column names
- Allow data input through Birst - Birst is only a data viewing tool. It would be nice to allow users to input data, e.g. let users select accounts out of a list inside the tool and save that information directly to the data behind the view for other users to see.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Easily, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Birst is superior customer service. As a new BI team with limited industry experience, Birst has been there to guide us through setup and implementation, and they are now helping as we move into the more complex capabilities of the product.
- The robust, yet intuitive visualization options have made a great impression at our Executive level. We are gaining trust throughout the organization as Birst is enabling us to respond quickly and efficiently to data needs.
- Moving beyond visualization into data warehousing functionality, Birst is set up to give us all we need as we begin this challenging and necessary process.
- Competitors like Tableau are showing superior display options when compared to the Birst dashboard.
December 10, 2013
Birst 2013
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Visual representations of data
- Dynamic filters
- Strategic analysis
- Better mapping/geo capabilities
- Easier to manage users/permissions
December 07, 2013
Easy to use BI tool
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Birst is a useful tool to organize data into graphs, charts, etc to easily visualize and analyze data and results. I used this tool to show customers how they performed throughout the year. We took their sales data and applied them to graphs, charts, meters, etc which allowed us to easily explain metrics and performance to our customers.
- Birst allows us to create custom dashboards which can be updated anytime which is also great. Our inhouse Birst administrator had access to make changes to the solution/ dashboards at anytime. We could schedule a meeting and work on updating the dashboards together on our own time.
- Birst is a secure network..we feel good knowing our data is safe and private and that our users/ customers who access Birst with a username and password will only see the data that is intended for them.
- Birst could work on new ways to help us present data to customers... some of the meters, charts were limited in how we could arrange and present the data and we would have to come up with ways to make it work.
December 06, 2013
Birst Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Birst is very user friendly and allows for easy analysis of complex data
- Takes the time out of building reports, does the background work for you once the modules are set up
- Easy to use and manipulate, helps in the decision making process by making quick analysis based on determined parameters
- Allow for the data to be hot linked to source
- Allow to adjust the chart type w/o write access
November 29, 2013
Fantastic BI Solution
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Very sleek, easy-to-use interface
- Can quickly upload all of my data and start making discoveries right away
- Knowledgeable support is always available
- Was hoping for a slightly flatter learning curve
- Would be nice to be able to operate more independently from customer support by providing further embedded help options and documentation.
November 29, 2013
Outstanding Business Intelligence Solution
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Slick customized user interface with the agility to tailor to our changing business needs.
- Professional Services and Customer Success teams are outstanding as they are proactive, responsive, and provide excellent guidance.
- A "one stop shop" providing both the business intelligence solution and the IT infrastructure to support it.
- Dashboard performace can be slow to load at times.
- Documentation could be better allowing more independence, however customer support has always been very helpful.
- Would like to see more functionality in their mobile offering.
November 22, 2013
Two Thumbs up for Birst!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Birst allows for greater visibility of data / reports. You are no longer limited to viewing critical reports only inside the firewall.
- Birst is able to easily integrate with data sources. We can quickly aggregate the data from multiple locations and build the reports we need for our business and our customers.
- Birst reports are highly scalable and agile. This makes the solution a prime BI solution that is maintained in the cloud.
- Their support staff needs to mature. If it's a minor issue, the support staff is quick to resolve it. Anything a bit more complicated seems to take a prolonged period of time.
- The help functions within the application need to be expanded upon. The details are extremely limited. If expanded upon, it may help cut back on the amount of tickets opened up with support.
November 21, 2013
Birst
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Easy Integration with Salesforce.com
- Wide reporting and dashboard capability
- Easy to use
- User Front-end.
- Product Support.
November 21, 2013
Simple and Quick BI Implementation
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Quick Implementation.
- Pixel Perfect Reporting.
- Cloud BI.
- Security.
- Lot of new features in dashboard and reports.
- Administration needs lot of new features.
September 05, 2013
An OEM View
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- We are an OEM for the product... Compared to some other alternatives we explored, it does what it is supposed to do VERY WELL. Specifically, we tried working with GoodData dynamic schemas and run analytics on that. We had to build the schemas through an API. GoodData did not work for us either on the API side or the dynamic schema side.
- Easy to integrate, API for creating and managing spaces works as advertised. It could be improved and I understand they are making some changes. It would be great to have a more advanced API like a REST API that supports more functions, but they are working on adding what we need.
- It doesn't look as "sexy" as some of the other competitors in the space but it generates professional dashboards and reports. For example, the GoodData look and feel is more modern and appealing, and is better at exploiting advanced browser features, but Birst is just as functional.
August 30, 2013
Great Product with Great Support
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- It combines data from disparate data systems so that it can all be viewed in one place
- The drilling and filtering capabilities are outstanding! We've really been able to get to the lower level of detail that we needed, but could not get, before we started using Birst.
- Once created, Birst updates all by itself. No downloading, exporting, or re-aggregating of data to update reports.
- Report designer user interface is poor. For example, Birst has a feature that allows report designers to build and save custom expressions. This is helpful because, rather than having to rewrite the expression each time it's needed, the designer can simply select it from the saved expression box and drop it into the report. However, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the organization of the expression box. It's not alphabetized and you can't categorize expressions by creating folders. This can lead to frustration when time is wasted just trying to find the custom expression that you need.
- Creating new reports is a clumsy process.
- Data exports are sloppy. This is due more to the lack of flexibility in the designer UI than to the actual exporting capability. For example, when creating a data table, you often need the label to be a larger size than the column because the label requires descriptive text while the column is just a value. However, in the Birst designer UI, you cannot independently change the size of a measure label and the size of its corresponding column--they have to be the same size.