Infor Birst

Infor Birst

Score 8.7 out of 10
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

Birst review

2 out of 10
March 30, 2018
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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Verified User
Executive
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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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Features

BI Standard Reporting

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

7.4Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

7Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

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

6.9Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

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

8.3Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

5Avg 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

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Infor Birst Videos

Infor Birst Competitors

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

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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

 (184)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Popular Filters
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 09, 2019

Birst almost live access

Tim Welch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tim Welch
Database Administrator
Strategy Analytics (Market Research, 51-200 employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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 forecasts across many technology areas, and use Birst to visualise this data via dashboards that clients access from our website.
Pros and Cons
  • Connects directly to many types of external data sources, enabling us to plug into data where it already exists
  • Visualiser provides a user friendly interface for non-tech users to build their own databases
  • HTML dashboards look far better now than the original Flash versions
  • Connectivity between the live sources frequently drops and does not reconnect automatically
  • Cannot add dynamic titles to reports - so although can create a dynamic text box, this title cannot be exported along with the report
  • Designer runs query as soon as an attribute is dropped on screen - would be useful if you know you need to add another 4, to be able to disable the query execution until all items have been added
Likelihood to Recommend
We find the performance of the dashboards is sometimes very slow - and has been noted by customers. a key question would be to confirm the acceptable delay and build the dashboards around that kpi.
Alternatives Considered
Birst is not as intuitive or flexible for cube design and aggregations as using SQL Analysis services - at times seems an odd mix between gui based, and required specific code.
Power BI is the tool of choice internally, but is limited by security settings that we need to enable to suport client access.
Tableau is unfortunately beyond our budget to provide the solution we would like to deliver.
Likelihood to Renew
9
Currently we have very in depth dashboards created in Birst, to rewrite these in an alternative product would incur a large overhead in cost and time that would need to be considered in any decision tom move away from Birst.
Infor Birst Feature Ratings
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
23.333333333333336%
2.3
Pixel Perfect reports
N/A
N/A
Customizable dashboards
70%
7.0
Report Formatting Templates
N/A
N/A
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
35%
3.5
Drill-down analysis
60%
6.0
Formatting capabilities
50%
5.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
N/A
N/A
Report sharing and collaboration
30%
3.0
Report Output and Scheduling (4)
15%
1.5
Publish to Web
N/A
N/A
Publish to PDF
60%
6.0
Report Versioning
N/A
N/A
Report Delivery Scheduling
N/A
N/A
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
36.666666666666664%
3.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
50%
5.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
60%
6.0
Predictive Analytics
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security (3)
73.33333333333333%
7.3
Multi-User Support (named login)
80%
8.0
Role-Based Security Model
80%
8.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
60%
6.0
Mobile Capabilities (3)
N/A
N/A
Responsive Design for Web Access
N/A
N/A
Mobile Application
N/A
N/A
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
N/A
N/A
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
Usability
3
Nowhere near as user friendly as other tools. Part of the problem is combination of Flash and HTML options, although this is configured at a user level rather than a dashboard level. As the features in each option are not the same, this can mean users working in one format cannot utilise dashboards that are more suited for the other format.
Users and Roles
5
Internal data analysis, and dashboard design for client facing dashboards
Support Headcount Required
2
Birst requires a lot of patience to use well.
Benefits from input by BI designers, and data modellers / designers
Business Processes Supported
  • Visualisation of data analysis
  • Presentation of data in visual format for clients, delivered via internet
  • Analysis tool for data held in SQL Analysis Services
Innovative Uses
  • Live access connections to SQL Analysis services cubes in MDX and Tabular format
  • using prompts to enable custom searches of data
Other Software Used
Future Planned Uses
  • Basic dashboarding of KPI's
  • Client facing data access
Products Replaced
Yes
Excel_Reports, as way of publishing data to website for clients
Key Differentiators
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Birst was the best value product in the market place at the time, for the functionality we believed we needed
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Implementation Phases
No
Change Management Lessons
Change management was minimal
Processes are in place for changes to Birst - the main one being the regression testing required across multiple appliance servers in dev / UAT / live whenever a new Birst patch is released
Implementation Issues
  • VM that is provided is restricted to Windows 2008 - no support for 2012 or higher
  • Cannot integrate with our own host providers as there is no real "install"
  • Permissions didn't seem to integrate with our AD
Implementation Rating
5
Disappointing that it is on a "delivered VM" rather than a software install as 99.9% of other software is provided.
Training Types Used
  • Self-taught
Ease of Infor Birst Training
Product is not intuitive, and frequently seems to require clicking back to different pages just to get the product to save recent changes. Support desk are not familiar with using the "Live Connect" method to connect to external data sources, and are more comfortable using the native datawarehouse system, meaning there are times it feels we are the ones telling the support team how to do things.
Product Configurability
7
Product is quite configurable, regarding data sources, location, file location etc. but still limited to within the provided VM
Configuration Lessons
we have learnt that the memory on the appliance server is the crucial specification to address when configuring Birst
UI Customization
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
All we have done is add some corporate branding and images to
Extensibility and Customization
No - we have not done any custom code
Additional Customization Considerations
We are looking to configure load balancing across multiple appliance servers via NLB but have not yet implement this
Support Rating
3
Frequently the first line support appear to know nothing about the "Live Data Access" part of the product, which is the main use we have for it. Frustrating to find that we spend several hours on the phone just having to reshow problems, to still get no support help.
Bug Resolution
Yes
Multiple bugs are raised with the support desk, many they either deny initially or admit were introduced by the frequent updates. Difficult to keep track of what may be errors caused by us, compared to what has been introduced by the software, which makes regression testing every Birst service pack a real chore
Exceptional Examples of Infor Birst Support
The only time we have felt valued has been at the "Birst Forward" conference in SFO, when we were given the opportunity to meet with more senior development team members who actually seemed to understand our issues. Prior to that, the only exception support has come when issues have been escalated to a level that resulted in staff on the West coast agreeing to phone calls at 5am their time to overlap with the UK
Easy Tasks
  • Creating dynamic charts
  • Click through functionality
Difficult Tasks
  • changing page layouts
  • re-sizing charts
  • dynamic text
  • changing data connections
  • working with external data sources via live connection
Scalability
6
we can see that loading a lot of data can cause a noticable slow down in performance. Birst support indicated that they don't really consider anything less than 30 seconds to be an issue, but that is not the case for our customers, so we have had to change some of implementation to address this
Reliability and Availability
3
We frequently experience -103 errors due to us using the Live Connect functionality, which does not seem to handle even minor interruptions in connectivity, and treats all future connection attempts or data requests as errors, even if the issue does not exist any longer
Performance
5
Birst struggles with complex data sets coming from SSAS, that resolve very quickly on tools like PowerBI
Systems Integrated With
  • SQL SSAS
  • Corporate website
Linking to SQL SSAS initially was easy, but it was very unclear how subsequent changes in structure could be reflected.
Integrating via our website simply required permissions and SSO tokens from users
Future Integration Plans
  • none planned
Types of Integration
  • File import/export
  • ETL tools
Ease of Integration
5
Nothing special
Integration Lessons Learned
-
Pre-Sale Experience
7
As a relatively new company at the time, Birst were keen to establish new clients, and were able to offer a deal and terms that we couldn't refuse
Post-Sale Experience
5
Most of our dealings are with the support team, which can cause frustration. Part of our problem is that the account is US based, but most of our users are based in the UK, so there are no local support groups or help available for the people actually experiencing the problems.
Key Negotiation Points
Number of appliances, and ongoing license fees
Dealing with Infor
Identify what support / user focus groups are available for the people who will actually be using the software
Upgrade Process
Yes
Birst frequently bring out new versions. While the down time is minimal while upgrading, there are nearly always unexpected impacts in each release affecting existing functionality. This has often led to support tickets being raised due issues where features that were working previously have stopped, but whether that was due to an error at our end or from the latest update is usually a chore to determine
Upgrade Benefits
  • Better stability of the Live Access connection
Anticipated Benefits from Future Upgrades
  • unknown
Migrating Between Editions
No
Future Edition Upgrade Plans
No
Evaluation Lessons Learned
Additional products, considerations and use cases would be considered if we were evaluating today.
At the time it was only a couple of people who chose the product based on one of their specific requirements, and other users / products were then crow-barred into that solution.
August 30, 2013

Great Product with Great Support

Scott Gabriel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Scott Gabriel
Business Analyst
United Allergy Services (501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • 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.
Return on Investment
  • It's hard to quantify the time savings and improved decision making that occurred because of Birst, but it is substantial.
Likelihood to Renew
10
We already renewed.
Likelihood to Recommend
I have really enjoyed working with Birst, both the people and the product. The Birst team truly cares about customer success and is committed to helping clients find solutions to their business intelligence needs. Despite all the benefits the product has brought my company, I still feel like we are just scratching the surface of its reporting capabilities. For example, just last week I submitted a support case for help creating a report. I ended up learning of an entirely new container report capability that we hadn't used before. The container report is about 10 times better for displaying the data than what I had originally planned to do. And because the Birst customer service is so outstanding, I had the new report up and running in less than a day. This is the kind of service that I believe makes Birst an outstanding BI tool.
Users and Roles
30
C-suite, directors, field managers, and analysts
Support Headcount Required
1
This person has other responsibilities besides managing the back-end of Birst.
Business Processes Supported
  • Reporting that used to be done in excel is now being done in Birst.
Products Replaced
Some of the reporting was done in Salesforce. Most of the reporting was done in excel.
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
  • Professional services company
Implementation Rating
9
I wasn't directly involved with the implementation process, but from what I understand it went smoothly.
Training Types Used
  • In-person training
In-Person Training
9
Training was very helpful. It occurred early in the implementation process, but I remembered a lot of what we did months later when I started getting hands-on experience.
Additional Customization Considerations
I'm not sure of the extent of customization my company did.
Support Rating
10
Birst can do a lot of things, but it can be difficult to figure out unless you have someone to answer questions and to help explain new functionality. Thankfully, Birst customer support has been outstanding. As mentioned before, questions are usually answered the same day the support case is created.
Usability
7
It can be clunky, but there have been noticeable improvements with each new release. It's obvious that they are working hard to improve the usability.
Reliability and Availability
9
We had a few instances when data didn't process as planned. However, we have worked with Birst and found solutions.
Performance
8
Sometimes I wish the data would load faster. Not sure if that issue is on Birst's end, though.
Systems Integrated With
  • Salesforce.
All non designer/admin users log into the service via salesforce.com .
Future Integration Plans
  • None that I'm aware of.
Pre-Sale Experience
I was not involved in the Sales process, but from what I understand all went well and both parties got along with few, if any, issues.
Key Negotiation Points
Again, not qualified to comment on this question.
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