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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

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 09, 2019

Birst almost live access

Tim Welch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
5
Internal data analysis, and dashboard design for client facing dashboards
2
Birst requires a lot of patience to use well.
Benefits from input by BI designers, and data modellers / designers
  • Visualisation of data analysis
  • Presentation of data in visual format for clients, delivered via internet
  • Analysis tool for data held in SQL Analysis Services
  • Live access connections to SQL Analysis services cubes in MDX and Tabular format
  • using prompts to enable custom searches of data
  • Basic dashboarding of KPI's
  • Client facing data access
Yes
Excel_Reports, as way of publishing data to website for clients
  • 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
  • Implemented in-house
No
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
  • 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
Disappointing that it is on a "delivered VM" rather than a software install as 99.9% of other software is provided.
  • Self-taught
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 is quite configurable, regarding data sources, location, file location etc. but still limited to within the provided VM
we have learnt that the memory on the appliance server is the crucial specification to address when configuring Birst
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
All we have done is add some corporate branding and images to
No - we have not done any custom code
We are looking to configure load balancing across multiple appliance servers via NLB but have not yet implement this
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.
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
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
  • Creating dynamic charts
  • Click through functionality
  • changing page layouts
  • re-sizing charts
  • dynamic text
  • changing data connections
  • working with external data sources via live connection
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
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
Birst struggles with complex data sets coming from SSAS, that resolve very quickly on tools like PowerBI
  • 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
  • none planned
  • File import/export
  • ETL tools
Nothing special
-
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
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.
Number of appliances, and ongoing license fees
Identify what support / user focus groups are available for the people who will actually be using the software
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
  • Better stability of the Live Access connection
  • unknown
No
No
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
across a division within a larger organization. External clients also utilize interactive dashboards and visualizations. We utilize Birst to present internal administrative and service metrics, external reach and effectiveness metrics and comparative metrics across our large syndication network.
  • 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.
What was promised was delivered. Amazing that point is so surprising, but as those of us who procure enterprise software know, salespeople can be very good at promising things that are "possible" but not necessarily workable. Birst delivered across every aspect; software, services and support.
Business Objects, Microsoft, Pentaho, JasperReports, GoodData. Birst provided the broadest set of functionality at the best cost of ownership. Ease of implementation and getting quickly up to speed provided the biggest cost savings vs the other packages. The keys to ease of use and speed were the integrated nature of the Birst Cloud platform; ETL, Authoring, Visualization and secured self-service. No servers to buy, no complex contracts for Professional services + support + licensing. Birst was very easy to work with in getting started up.
Birst has provided exactly what was promised and then some. I can honestly say this is the first commercial product I have acquired for my company where the benefits promised were all delivered. Birst has been a pleasure to work with as a partner, actively seeking out comments from my team.
25
Product Management, Sales Operations, Client Solutions, Customer Service. We also have over 2500 external clients access Birst Dashboards integrated into our Client and Vendor Portals to gain insight into their content syndication effectiveness and reach.
5
Engineers and Client Solutions specialists. With a strong understanding of traditional data modeling and stewardship as well as the uses and methods of big data analysis, our core team of Analytics Engineers create and publish interactive analyses utilizing Birst. A good understanding of traditional ETL, BI and visualization design are critical to success of the team.
  • Reporting and Analytics
  • Interactive Dashboards integrated within our applications
  • Publishing Interactive Analyses for consumption by our client base.
  • I am not sure if we have been that innovative vis a vis capabilities of a BI/Analytics package. I think we do some pretty amazing things joining big data sets to our standard BI model. We allow comparison of a particular manufacturers product reach vs an anonymized set of competitive information. In an interactive dashboard you can change the comparison from the general set to a named set of top competitors as well as filter and slice by many different attributes.
  • We are looking into Birst's predictive analytics capabilities and sampling structures to provide prescriptive services to our syndication network. Items like suggesting the best price for an item, or inventory demand planning, or which channel to spend marketing $. Basically utilizing our data and Birsts platform to create an e-commerce optimization info-store.
  • Utilizing the new Birst Visualizer, we will be opening up a limited set of our standard model for ad-hoc visualization (we have a large amount of data and need to limit the scope of what can be completed ad-hoc to live within very strict performance guidelines).
Microstrategy and TerraData
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
As with many, price and licensing became the most important. Not having to buy a license for every person who will look and interact with a dashboard was critical for us as we have an unknown and ever-growing number of users
I would definitely expand the data set with which I evaluated. Although Birst has been able to handle the increased data load - it has taken more work on our side to model, clean, archive and optimize our data. Our original implementation was under budget, but ongoing costs are above what I planned (although not by any economically meaningful amount)
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
I partnered with Birst to implement the system and our first report model.
Yes
the original phase (modeling) really occurred during the selection process. So we really had Model, Implement, Operate and Iterate phases. The last two are of course permanent processes and not actually part of a project plan per se.
Change management was a major issue with the implementation
Changes to technical processes were no problem, but changing mindsets to a position of analysis vs reporting was a big deal - and is still ongoing. Asking for a 200 page report when all you are really looking for are the top and bottom 10 performers requires explaining goals. Making changes to a report that multiple people use, to maximize reuse is a different challenge than in the regular software engineering world with a single codebase. Minimizing code fracturing requires a lot of planning to ensure modifications do not break only code/reports, but purpose and unknown insights as well (unknown to the developer, but well known to the end user)
  • esoteric functions that were not well documented - having to go to Birsts client solutions team for answers
  • report functions that were not well documented, leading to some unanticipated results in reports - having to go to support to gain understanding of why.
Birst's implementation staff were beyond excellent. Their knowledge of BI/DW, good implementation methodology and ability to flexibly approach a set of business problems enabled us to quickly get up to speed.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
This was one of the best in person trainings I have attended. The instructors were very knowledgeable of the product and its functionality. They were easily able to translate training material to actual business problems faced by the attendees.
Although I found the online resources helpful, a lack of appropriate examples for certain tasks key to report creation and advanced modeling make the online training/documentation less than perfect. For an inexperienced BI professional, the online training would not enable a streamlined launch of the product.
BI is a complex topic. If you have experience with BI and data warehousing, this product is very easy to pick up and get going with. From scratch, and with only a couple hours of assistance I was able to pilot the system with a fairly complex data model. This included developing reports that utilized advanced functions that were fairly well explained in online training and documentation. I would not recommend this approach to someone attempting to implement a full line BI system for multiple end users. Its one thing to work through learning a new system when you are the project champion, quite another when you are trying to implement for a broader user base.
its seems just about right.
when you create your model - ensure you utilize "scripted" sources for any source that will be utilized in a fact table or degenerated dimension. These become more difficult to modify if you source directly from a file/db connection.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface
general interface is easy to customize. There are a couple of options I would like to be configurable that are not, but no real ramifications of these.
No - the product does not support adding custom code
No
As we have become more self sufficient, we normally only have to call support for some weird or big issue. These issues take longer to solve than i'd like. This is because support cannot fix them. So, not completely fair to the support team - who is knowledgeable about what they should be, but at the end of the day we are talking about the company's support of me, not a support agent team!
Yes
almost always - with exceptions for some complex issues that required engineering. Those may take a couple months.
after an upgrade, where I failed to follow my part of the upgrade instructions I was left with an inability to import data. I spent hours looking at my sources and processes. When I finally entered a ticket (on a saturday night), they called me back within minutes and walked me through what needed to be done. With the normal automated processing steps I have - I would have had a lot of manual work to fix the data up if I had missed a second cycle. Their prompt response and clear instructions let me get past that.
  • creating dashboards with interactive functions
  • adding sources and data fields
  • administration of the system
  • user setup
  • modfying fields related to a "delete-key" source used to control ensuring duplicate data is not ingested for sources with only "natural" keys
Yes, but I don't use it
I would like to see additional usability put into the ETL scripting. Recently, Birst added a nice function reference inline to formula creation which has kept me from having to return to documentation so much. The same in ETL would be very beneficial. The interface problems related to the Flex framework are being addressed in a rewrite to HTML 5, but for now they are still a hindrance to a higher usability rating.
Mostly this rating is due to Birsts lack of understanding of my model and data size even though we clearly discussed it. They started me out on a particular data backend and as my data grew had to convert to a more performant backend (that is standard for them). I should have been started on that. Birst does allow connections to Amazon Redshift, and if you deploy in house has connectivity to several columnar data stores.
There have been only a couple of brief outages under 30 minutes in the 6 months I have utilized the platform.
In a reporting and analytics package there are two distinct performance times to look at. First is the performance of calculating the report data and metrics. I would rate a 9 for this. However, the interface rendering is slow, rating a 7. Dashboards can take 3-5 seconds to load. This is probably not a problem for normal users, as the dashboard render is performed once. My application integrated the dashboard into a commercial product though, with hundreds of customers - so my demands are higher with a large number of end users.
  • Internal and customer facing portals. Salesforce.com
The integration was clearly documented and worked as documented. A combination of GET/POST statements should make it easy for anyone to integrate to another website or database.
  • Zuora, a subscription billing system.
Zuora integration is on the roadmap for Q3/4 2014
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • ETL tools
very easy and well documented.
none - it is very straightforward.
amenable to my requests for access to the system during the sales process. I did not want a vendor lead POC. If I couldn't get in and use it and figure it out in a couple weeks - I knew it wouldn't be right for our organization
after a great implementation and wonderful support for the first 6 months - some more complex problems I encountered led to some time to repair metrics I was unhappy with. After a couple months I spoke with their exec team and was then given the attention and support I had come to expect.
I am not allowed to disclose the terms of our contract as we signed up as an OEM.
as with any vendor that is not one of the top 5 software/hardware companies in the world - push for what you want. If there is a feature you need and it's "on the roadmap", get it included in the contract/SOW. This is your time to ensure you get what you want at the price/terms you are willing to enter. They are professional sellers - are you a professional buyer?
Yes
yes. follow the published steps and its all good.
  • enhancements to HTML5 dashboard
  • Birst Visualizer
  • Backend data processing enhancements
No
No
Scott Gabriel | TrustRadius Reviewer
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.
  • It's hard to quantify the time savings and improved decision making that occurred because of Birst, but it is substantial.
We already renewed.
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.
30
C-suite, directors, field managers, and analysts
1
This person has other responsibilities besides managing the back-end of Birst.
  • Reporting that used to be done in excel is now being done in Birst.
Some of the reporting was done in Salesforce. Most of the reporting was done in excel.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
  • Professional services company
I wasn't directly involved with the implementation process, but from what I understand it went smoothly.
  • In-person training
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.
I'm not sure of the extent of customization my company did.
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.
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.
We had a few instances when data didn't process as planned. However, we have worked with Birst and found solutions.
Sometimes I wish the data would load faster. Not sure if that issue is on Birst's end, though.
  • Salesforce.
All non designer/admin users log into the service via salesforce.com .
  • None that I'm aware of.
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.
Again, not qualified to comment on this question.
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