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Sisense

Sisense

Overview

What is Sisense?

Sisense is a BI software and analytics platform. With what the vendor calls their In-Chip™ and Single Stack™ technologies, users have access to a comprehensive tool to analyze and visualize large, disparate data sets without IT resources.

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Pricing

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What is Sisense?

Sisense is a BI software and analytics platform. With what the vendor calls their In-Chip™ and Single Stack™ technologies, users have access to a comprehensive tool to analyze and visualize large, disparate data sets without IT resources.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.sisense.com/get/pricing

Offerings

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

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What is IBM Cognos Analytics?

IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.

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Product Demos

Locked Filter | Sisense Tutorials: Filtering Dashboard Data

YouTube

Adding a Custom Field | Sisense Tutorials: Preparing your Data Model

YouTube

Working with Tables and Fields | Sisense Tutorials: Preparing your Data Model

YouTube

Adding a Custom SQL Table | Sisense Tutorials: Preparing your Data Model

YouTube

Date and Time Functions | Sisense Tutorials: Preparing your Data Model

YouTube

Layout and Responsive Design | Sisense Tutorials: Creating your Dashboard

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.

8.7
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

8.3
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.2
Avg 8.3

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.

9
Avg 8.0

Access Control and Security

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

10
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

9
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Sisense?

Sisense data & analytics platform is designed to make it easy to mashup data from across the entire data landscape and transform it into actionable analytics applications that can be embedded anywhere. The vendor boasts innovative startups and global brands like GE, Nasdaq, and Philips, as well as organizations worldwide are using Sisense to accelerate innovation and drive digital transformation by embedding Sisense into their businesses. Whether data is in the cloud, on-prem, or a mix of both, Sisense gives users everything needed to successfully deliver on analytics application strategy today, allowing you to:

  • Securely connect and ingest data into cloud data warehouses to create a single store for your data
  • Mashup data from dozens of sources for a complete view of your business
  • Leverage a combination of live or cached data models to optimize performance and manage resource utilization
  • Build beautiful visualizations and actionable application components using the robust library of integrated widgets and certified add-ons
  • Develop and white-label with ease using a full suite of APIs and developer toolkits
  • Differentiate products and services with fully integrated, white-label analytics in the office or on mobile devices for users on the go

Sisense 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: Sage 500
  • 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

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • 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: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • 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

Sisense Video

Infusing Analytics Everywhere with Sisense

Sisense Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry
Supported CountriesAll

Frequently Asked Questions

Sisense is a BI software and analytics platform. With what the vendor calls their In-Chip™ and Single Stack™ technologies, users have access to a comprehensive tool to analyze and visualize large, disparate data sets without IT resources.

Tableau Public, GoodData, and Domo are common alternatives for Sisense.

Reviewers rate Multi-User Support (named login) and Role-Based Security Model and Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Sisense are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

(1-5 of 5)

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Rating: 9 out of 10
May 26, 2021
CV
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sisense
2 years of experience
This tool has given me the power to convert the data into new analytical applications that give me a transparent idea about working on multiple platforms. This is a cloud-based application that has allowed me to combine my different pages so that a complete progress report is generated. It is playing a perfect, fantastic role in our organization.
  • Customer support is straightforward and well responsive.
  • Data discovery is effective.
  • Big data services are amazing and secure.
  • Easy integration of APIs.
Cons
  • It is very costly solution.
  • I did not face any issue regarding its technicality, we easily came across its usage. But while purchasing the tool I face some complexities in terms of licensing which overburdened me.
  • Various plans are available but still, they lack a reliable plan.
Sisense is a reliable analytics platform that helps us fetching data effectively. Also, the visualization of data is easy. I will recommend this tool to those organizations that are dealing with their business on various platforms and trying to manage their online stores.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Pixel Perfect reports
80%
8.0
Customizable dashboards
90%
9.0
Report Formatting Templates
90%
9.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Drill-down analysis
80%
8.0
Formatting capabilities
90%
9.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
90%
9.0
Report Output and Scheduling (4)
82.5%
8.3
Publish to Web
80%
8.0
Publish to PDF
90%
9.0
Report Versioning
80%
8.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
80%
8.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
90%
9.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
90%
9.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
90%
9.0
Predictive Analytics
90%
9.0
Access Control and Security (3)
100%
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
100%
10.0
Role-Based Security Model
100%
10.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
100%
10.0
Mobile Capabilities (3)
90%
9.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
90%
9.0
Mobile Application
100%
10.0
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
80%
8.0
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
  • It's free trial helps us to find drawbacks and find the exact solution for them.
  • I never faced any difficulty in shifting my data from the previous cloud while implementing this software, thus it is very easy to install and get started.
  • Its cost should be reduced.
Sisense provides better services than Looker and also its functionalities are more advanced and effective.
There is no doubt it is easy to use solution. It always equips me with authentic reporting, I can have the detailed analysis of the operations. This tool has helped me to collect every bit of the data and it would be just to say that it has influenced my lead generation and helped to build strong customer relations.
Its customer support is polite and problem-solving. Most of the time I have to have conversations with them, they always give responsive services.

SiSENSE as web service platform.

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 03, 2016
I was using SiSense PRISM as platform supporting our own www service. Our service provided a complex info about public contracts around Poland and we used PRISM as BI platform to generate Dashboards. Those Dashboards were used by our costumers to analyze situation on public contracts market and support them in decision to start with a given contract. Overall I see PRISM as a great tool, which requires not so much IT knowledge to operate and is not time consuming in terms of deployment and report or dashboard preparation. It is also very low on Hardware resources consumption.
  • Great at mashing up data from multiple different data sources.
  • Easy deployment, ETL process, Dashboard or Report preparation and distribution to end users.
  • Very low hardware usage so you probably wont need to invest huge money on new servers.
  • JS Extensions engine which allows to create really powerful tailored features.
Cons
  • Plug-ins in ETL tool are powerful, but configuration could be a little easier. Also JS extension in PRISM Web is powerful but could be a little more clear how to use.
  • Need to catch up with several common features for BI platform.
From my point of view it is perfect tool for any company which just starts with its first BI solution and are limited with money. Also great for companies which do not want to have a time consuming project to deploy. It depends on how large your data sources are, but probably you wont need to invest in any new hardware.
  • QlikView,InForum,JetReports
Less resource consuming and faster deployment. Also very extensive embeding capabilities, that make it a perfect tool for OEM customers.
The main factor is flexibility of SiSense and that is enhanced pretty often. Also extension engine allows to produce a lot of powerful features perfect for given use of SiSense.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (1)
100%
10.0
Customizable dashboards
100%
10.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
90%
9.0
Drill-down analysis
100%
10.0
Formatting capabilities
90%
9.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
90%
9.0
Report sharing and collaboration
80%
8.0
Report Output and Scheduling (4)
85%
8.5
Publish to Web
100%
10.0
Publish to PDF
90%
9.0
Report Versioning
50%
5.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
100%
10.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
96.66666666666666%
9.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
100%
10.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
100%
10.0
Predictive Analytics
90%
9.0
Access Control and Security (3)
100%
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
100%
10.0
Role-Based Security Model
100%
10.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
100%
10.0
Mobile Capabilities (3)
90%
9.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
100%
10.0
Mobile Application
70%
7.0
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
100%
10.0
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
  • We're able to finish our web service which we could not with our previous BI vendor.
  • We could use our own product in a matter of 2-3 months after deployment which was quick.
4
They are creating Dashboards and support our customers.
3
One need basic knowledge on BI as general, some SQL knowledge, an analytical mind, ability to know how use script languages (it is not required but it is useful to have a general knowledge how scripting works; it helps a lot at some point). One also should have a basic taste for composing a color palette and Dashboard layout planning.
  • As of today None.
  • Final Dashboards used as IFrame on our web service.
  • Ability to mash-up multiple different data sources
  • Speed - even with lot of text to analyze.
  • Mainly as a platform integrated with our web service that allows an innovative approach to analyzing public contracts market.
Yes
We replaced InForum BI solution for following reasons:
- Support for WWW was weak
- Slow
- Mashing up different data sources was near impossible
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Product Features - mash up from different data sources and support for WWW were most important factors.
I would definitely be more thorough in terms of evaluating a specific features required for our own product.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
Always use a separate environment to test new release. Always make a back up of each ElastiCube before each upgrade.
  • Some issues with IIS, when implementing earlier versions of PRISM Web.
Quick and simple. If we had run into some issues they were solved pretty quickly.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
Easy and free training that allowed us quickly understand basics in SiSense and start using them. More advanced features requires some browsing through SiSense forums, but there is always support to help, and SiSense support is one of the best whith which I worked so far.
Many examples, videos and scenarios which you try on your own right away. This combined with in-person training gives you enough to utilize most of SiSense's power.
It is quite easy to learn on your own, but before doing so you need to identify your needs and if some of those needs are not met easily, conntact suport to learn more about it.
There maybe some features missing but overall configuration is flexible and quite powerful. Plus there is rebranding which is quite unique
Do not use IIS Express if you're going to use mobile platform since it has some issues. Other then that installation and configuration is easy and standard settings for most cases.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface
We needed to embed the solution as well as align coloring scheme to web page it was embedded in. All in all it was not that challening, although documentation for that requires some upgrades still.
Yes - we have added extensive custom code
Based on already available solutions it was quite easy. Tweaking and modification of already existing pieces of code is a little bit challenging but not that complicated. Creating your own plugins is difficult mainly due to high technical requirements and small amount of hints how to begin.
Support is very good. Quick response, timely delivered solutions and those are exactly what is required.
Yes
Yes, it was solved in timely fashion (usually in next release but sometimes I've receive a special hotfix for certain issues) and to my full satisfaction.
Since solution is only in English, fact that they allowed us to translate some parts of Web Interface to Polish was something exceptional.
  • ETL
  • Dashboard preparation
  • Dashboard distribution
  • Plugins in EC Manager.
  • JS Plugins could be problematic
Excellent, easy to use, end2end solution. It requires almost no it knowledge and is ready from day one to be used by end users.
Product is quite easily scalable. The whole installation can be easily moved to stronger machine if needed.
There are very few situations when there is unexpected downtime. Mostly during development, new dashboard implementation and during upgrades. other then that there were very few crashes.
SiSense is usually performing better then other solutions even if going for complex reports/dashboards(of course within reasonable frames). I haven't noticed any bad influence on other systems, usually if something happens it stays within SiSense.
  • Internal web application
Embeding dashboards in web application + merging user rights from SiSense with web application current users. There were some hurdles mostly due to the holes in documentation for such cases.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
  • ETL tools
Quick responses and flexible approach allows to get to agreement quite quickly.
Support and Success team keep in touch since day one, they reach to you by themselves from time to time to check how things are going. Also they respond very quickly when contacting support team.
Mostly pricing and number of users, but also some additional features outside regular license.
Be prepared in term of your needs to avoid disappointment.
Yes
Update is quick. It is recommended to back up before doing upgrade mostly due to behind the scenes changes that may affect system, mainly if SiSense is used as OEM embeded in another system. Unexpected impacts are very rare and usually quickly fixed with help of support team.
  • Hierarchies
  • New filtering system
  • Memory consumption enhancments
  • Improved iPad experience
  • Improved role configuration
  • Better documentation for extending SiSense.
Yes
Change is quick and painless and was done after finishing PoC and going for regular license.
No

Sisense: fast and easy to use on large data sets for medium sized businesses

Rating: 7 out of 10
February 22, 2016
HV
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sisense
1 year of experience
Sisense is used by our whole organisation and Sisense is an integral part of the services we provide to our our customers. Sisense helps us to provide operational, tactictal and strategical information.
  • The user interface for creating dashboards is very user friendly.
  • The user interface for creating dashboards has a pleasant design.
  • The performance of analysis on large datasets is excellent.
  • Basic analytic cubes are easy to develop.
  • Sisense support is excellent. Replies are fast and support personel have the required knowledge and experience.
  • Upgrades have been deployed easily and without problems, up till now .
Cons
  • The development and maintenance of complex and generic analytic cubes could be improved.
  • Export of data and visualisations to pdf and csv is possible. However the functionality is basic and limited.
  • No time format/datatype available. This requires JavaScript code to make it work.
  • JavaScript add-ons for bucket analysis and Gantt charts are limited and not supported.
  • Very limited trellis functionality
  • Cube field names cannot be changed without impacting the dashboards. Impact analysis is not available in standard software package.
  • Cannot rebuild cubes without making cube inaccessible during rebuild period.
It is a perfect solution for small scale BI demands. This is not due to the columnar database. The backend can handle enterprise data loads easily. But Sisense lacks the features to create and maintain enterprise wide data models. However new functionality is added rapidly. I expect Sisense to able to answer the enterprise requirements in the near future.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (1)
80%
8.0
Customizable dashboards
80%
8.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (3)
50%
5.0
Drill-down analysis
80%
8.0
Formatting capabilities
70%
7.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
N/A
N/A
Report Output and Scheduling (3)
63.33333333333333%
6.3
Publish to Web
80%
8.0
Publish to PDF
50%
5.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
60%
6.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
46.66666666666667%
4.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
70%
7.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
70%
7.0
Predictive Analytics
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security (3)
76.66666666666667%
7.7
Multi-User Support (named login)
80%
8.0
Role-Based Security Model
70%
7.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
80%
8.0
Mobile Capabilities (3)
26.666666666666664%
2.7
Responsive Design for Web Access
80%
8.0
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
30
Business analists, management, (sales, purchase, logistics) employees.
2
sql, information and business analysis
  • Provide Sisense as an information service to our customers.
  • Operational reporting
  • Analysis of sales data
  • Management information on medication usage
Yes
jaspersoft server was replaced because of lack of performance and ease of use.
excel was replaced in some business cases that require large amounts of data.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Third-party Reviews
It was a combination of factors: performance on large datasets, usability and a reasonable price.
Our evaluation and selection process was successful and we are happy with the result, so no need to change it.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
Sisense was easy to install and because Sisense is easy to use the roll out in our organisation was a breeze.
  • Some add ons could not be migrated at first
Remember to migrate the plugins. The documentation however is pretty straight forward.
Yes
We pay for premium support if available, because we need support for our non-standard questions about the product or to investigate difficult technical issues.
Response is fast and adequate.
When we migrated to a new server, we received several hours of support that could be considered as professional services. However this was done without additional costs.
  • Creating visualisations
  • Deploying a new cube means the users cannot use the dashboards for that cube. So deploying needs to be scheduled during night time.
  • Time format requires JavaScript.
For at least 80% of our business requirements Sisense works perfectly.

Big Data and Charter School - What? Sisense delivers big time

Rating: 9 out of 10
December 06, 2014
DC
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sisense
1 year of experience
Sisense is used to give our educators on staff real-time feedback on the performance of their students. Using various coding techniques the dashboards are directly integrated into our student management system. All staff members across the state utilize the product. It addressed the need for all key performance data located in one place and in a timely manner.
  • Elasticube technology simple to use - extremely flexible and easy to use. You have many built in plugins to connect to multiple sources of data and the ability to build an API connector if needed.
  • Short Development time - build comprehensive dashboards on the fly and push changes instantly to the web
  • Customer service - big strength here. They have a very responsive support staff that will help you figure out any issue. I have them all on Skype if that tells you how accessible they are.
Cons
  • Discrepancies between what you see in the designer and how it is displayed on the web. It does not look as polished when published. Fortunately I have been already shown a sneak peek into the upcoming v5 and they moved the designer completely to the web.
  • Documentation on how to accomplish some things is sometimes left to much to the interpretation of the user. I would like to see a more comprehensive guide in different areas such as their API designer and some of their SQL design pieces.
  • Some stability issues within the prism web environment. Not sure if this is something at fault on my end or theirs.
I don't write many glowing reviews but this company has all the right things going for it. This product is particularly suited to companies with little fat in the IT side of things. One person with middling to good computer know-how can create everything they would need. Your prism web and elasticube can run on some pretty inexpensive hardware. The place where I placed emphasis was in lots of RAM and a fairly decent multi-core processor. To round it off, my biggest measure of how my experience is going to fare is the priority of the vendor in the area of customer service and it is superb.
I absolutely love this product. However, they are moving to a new version that is almost a total redesign of the product. It remains to be seen how much work will be involved to transition.
250
These staff members represent all areas of what you would term a typical school district. Teaching, finance, administration, support, etc are part of this.
1
Yes. Just me. Realize that my primary background is education but I have a pretty thorough knowledge of C#, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and database design. As one of our vendors described me, "Enough to be thoroughly dangerous." I take that as a compliment.
  • Tracking of student engagement - being able to identify our students that are starting to disengage in order to pull wrap around services into play is important with our high at-risk student population.
  • Support for Coaches - easy drill down for school administration to see where hot spots are occurring. Allows for a quicker and more reasoned response to support.
  • Tracking of enrollment and paperwork - in a two month period of time we enroll several thousand students. Having dashboards that instantly convey that information directly to those who need it to engage and support from the word go is priceless.
  • The fact we were able to integrate so closely with Maestro, our student information system by a company called Bocavox gave both products a high profile within the organization.
  • Using some creative java scripting, I was able to seamlessly pull data from hidden fields to set the global scope of the dashboards. What this allowed was an instant customized view of only the data pertaining to the user and their role in the SIS. For example, a coach only saw their caseload of students assigned to them or a principal only saw data that pertained to their school site.
  • The sky is the limit here. I plan on bringing some real world big data into play soon. For example, wouldn't it be cool to be able to build the typical profile of our students with census data? We can overlay that data onto a geocoded map (yes Sisense does this) and get a feel of where best to spend our limited marketing dollars when looking at moving into a particular city or area.
No
Sisense does not have levels of support according to pricing structures. They are dedicated to the client success at any level. Their initial line of support is extremely knowledgable as it is and when things have to elevate to a solution architect, the ensuing solutions become a part of the whole product and I believe it will make for a stronger product.
This team is one of the few companies where I can literally Skype them for help and they respond immediately. Most don't realize how rare that actually is in the industry. Expanding their presence to the eastern time zone of the United States has made them more accessible as a result.
At one point we did not have an active directory built and available for use but I still needed the product to be responsive to allowing individuals to access their specific boards. As a team of just myself, I couldn't load in 100's of staff members myself so I had to embed Sisense into our student information system and pass variables via JavaScript. The support division of Sisense went out of their way to build a generalized user that would authenticate when any staff member logged into the SIS and allowed the java scripting to take over using filters. It was an awesome short term solution to help me meet a development deadline.
  • New V5: Rapid reveal of data bought into an elasticube. You are literally able to create a few widgets and make that data available to anyone in less than a minute
  • New V5: Simple hookup of Active Directory to Sisense with automation of pulls from the AD easily setup. Truly set and forget.
  • New V5: Addition of groups from Active Directory one at a time. Would prefer a checkbox list and be able to apply all at once. Also, to be able to apply active directory choices to other folders of boards would be ideal. Currently you add one group at a time, dashboard by dashboard.
New V5 is ground floor of an exciting collection of possibilities. Weekly Sisense developers come up with new functionality that they share with us in their forums. The move to HTML5 has been pleasing in that widgets auto size themselves into appropriate forms in the board but everyone of them can be popped out to full page size to be looked at in more detail.

SiSense is a great solution for delivering agile BI with a low total cost of ownership

Rating: 10 out of 10
July 30, 2014
KH
Vetted Review
Verified User
Sisense
1 year of experience
We implemented Sisense to be the executive dashboard and managerial reporting platform across the whole organization. It provides business performance insight to people at all levels, including C-level executives, business function managers, product managers, and analysts.

Before SiSense, we used SAP Business Objective as our BI application; however, BO fell short of business mandates, and we had to look for an alternative solution. SiSense was chosen and implemented successfully to meet the business demand.

  • It is fast to setup, develop, and deploy.
  • It requires no tuning to handle large amounts of data.
  • it is easy to maintain and has low software license and hardware costs
  • Elastic Cube makes it easy to maintain consistency in data relationship / data definition across all reports,
  • The dashboard builder could construct complicated dashboards from the data model with lowest granularity level (minimal or none data aggregation before loading data to SiSense ).
Cons
  • SiSense doesn't have a comprehensive data permission authorization capability. It could be difficult to manage the data access permissions for an organization with a large hierarchy structure or for complex authorization requirements.
  • SiSense does not support merging two dimensions on-the-fly when building reports in BI Studio (the report development tool in SiSense). For example, there were a user table and a revenue table in the ElastiCube. To show user growth and revenue growth in one chart, I can not build the chart directly. Instead, firstly, I needed to bridge two date dimensions, the user sign-up date and the revenue date, from the two tables in ElastiCube Manager ( the cube management tool in SiSense). Secondly, I used the bridged date dimension to build the chart in BI studio. This leads to a complicated data model and the reduced flexibility in ElastiCube.
  • ElastiCube does not support outer-join tables when modeling data. Though it's always feasible to build reports that have outer-join logic, some minor work-around is required.
SiSense is very approachable and implementable, compared to other BI applications with similar functionality in the market.

SiSense is a great for
- companies / departments that need agility and fast delivery in BI and data analysis
- small to mid size companies
- companies that need to analyze large amounts of data

SiSense is less appropriate for
- companies that have a large hierarchy structure and complex data permission requirements

  • Report development time is reduced from 2~3 days to 2~3 hours.
  • Report querying time is improved from 0.5~10 mins to 2~30 seconds.
  • A 2-staff team delivers 10 times the BI output that we did on the old system.
  • We were able to deliver BI and data analysis for all business functions instead of a very limited group of users
  • SAP Business Objects,Tableau Server,Birst,MicroStrategy Analytics,QlikView,Pentaho,IBM Cognos Express,Oracle Business Analytics,Tibco Spotfire,GoodData,datahero,Domo
We evaluated each software and chose 4 candidates to build a proof-of-concept for the most complicated and challenging reporting scenario at our company with real data and business requirement.

We selected SiSense because its strengths and abilities (fast-to-deliver, small investment, big-data capability) best solve our problems and meet our business needs.

SiSense will continue being a great solution for BI / Data delivery in my company.
  • Build reports and dashboards
  • Perform ad-hoc analysis
  • manage and maintain data model and data relationship
  • Install and setup the whole SiSense server
  • Implement complex data permission requirements
Yes, but I don't use it
It's really easy to learn and use for developers and business users, compared to all other BI applications with similar functionalities
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