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End to end BI solution for not complex scenarios
Updated February 12, 2019

End to end BI solution for not complex scenarios

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Birst

We adopted BIRST to be used as the enterprise BI solution so all departments with enterprise BI needs would use BIRST.

We use BIRST Cloud solution.

  • Being a cloud solution the platform upgrades are not a pain point anymore.
  • Once the data model is ready, building basic reports/dashboards are really straightforward.
  • One single tool may cover all your business intelligence needs, from data ingestion to reporting so it can be cost-saving in terms of licensing.
  • Building an analytical ready model does not require highly skilled developers.
  • Lack of access to underlying database and use of non standard languages (propietary code) BQL and BIRST scripting.
  • Very poor and not user-friendly administrative area. Big dependency on command line tasks (a few drag and drop) and lack of out of the box administrative views (reports and dashboards showing platform's response).
  • Small community. Really difficult to find skilled resources in the market and few technical blog articles or videos available.
  • Data ingestion capabilities do not scale. Being capable of ingesting data is an added value however, the solution is mainly based on SQL plus scripting (no out of the box monitoring capabilities, difficult to reverse-engineer...).
Tableau does not have a common semantic layer like BIRST does so we use Tableau for data discovery purposes and BIRST for enterprise BI.
Within BIRST, we can increase the level of data governance.

Depending on the complexity of your company's data and business needs it may or may not be a good fit. I would say it can be a good BI ecosystem for small and mid-size companies with low complexity so they can have data ingestion and reporting capabilities with one single tool.

If you need to integrate data from many different data source;, your environment does change quite frequently, you have many different business areas, the data volume you have is quite big... then it is less appropriate.

Infor Birst Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
5.3
Pixel Perfect reports
4
Customizable dashboards
6
Report Formatting Templates
6
4.7
Drill-down analysis
5
Formatting capabilities
6
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
3
6.7
Publish to Web
7
Publish to PDF
8
Report Delivery Scheduling
5
8.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
8
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
5.7
Multi-User Support (named login)
6
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
4
5.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
2
Mobile Application
7
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
6
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding ()
Not Rated

Additional Questions on Birst Capabilities

From the end user point of view (both interacting with dashboards already built or creating your own reports with Visualizer as self service BI) it is user friendly.
From the admin/developer point of view we do not find it user friendly, a lot of commands for administrative tasks (few drag and drop), a lot custom code required for data ingestion purposes including Python, batch command line, BQL (BIRST SQL language, it is difficult to reverse engineer, there is a lack of a super-administrator role which could have access to everything.
Personally I would say it could be a good fit for mid-size companies with low complexity (few data sources, few STAR-schemas and few conformed dimensions).

Using Birst

7000 - We do follow a centralized/de-centralized approach around BI with BIRST covering the data-warehousing and semantic layer needs and another BI tool for data discovery and piloting purposes.
Current usage of BIRST in our company is not focused on a specific business area or function but all areas with enterprise BI needs.
50 - We use BIRST as SaaS so in-house we do not support the platform/technology but the applications built on top of it.
The support team we have is basically granting access to users, and supporting the different applications including: monitor the execution of ETLs, building new reports/dashbords, troubleshooting issues...
  • Enterprise wide reporting with big target audience having a common semantic layer in order to ensure KPI definitions are consistent
  • No innovative ways we have used BIRST
  • Depending on BIRST new capabilities. Currently we're trying to adopt Pronto for self service data preparation purposes
Not Sure
  • Product Features
  • Third-party Reviews

Birst Support

There are tickets we've created which seem simple but not answered in over a year.
In many cases we are provided with workarounds but not real solutions.
Multiple times we are given the answer "code change" requested so we have to wait for the next release (every 3 months) and in some cases we have to wait for more than one release.
ProsCons
None
Slow Resolution
Poor followup
Less knowledgeable
Problems left unsolved
Escalation required
Yes - The tool has been selected as the Enterprise BI solution so having it 24/7 is a must
Yes - Multiple times we are given the answer "code change" requested so we have to wait for the next release (every 3 months) and in some cases we have to wait for more than one release.
There are other cases where a minor release has been provided (not having to wait for 3 months) but this is not the usual case.

Using Birst

ProsCons
None
Unnecessarily complex
Requires technical support
Not well integrated
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Feel nervous using
Lots to learn
  • Self service BI to build simple reports with Visualizer is easy
  • Interacting with existing reports and dashboards is really easy
  • Data ingestion process is quite complex
  • Data modelling and making changes to the existing model can be really tricky. It is hard to reverse engineer and apply changes on a model built by another developer/team and it is hard to change something if you do not regularly apply changes (i.e. add a dimension to a model you built 5 months ago).
  • The administration parts are not user friendly. It is Flash based and a lot of things are done via commands. There is no super administrator role so not possible to have a look at everything which has been built.
Yes

Evaluating Birst and Competitors

BIRST was the innovative and disruptive technology of
the BI Industry in 2015 and we were looking for a SaaS cloud solution what we did not consider is the high complexity of our data-ingestion/integration needs neither the low re-usability of the data ingested by BIRST.
During the selection process make sure the tool does fully cover the capabilities needed and clearly position it within your toolkit so each tool is used for the purpose it was selected.