Host Analytics works, but the UI is underwhelming
May 16, 2019
Host Analytics works, but the UI is underwhelming
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Planning
- Reporting and Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Planful (formerly Host Analytics)
Only our Financial Analysts and the financial execs use Host Analytics directly. The primary purpose is budget forecasts.
- I often hear from my users, "the best thing about Host Analytics is the export to Excel feature so we can do our work there."
- I'm struggling to come up with things it does "particularly well," so I think it would be a disservice to readers to make up something
- User interface, while not bad, really could take some cues from basic interfaces. Strange to navigate. Perhaps its method of often requiring double-clicks is smart, but it's not consistent with most web interfaces
- Their newly touted native NetSuite integration is techncially GA, but really needs more time to bake. Documentation for this new feature is improving but still is confusing.
- It's surprisingly configurable, perhaps overly so for a point solution. "Surprising" also because it's hard to navigate and find the configurations.
- When there are problems with data loads, my experience is its challenging to find the problem (weak error messages and reporting), and fixing the problem often means deleting entire periods of data and reloading again.
- While a lot can be done with reporting, the way to generate custom functions is...uncommon. I forget the name of the query language.
- Can't speak to this.
The UI in Oracle's Planning and Budgeting Cloud is surprisingly fresh, especially compared to Host. Navigation, colors, clicking, graphics all feel relatively modern, especially for business software. It offers a lot of features that appear more fully baked than Host Analytics' offering. The NetSuite integration is especially attractive for two known reasons right now: 1) it can extract any data we put in a saved search in NetSuite and 2) it pulls metadata (departments, accounts, etc), neither of which can be said of Host Analytics.