SPSS: An effective business solution
December 18, 2018
SPSS: An effective business solution
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- IBM SPSS Statistics
Overall Satisfaction with IBM SPSS
IBM SPSS is only used within the data and evaluation department at my organization. I am the director of the department and when I came on board 3 years ago, I made the decision to use this software based on my experience having used it in the past. I recently hired someone about 2 months ago and requested that she have a license for the software as well - luckily she also had experience with the software. In terms of solving business problems, SPSS helps us analyze large datasets. It is able to do a lot more than Excel or Salesforce - such as statistical testing. We have integrated SPSS with Salesforce and are able to push data into SPSS for easy analysis.
- SPSS has both point and click as well as syntax options. I was trained by someone who had worked in SPSS for many, many years and only knew SPSS syntax so I learned how to write code myself. However, it is helpful to have both options.
- SPSS has great resources online for syntax and defining certain functions/processes.
- SPSS integrates with Salesforce and allows for a streamlined process by pulling data for easy analysis.
- It's my understanding that SPSS cannot do very complex analysis like SAS can. But I personally have not had the need to use it so it hasn't affected me yet.
- Sometimes SPSS has little quirks that are rules built in that are difficult to get around. Like when you set values to missing (or something related to this) the original string variable cannot be more than 8 characters long.
Significant time is saved by using SPSS and SF integration. This includes the actual analysis happening in SPSS and not in Excel. Rather than exporting data from SF into Excel and then importing the Excel file into SPSS. There are a few places where things could go wrong and this would certainly be an operational efficiency. Also the fact that I can do advanced data clean up and manipulation is a huge operational efficiency.
SPSS has allowed my organization to have more advanced tracking and reporting of metrics. It has allowed us to answer various research questions such as likelihood that something will happen or how strong an association is between two things. As a result of these research, there is improved decision making across the organization. It also helps us identify gaps or needs as well as opportunities.
I have used SAS. I started my career using it after being formally taught in graduate school back in 2010. I switched to SPSS when a new employer requested that I learn it. I will say it wasn't hard to go from SAS to SPSS because I already had the knowledge of statistical software programming. The biggest difference between SAS and SPSS is that SPSS offers simple point and click (although its my understanding SAS has changed to account for this).