Item: MicroStrategy Analytics
Rating: 8
Author: Sid Haas

Overall Satisfaction

Pros and Cons

Pros

Drag and drop analysis for users that don't need any database knowledge or programming experience.
Beautiful dashboards that load quickly and provide instant snapshots and/or trends over time.
Ability to extend from desktop to mobile with relative ease.

Cons

Microstrategy Web and Microstrategy Desktop work slightly differently. There are still some functions that need to be completed in the Desktop software that are not available through a browser.
Web-based dashboards still utilize Flash. I expect to hear about a transition to HTML5 or something similar, but have not yet heard about this. Microstrategy Mobile solutions do not require Flash.
Product licensing is difficult to understand.

Return on Investment

Greatly enhances our ability to help customers understand their data -- we import client data into Microstategy to provide a variety of services to them.
Provides one version of the truth as all reports/dashboards access the exact same data, formulas, metrics, etc.
Gained tremendous flexibility for all sorts of reporting and analysis needs. Beyond anything we could build ourselves in-house.

We're heavily invested (time and money) in Microstrategy. It meets all of our reporting needs -- there are still many things it can do that we haven't utilized. Microstrategy still provides the "wow" factor even after using it for several years.

Likelihood to Recommend

Success with Microstrategy (or any BI tool) begins with your data. Spend the time and effort it takes to clean up your data and develop bullet-proof ETL (Extract - Transform - Load) procedures and scripts to keep that data clean at all times. Ensure that you have excellent performance from your database server(s) and plenty of memory available for Microstrategy's tremendous caching engines.

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Reporting and Analysis for the Non-Techie

Software Version