QlikView: Perfect Data Exploration Tool for a Department on a Tight Budget
December 11, 2018
QlikView: Perfect Data Exploration Tool for a Department on a Tight Budget
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
QlikView Desktop (Free)
Overall Satisfaction with QlikView
We use QlikView as a data exploration tool for non-experts. Our front-line staff can use QlikView to dig into our data, explore what's available, what prospects might be in a particular area, what a possible population might be for a targeted event, mailing or solicitation. Our entire department has access to Qlikview--some users rely more heavily than others on data to inform their decisions. Those users are digging into QlikView to get a picture of what their data looks like quickly and easily.
- QlikView has a simple, relational data model that's REALLY fast. Filtering and changing data is dead simple results are almost immediately available.
- The free version of Qlikview is almost completely featured, so you roll a pro-level product out to an entire department for really cheap.
- QlikView is really flexible--if you can imagine it, you can build it.
- Because it's such a clean slate, QlikView requires some UI design. You've got to think about how you want to display not only the data itself, but the filters and controls users need to explore the data.
- It can also be a pretty confusing to your users: if they filter in one place, they often forget that they've done so and don't understand why they're not seeing all their data elsewhere.
- The free version of Qlikview doesn't push data updates, so if users forget to refresh their data manually, they can be working from an old copy of the data. Paid versions solve this problem.
Tableau and Qlik Sense are a lot prettier and easier to use than QlikView. They also cost a LOT more. If you've got the budget, I'd consider going with one of those solutions. However, departments that don't have the budget to support tools like those need usable solutions as well--QlikView provides exactly that sort of solution.