Great BI tool if you are already using Salesforce as your CRM
February 27, 2019
Great BI tool if you are already using Salesforce as your CRM
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Analytics Cloud
Salesforce Analytics Cloud, or Salesforce Wave, is a great BI tool and optimized for mobile access and data visualization, especially if your organization is currently using Salesforce. Our University is currently using Salesforce for Student Relations Management and this tool is great for pulling data and presenting that data in an easy to ingest format in a visually pleasing way. It is used by our Enrollment departments on campus.
- It has dashboards that, out of the box, can be useful for people who do not want to put in much effort in creating custom dashboards. It also has the ability to customize dashboards so you can add more info and functionality to your dashboards if the need arises.
- The developers are continually investing in the platform and providing improvements, and listen to customer feedback and feature requests. They regularly update the app and provide more functionality which has been beneficial to our institution.
- Native integration and natural connection if your organization is already using Salesforce. Super easy to set up and works well with Salesforce. Very smooth and natural when connecting it to your Salesforce instance.
- Excellent visual experience for presenting data. Users find it so much easier to navigate and view data in a visual way, which allows them to drive their performance in the right directions.
- Has the ability to pull data not only from Salesforce but from other external systems and databases, making it an all-around BI tool. Mixing data from Salesforce and other third-party systems puts all your data in one place which can easily be ingested by decision-makers and executives.
- Implementation takes time and resources. It is a heavy lift to implement and at first, it can take a little bit of time to understand what you are looking at. But once it's implemented it's easy to get started.
- Without any BI expertise or resources available to your organization, the implementation of this is difficult. If you aren't used to BI tools and don't have an expert in house, the terminology can be difficult to understand at first.
- Their support is not on hand to help you if you encounter any issues, at least not on all the plans or the basic plans. Real-time support service is an add-on, so you'll need to be patient if you require help or pay extra money.
- More functionality for the tool is needed to compete with other heavyweights in the arena like Tableau, Qlik, and Microstrategy. Still lacks the robustness, functionality, and flexibility other competing products possess.
- Google Data Studio and Tableau Online
Salesforce Analytics Cloud is easier to integrate with Salesforce since it has a native integration and connection point. It does lack in functionality compared to heavy tools like Tableau and Microstrategy. If you want more functionality and are not currently using Salesforce as your CRM tool then I would go with an alternative. It does do better than super lightweight tools like Google Data Studio, which we also use in our organization.