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SAS BI - Not so great Business Intelligence software
May 13, 2021

SAS BI - Not so great Business Intelligence software

Raman Ahuja | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SAS Business Intelligence

SAS Business Intelligence is mainly used by the analytics teams across organizations in order to create interactive reports and dashboards. The employees are not dependent [on] clunky Excel reports and dashboard[s] anymore and are able to have access to reports, dashboards, and insights on the go with the help of mobile apps. Also, lot of features are inbuilt to do predictive analysis as well instead of just descriptive analysis.
  • Provides the flexibility to the end user to slice and dice the data.
  • Anyone can make predictive models with the help of in-built algorithms without the need to write a single line of code or knowledge of what's under the hood of algorithms.
  • The feature to simply ask a question related to data and getting a response in form of text, chart or graph is amazing.
  • SAS Business Intelligence is very expensive.
  • There is a steep learning curve to be proficient at using SAS Business Intelligence even for people experienced with BASE SAS.
  • Limited functionality as it doesn't integrate with open source tools like Julia, Python or R.
  • End users of dashboards are more self reliant in terms of making changes to reports.
  • One doesn't need to use other software for basic predictions and forecasts.
  • Decision making has become prompt and data backed as people are equipped with reports and insights anywhere and with any device.

Do you think SAS Visual Analytics delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with SAS Visual Analytics's feature set?

No

Did SAS Visual Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SAS Visual Analytics go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy SAS Visual Analytics again?

No

SAS Business Intelligence is more suited to organizations which are already using SAS as the primary software for their analytics needs. Learning curve is relatively shorter for teams already skilled in BASE SAS. For organizations already working with open source software like Julia and Python, it doesn't make much sense to use SAS BI.

SAS Visual Analytics Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
Not Rated
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
Not Rated
Drill-down analysis
Not Rated
Formatting capabilities
Not Rated
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
Not Rated
Not Rated
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Not Rated
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Not Rated
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
Not Rated
Multi-User Support (named login)
Not Rated
Role-Based Security Model
Not Rated
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Not Rated
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
Not Rated
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
Not Rated
iFrames
Not Rated
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Not Rated
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated

SAS Business Intelligence Support

I didn't have a lot of experience with SAS BI support teams apart from one interaction. I was able to reach out to local support team via email and got a prompt response where they helped me resolve the issue I was facing on the next day. The team was knowledgeable and they resolved it to my satisfaction. But it made me wonder what if it would have been [if it were] a critical issue and I need[ed] support on an urgent basis. Since a dedicated resource and after office hours support was not there, it made me a little uncomfortable.

Using SAS Business Intelligence

SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.