Item: Sigma Computing
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Sigma Computing

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Simga Computing is used by the entirety of the data analytics team, as well as a few select individuals like myself, that need to perform data analysis. I believe the plan is for more of a company-wide implementation to be adopted, but outside of engineering, operations, and data analytics, the audience/value will be limited.

Sigma's cloud-based platform offers the benefit of quickly querying large amounts of data, those that would never be able to be effectively run in Excel/Google Sheets. Furthermore, it expands the 'proficient data consumer' population across the company, as SQL (or other query language) skills are not required.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Quickly querying vast amounts of data - this cloud-based solution integrates seamlessly with our Snowflake aggregator.
It increases the population of employees that can effectively utilize data. Knowledge of query languages are not necessary, but I love that Sigma still offers the option of using query languages (particularly for those that are more familiar with them and/or highly complex queries.
Seamless integration wit Snowflake enables quick implementation of the tool.

Cons

When adding values to include/exclude in a filter, it's not obviously that clicking away from the field entry will initiate the application of the filter.
In the filter dropdown menu, it's not entirely obvious how to remove a filter. The "x" is not easy to find visually, nor is its intent obvious.

Return on Investment

Simga greatly increased the population of colleagues that could effectively access and query data--I'd estimate that it's grown our effective-data users by 30-40% company-wide.
As with any business tool, integration and mass-adoption take time. We are a data-centric consumer hardware company, there are a myriad of existing tools so getting full buy-in (outside of our data analytics team) has taken >1 year.

Usability

It opens up a world of reporting and analysis to the greater population of employees, all without the need to understand/be proficient in query languages. Overall, if a user has even a basic understanding of popular Excel functions, they'll see value in Sigma. The usability score drops from an 8 or 9 as the UI color palette make finding objects somewhat difficult. This has been the #1 negative feedback we've received from new-to-Sigma user and greatest barrier to quick adoption by those that currently use other tools.

Support Rating

I must remain somewhat neutral on a support rating as I've had very limited exposure to their support organization. That said, in the self-service realm, there are a ton of resources/articles to help guide users though nearly every situation (e.g., understanding syntax, how to add basic objects/filters, etc.). Sigma Computing offers a vast collection of support articles (all fairly well formatted/written), and it's overall usage/adoption have allowed for a number of third-party resources and forums to spring up.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho Analytics (formerly Zoho Reports), Salesflare and Allstream Data

While the business decision to acquire and implement Sigma was not mine, it's benefits in speed, stability and user-friendliness (with some caveats as previously noted) make it an easy choice over similar products. I feel that the largest disadvantage to Sigma is the somewhat-difficult-to-navigate UI, due to the color palette.

Likelihood to Recommend

Sigma is well suited for companies/business units that are >20-30 people--those that require broad access to data company-wide will see the most immediate benefit as the non-data pros will now have the ability to peruse and export as they please. Additionally, those that have already implemented Snowflake have a large advantage for roll-out, but Snowflake is not a necessity.

Sigma doesn't make too much sense for companies with a very limited population of data users, or if all data/analysis is routed directly through one small team (e.g., a 1-3 person team that specializes in-/is solely dedicated to data).

Sigma Feature Ratings

Comments

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Sigma has eliminated the common barriers to entry for our data--the door has been opened for those that have never heard of SQL