Sigma has eliminated the common barriers to entry for our data--the door has been opened for those that have never heard of SQL
Updated September 23, 2020

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

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Sigma Computing

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

  • 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.
  • 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.
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.
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.
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.
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

Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
8
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
Not Rated
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
8
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
8
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
8
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
7
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated

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